The Story Of Scotland Yard E-Book

Basil Thomson

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 505

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

THE INGRAINED love of personal liberty inherent in the British people and their distrust in giving additional power to their governments made Great Britain one of the slowest countries in the world to institute police. Jurists were far in advance of public opinion. Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832) considered police necessary as a method of precaution to prevent crimes and calamities as well as to correct and cure them. Blackstone in his Commentaries (1765) wrote, "By public police and economy I mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behaviour to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners; to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations.

Leseprobe

THE STORY OF

SCOTLAND YARD

Basil Thomson

© 2020 Librorium Editions All rights reserved

Contents

PART I: THE NEED FOR SCOTLAND YARD

1. The Need for Scotland Yard

2. The Brothers Fielding

3. Bow Street Experiments

4. The Cato Street Conspiracy

PART II: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SCOTLAND TARD

5. The Public Opposition

6. Disturbed Years

7. The Demand for Reform of the Criminal Law

8. Early Years

9. The Institution of a Criminal Investigation Department

10. Some Early C.I.D. Cases

11. Disturbed Years

12. The Abolition of Transportation

13. Dealing with Mobs

14. The Rugeley Poisoning and other Crimes

15. The Fenians

16. The Dynamiters

17. The Crippen Case

18. The Criminal Record Office

19. War-time Crimes

20. The Police Strike

PART III: THE POST-WAR PERIOD

21. Post-War Crimes

22. The Work in Fraud Cases

23. The Thompson and Bywaters Case

24. The Raid on the Russian Trading Delegation

25. Coping with New Conditions

26. The Existing Organization

_______________________

PART I: THE NEED FOR SCOTLAND YARD

1

The Need For A Scotland Yard

THE INGRAINED love of personal liberty inherent in the British people and their distrust in giving additional power to their governments made Great Britain one of the slowest countries in the world to institute police. Jurists were far in advance of public opinion. Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832) considered police necessary as a method of precaution to prevent crimes and calamities as well as to correct and cure them. Blackstone in his Commentaries (1765) wrote, "By public police and economy I mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behaviour to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners; to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations.

The French kings seem to have been the first in modern times to establish a police system. As early as the fourteenth century, Charles V instituted police "to increase the happiness and security of his people." It was destined soon to become an engine of oppression, depriving the people of the commonest rights and privileges— prescribing their diet and their dress and forbidding them to move from place to place without leave. Louis XIV enormously increased the powers of the police with the excellent object of giving security to a city in which crime, disorder and dirt flourished unchecked, but in doing this he crushed all freedom and independence out of his people. The Lieutenant of Police, called into existence in 1667, ruled Paris despotically henceforward until the great break-up of the Revolution in 1789. He had summary jurisdiction over criminals, vagabonds and beggars; he was responsible for the security and good order of Paris. Nevertheless, crime flourished. In the heart of the city— the Cour des Miracles— was a criminal Alsatia in which desperadoes of all kinds defied authority. Everyone carried swords— even the servants of the great nobles— and were quick to use them. Crime was rampant even in the highest ranks. The Chevalier de Rohan was detected in a plot to sell strong places on the Normandy coast to the enemy; the Marquise de Brinvilliers and others of little less importance were convicted of wholesale poisonings and were executed in 1776.

La Reynie, the first Lieutenant of Police, did much towards suppressing disorder. He cleared out the Cour des Miracles and forbade servants to carry arms. He was Press Censor; books and pamphlets to which he objected were sent to the Bastille to be destroyed; the printers were arrested and their presses broken up. He had nearly a thousand cavalry and infantry under his orders besides the city watch, or 'archers' as they were called.

While most of the continental countries in Europe were over-policed, Great Britain was content to make shift with her citizens for maintaining order. The policy in dealing with crime was to terrorize potential criminals by the savagery of the punishment, which, with that object, was carried out in public. It was no uncommon thing for parents to take young children to such exhibitions as an awful warning against temptation to engage in crime. Public executions were the rule even as late as the childhood of the present author.

The office of constable in England was incumbent upon every adult citizen, but many evaded the duty by paying substitutes. One of the earliest attempts to establish a systematic police was the Statute 13, Edward I (1285), made to maintain peace in the City of London. This ancient statute was known as that of "Watch and Ward"; it recognized the principle that the inhabitants of every district must combine for their own protection. It enjoined that "none be so hardy as to be found going or wandering about the streets of the city with sword or buckler after curfew tolled at St. Martin's le Grand."

Any such were to be taken by the keepers of the peace and be put in a place of confinement to be dealt with and punished if the offence were proved. This Act further prescribed that as such persons sought shelter "in taverns more than elsewhere, lying in wait and watching their time to do mischief," no tavern should remain open after the tolling of curfew. No school to teach fencing was allowed within the city.

As evidence of the traditional British distrust of foreigners, this Act imposed penalties on foreigners who sought shelter in England "by reason of banishment out of their own country, or who, for great offence, have fled therefrom." Such persons were forbidden to become inn-keepers, unless they could find sureties. The Act sets forth that "some do nothing but run up and down the streets more by night than by day and are well attired in clothing and array and have their food of delicate meats and costly; neither do they use any craft or merchandise, nor have they lands and tenements whereof to live, nor any friend to find them; and through such persons many perils do often happen in the city and many evils, and some of them are found openly offending, as in robberies, breaking of houses by night, murders, and other evil deeds."

Another police Act, if we may call it so, was that of 27 Elizabeth (1585) for the good government of the City of Westminster which had been recently enlarged. "The people thereof being greatly increased, and being for the most part without trade or industry, and many of them wholly given to vice and idleness," power to correct them was given to the Dean of Westminster and the High Steward, who were authorized to punish "all matters of incontinencies, common scolds and common annoyances, and to commit to prison all who offended against the peace." Orders were made under this Act to control the bakers, the brewers, the colliers, the woodmongers and bargemen; none were suffered to forestall or "regrate " the markets so as to increase the price of victuals by buying them up beforehand. Cooks and tavern-keepers were kept apart; no man might sell ale and also keep a cook-shop. The tavern-keepers had to keep a lanthorn lighted at their street doors from 6 p.m. until 9 a.m. "except when the moon shall shine and give light."

The Act contained many other regulations for the cleansing of the streets, the selling of wholesome food, the strict segregation of persons affected with the plague. It is interesting to note that the great Lord Burleigh was the first High Steward of Westminster and that he was the author of these excellent regulations.

But it is one thing to pass a law and quite another to enforce it. The powers of the High Steward soon fell into disuse, but in the 10 George II (1737) the Elizabethan Act was re-enacted and its powers enlarged. In that Act a night-watch in the City— "a matter of very great importance for the preservation of the persons and properties of the inhabitants, and very necessary to prevent fires, murders, burglaries, robberies and other outrages and disorders"— was prescribed. The Common Council of the City was to levy rates to pay for the night-watch whose instructions were issued through the constables of wards and precincts.

Forty years later 14 George III (1777) was passed to supersede the last-mentioned Act. It is far more detailed in prescribing the actual number of watchmen, their wages; their arms, such as rattles, staves and lanterns; their duties; how they are to proclaim the time of the night or morning "loudly and as audibly as he can"; they are to see that all doors are safe and well-secured; they are to prevent "to the utmost of their power all murders, burglaries, robberies and affraies; they are to apprehend all loose, idle or disorderly persons and deliver them to the Headborough of the night at the watchhouse."

But this was only another instance of the failure of the best legislation where there is no will in the public mind to carry it out. The watchmen were too few in number and their pay was insufficient. Mr. Colquhoun, the police magistrate of the time, declared that "no small portion of these very men who are paid for protecting the public are not only instruments of oppression in many instances, by extorting money most unwarrantably, but are frequently accessories in aiding and abetting, or concealing the commission of crimes which it is their duty to detect and suppress." In June 1780, when a mob surrounded the Houses of Parliament at the beginning of the Gordon riots, only six out of the eighty constables appointed by the Westminster Court Leet could be found.

Throughout the eighteenth century the position of the poor in London was deplorable. Gregory King estimated that at the end of the seventeenth century paupers amounted to nearly one quarter of the population. The disproportion between wages and prices left the men who were fortunate enough to be in employment little margin above a mere subsistence level. The Statute of Artificers, which was in force up to 1813, required the Justices to make an annual assessment of wages under the supervision of the Privy Council, but the temper of the time was strongly against the central regulation of industry in any form, and with the decline of the power of the Privy Council the justices became progressively laxer in the performance of their duties in regulating wages. "The industrial revolution with its disastrously fluctuating prices and its further displacement of labour, fell upon the poor rather as the last straw on the back of a camel that had been living largely on its hump for some hundred and fifty years."

The night watchmen had been instituted in the reign of Charles II and named after him "Charlies," but they seerned to have served more as a sport for the high-spirited than as a deterrent to law-breakers. Fielding thus describes them in Amelia:

They were chosen out of those poor old decrepit people who are from their want of bodily strength rendered incapable of getting a living by work. These men, armed only with a pole, which some of tihem are scarce able to lift, are to secure the persons and houses of His Majesty's subjects from the attacks of young, bold, stout and desperate and well-armed villains. If the poor old fellows should run away from such enemies no one, I think, can wonder, unless he should wonder that they are able even to make their escape.

The "Charleys," as they were called, rarely complied with their orders to perambulate their districts once in every twenty-four hours. They were facetiously described as "Persons hired by the parish to sleep in the open air." Another wit preferred the title "shiver and shake "

to "watch and ward." The watch-houses were dirty, insecure hovels where prisoners were confined in under- ground cellars secured by a grating.

The Justices of the Peace were entrusted with the sole responsibility for maintaining order with these poor instruments and they themselves, in London at any rate, were often men of corrupt morals, incapable of inspiring respect and quite indifferent about the efficiency of their subordinates. In the rural districts there was no difficulty about finding gentlemen of property and repute to serve as Justices without emoluments, but in London the duties of a magistrate, if taken seriously, were so much more arduous and less pleasant that candidates were seldom men of distinction and frequently persons whose motive was to exploit rather than to serve the public. For though the Justices were not paid, they were entitled to receive certain fees, and some of them deservedly earned the opprobrious name of "trading Justices."

Amid the prevailing apathy and corruption of the time the Bow Street magistrates stood out as striking exceptions and it was to their initiative and example that all the movements which culminated in the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 were due.

London under the first four Georges was probably more pre-eminent in crime than any other town in earlier or later history. Little by little the slums in what is now known as Mayfair were cleared out to permit the building of mansions for the rich, and their occupants were sent to swarm in the filthy and unlighted streets in Westminster and Lambeth. There was no work for them. Children of the tenderest years were employed in every kind of crime and depravity; many were compelled to maintain their parents by thieving; girls at the early age of twelve swelled the ranks of prostitutes. There were streets in London which it was not safe for well-dressed people to traverse even in the daytime; pickpockets would dash out, rob, and make off again into the rabbit warren of criminals before any alarm could be given. Murder was rampant, because the addition of homicide to a theft of twelve pence or over could not make the punishment any heavier, while it might decisively favour the chance of escape. "One might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb." There was, moreover, in London, organized co-operation among malefactors, though much organized co-operation was entirely lacking among the guardians of law and order. Fielding tells of a gang "whose number falls little short of a hundred, who are incorporated in one body, have officers and a treasury; and have reduced theft and robbery to a regular system." The headquarters of such gangs were the labyrinths of narrow, filthy alleys in which the London of the time abounded.

As Fielding tells us it would have been foolhardy for unarmed constables to venture into such alleys "for it is a melancholy truth that at this very day a rogue no sooner gives the alarm in certain purlieus than twenty or thirty armed villains are ready to come to his assistance." An officer of the Honourable Artillery Company who was occasionally called upon to assist the Bow Street runners, thus describes Chick Lane, Field Lane and Black Boy Alley :

The buildings in these parts constitute a sort of distinct town.

...The houses are divided from top to bottom into many apartments, with doors of communication between them all, and also with the adjacent houses; some have two, others three, nay, four doors opening into different alleys. The peace officers and the keepers of these houses were well acquainted with each other, and on much better terms than is compatible with the distinction between honesty and roguery.

Not only the common footpads of the town, but their more romantic brethren of the road, profited by the asylum they enjoyed in these unsavoury precincts; a highwayman who had robbed a traveller or a coach in Hendon or Blackheath would make straight for Whitefriars with his booty and would be secure from arrest until he betrayed himself by his own vanity and boastfulness, or was betrayed by the treachery of a woman in whom he had confided. According to Sir John Fielding "most highwaymen keep company with low women who generally spend half the year in Bridewells and they have often impeached their paramours."

The disposal of loot was comparatively easy and safe in those days. Pawnbrokers were under no supervision and could safely carry on a trade in stolen goods. They were entitled to take before a magistrate any who attempted to sell or to pledge any article they believed to have been stolen, but as they ran no risk in accepting it, and to denounce a customer was dangerous, they preferred to take the safer road.

It was from these horrible streets and alleys that the mobs and rioters issued in times of public excitement to burn and pillage London. The government had no means of dealing with these riots except the military, who were called out far too late when the temper of the mob had become unmanageable. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there were five serious disturbances of this kind— the riots caused by the Gin Act in 1736; that of the journeymen weavers in 1765; the Gordon riots in 1780; the riots caused by the arrest of Sir Francis Burdett in 1810; and the riots at the Queen's funeral in 1821 . In all but two of these cases the wretched inhabitants of the poor quarters of London had no interest in the questions that were made the excuse for the riots; they did not even understand them. It was inevitable, as Fielding said at the time, that those who starved and froze and rotted among themselves should "beg and steal and rob among their betters."

The destitution in London during the whole of this period was appalling. By the end of the seventeenth century her population amounted to Just over half a million, or more than one tenth of that of the whole kingdom. By the beginning of the nineteenth century it had nearly doubled. In 1821 it was 1,167,000 and in 1851, 2,300,000. People had been crowding into the city by thousands without any reasonable hope of finding work. What else could they do but steal and what could they do with their booty but convert it into liquor to drown their misery? There were from six to seven thousand dram shops in London and Westminster alone. Smollett thus describes these establishments:

The retailers of this poisonous compound set up painted boards in public inviting people to be drunk at the small expense of one penny, and assuring them that they might be dead drunk for twopence and have straw for nothing.

And again:

As his guests get intoxicated they are laid together promiscuously, men, women and children, till they recover their senses, when they proceed to get drunk, or having spent all they had, go out to find wherewithal to return to the same dreadful pursuit, and how they acquire more money the Sessions paper too often acquaints us.

It was not until 1729 that an excise duty of 5s. per gallon on gin and other "compounded"  spirits was imposed in the hope of raising the price beyond the means of the poorest. This act was repealed in 1733, but the problem became so acute that three years later the duty on all spirits was raised to 20s. per gallon and none might retail them who had not taken out a licence. It is on record that only two £50 licences were taken out in seven years, and yet in 1742 excise duty was paid on 7,160,000 gallons of spirit. Nevertheless, in 1780, liquor and spirits were still being sold in 500 out of a total of 2,000 houses in the parish of St. Giles.

The eighteenth century was the great period of the smuggler. The gangs were well organized, as were the boot-leggers in the United States before the repeal of the Volstead Act. These gangs claimed a prescriptive right to a certain coast-line and openly defied the Revenue authorities. They operated under the protection of armed "fighting men," not only terrorizing the local population, but actually inducing members of the local magistracy to aid them, either by bribes or because certain magistrates were in sympathy with them.

Although the British criminals of the eighteenth century had anticipated modern methods, the counter- measures employed against them were still almost entirely mediaeval. The principle was that the people of a township or parish were answerable for every offence com- mitted within their borders and were bound within forty days either to produce the body of the offender, or else to make good the damage and pay a fine. This system had long become unworkable. Expansion of trade and population calls for specialization. " What is everybody's business is nobody's business," applies more closely to communities which are too large for public opinion to exercise pressure on indolence or evasion on the part of officials. The only solution of this problem is for the citizens to delegate their obligations to paid, permanent officials under the direct control of the executive, but for various reasons the eighteenth century was slow to accept this principle. In one of the most important departments of social economy— that of police— it paid dearly for its laxity.

Until the year 1792 constables were still theoretically ordinary citizens, serving unpaid for yearly terms of office in rotation. It is more than probable that those who could afford it paid substitutes to take their places— a practice not beneficial to the public, since these deputies were unlikely to be men of much integrity. Like Elbow in Measure for Measure,  who, when asked by Escalus how it is that he has been a constable for seven and a half years— "Are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it?" — replied "Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters. As they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I do it for some piece of money and go through with all."

2

The Brothers Fielding

IT WAS ALMOST by chance that the germ of the modern Scotland Yard planted itself in Bow Street, which was the first and most famous of the police offices. It chanced that a certain retired colonel, Sir Thomas de Veil, the son of a Huguenot minister, born in 1684, had been apprenticed to a mercer in Cheapside. The business failed and he joined the army for a livelihood. He rose to be a captain, but on his return to civil life he was too poor to indulge his rather extravagant tastes. Accordingly, he set up an office in Scotland Yard, leading out of Whitehall, where he transacted business such as preparing memorials to the public offices and drawing petitions at fixed fees. In 1729 we find him appointed to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster. It was exactly one century before the passing of Peel's Metropolitan Police Act.

He was now forty-five, well-educated and well travelled during his military service, and he had won a good reputation in business after leaving the army. He was thus well fitted for the responsible work he had undertaken. Throughout his career his guiding principle was to better himself, to stand well with his superiors, and to do all that tact, sagacity and conscientiousness could accomplish. As his biographer says of him :

The case was this. The captain was a very nice economist, and though he was willing to give his friends any assistance that might be drawn from his time and labour, yet he thought that they had no right to his pocket, and therefore he was so punctual in setting down his expenses that a dish of coffee did not escape him.

Those who thought him mean respected his scrupulous honesty in paying his debts. His caution and prudence were shown in declining to be nominated for the Bench until he had carefully studied the powers and duties of a magistrate.

The reputation he had acquired of conscientious work won him recognition as "Court Justice" in 1735. This office also had been created by chance. From the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if not earlier, it had been the practice for the Court and the Ministry to have recourse to some London or Middlesex magistrate for confidential services. The magistrate so employed came to be known as the "Court Justice." One of de Veirs successors, Henry Fielding, was known as "Principal Justice of the Peace in Westminster." Addington and Ford, who also succeeded him, received special emoluments for attendance at the Home Office and the Bow Street magistrates came to be recognized as higher authorities than their colleagues, especially in matters of police.

De Veil came into prominence as the author of a pamphlet "Observations on the practice of a Justice of the Peace, intended for such gentlemen as design to act for Middlesex and Westminster." His reputation was further advanced by his feat in breaking up one of the formidable gangs of criminals which infested London. This gang had long been defying the law. Their leader, a cunning attorney named Wreathook, had conducted their legal defence, but he took alarm when it became known that de Veil was on his track, so they lay in wait for him near his new office in Leicester Fields to murder him. In this they failed, and one of their number, Julian Brown, surrendered himself to Sir Thomas as King's evidence. On his information, Wreathook, the leader, was arrested and the rest dispersed. The case attracted the attention of the ministry. In the following year Colonel de Veil induced the Middlesex magistrates to petition Parliament on the subject of restraining drunkenness, and in consequence the Gin Act of 1736 was passed. It was quite ineffective and de Veil incurred much odium in consequence.

In January 1737 he read the Riot Act to disperse a crowd collected outside his house in Thrift Street, Soho. The mob demanded the persons of two informers who were in his house at the time. He could not turn them out without sacrificing their lives, or permit them to remain without danger to his own. He sent for assistance and had the leader of the mob, Roger Allen, committed to Newgate. The man was not tried for six months and he escaped punishment on a false plea of insanity. On his acquittal he made a speech to his supporters which showed no sign of any derangement.

De Veil had some gift as a detective. A man was being examined by him on a charge that he had stolen plate from an eating-house. There was no evidence against him beyond the fact that he had passed more than once through the house to the billiard-room. A lock had been picked and on hearing this de Veil began to talk about other matters. Then, suddenly turning to the prisoner, he asked him to lend him his knife and on opening it discovered that the point had been broken off. On this he sent a constable to examine the lock and the point of the knife was found in it. The man then confessed and gave the address of a pawnbroker to whom he had sold the stolen plate.

Few years passed without de Veil coming into public notice for some remarkable instance of detection. He it was who discovered the murderer of Mr. Penny, the principal of Clement's Inn and deputy paymaster of the pensions. The murdered man had a servant, James Hall, "a fellow of surly disposition and of a very cloudy aspect," who had been with him for six or seven years and was heavily in debt. To pay these debts he resolved to kill and rob his master. Accordingly he bought an oaken knobkerry and hid it under his master's bed. In the evening as Penny sat on his bed side, undressing himself. Hall drew out the club and stunned him from behind; then, carefully undressed him and cut his throat with a penknife. He made no attempt to escape, but told the charwoman that his master had gone out of town.

Penny's friends decided to have Hall taken before a magistrate, and that magistrate, unfortunately for him, was Thomas de Veil. Hall was truculent, but he was no match for the colonel who questioned him so closely that he "fell into confusion." Finally, Hall made a full confession. He was executed on September 14 at the end of Catharine Street in the Strand. At that time hanging in chains in cases of special barbarity formed part of the sentence. The custom was not abolished until 1834. Hall was hung in chains at Shepherd's Bush.

On March 10,1 744, de Veil's house was again assaulted by a mob. The footmen of London were meeting on a Saturday afternoon to protest against the unfair competition of French footmen. De Veil was instructed to prevent the meeting and the proprietor was craven enough to inform the mob that de Veil had the key to the room they had hired. Thereupon, they went in a body to his house in Bow Street and demanded the key. Obtaining no satisfaction they proceeded to break his windows and beat down his front door with hatchets, he, meanwhile, standing on the staircase, armed with pistols and a blunderbuss, for three hours before the military made their appearance. The ground floor of the colonel's house was entirely wrecked and only one arrest was made. A month later he received the honour of knighthood.

His last recorded exploit was keeping London quiet whilst Charles Edward was advancing to Derby. He was taken ill while examining a prisoner on October 6, 1748, and died early the following morning. He had been four times married and had twenty-five children. His biographer records that "his greatest foible was a most irregular passion for the fair sex, which, as he freely indulged, he made it often a subject of his discourse."

Sir Thomas de Veil was succeeded by Sir Henry Fielding after a space of two years when a magistrate named Poulsen held the office. Like de Veil Fielding's motive in taking office was lack of means, for he was a barrister, a journalist and a playwright by profession. His appointment to the Bench is dated October 25, 1748; six weeks later he was dispensing justice in Bow Street. Living with him was his blind half-brother, John, who succeeded him at his death in 1754.

One of Fielding's first actions on his appointment was to get himself nominated as a magistrate for Middlesex as well as for Westminster, but he lacked the necessary qualification as a property owner until the Duke of Bedford made up the deficiency. The fees due to him were supposed to amount to about £1,000 a year, but much of this income had to go to his clerk. He received, besides, a small yearly pension out of the public service money and this was made the precedent for the system of stipendiary magistrates which came into being in 1792.

Fielding was in fact the instrument out of which grew the institution of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, for very early in his service he found it necessary to institute a body of paid police who came to be known as the Bow Street Runners. Some idea of how hard he worked can be formed from his statement that fifty commitments a week were not unusual. Often he was compelled to sit up all night, as when a gambling house in the Strand was raided and forty-five accused were taken into custody. More serious than this was the prevalence of gangs of street robbers. He broke up one such gang during his first year of office.

These activities quickly brought him into prominence. He was elected chairman of Quarter Sessions for Westminster and a month later he wrote his Charge to the Grand Jury, which was published three weeks later "by order of the Court and the unanimous request of the grand jury." It was at this time that he submitted to the government a draft of necessary legislation. His apprehensions were soon justified by the riots of 1749. He had gone away for the week-end on Saturday, July 1. That night three sailors from the Grafton visited a house in Westminster where they were robbed of thirty guineas by women. They were turned out of the house, but they came back with a large body of comrades, broke all the windows, demolished the furniture, ripped the clothing from the backs of the inmates, piled up their spoils in the streets and set the heap ablaze. A huge crowd gathered to encourage them, the parish fire engines were called to stop the blaze from spreading, but they never appeared. No magistrate could be found who cared to interfere with the angry mob. Towards midnight soldiers were called in and after desperate fighting the streets were cleared. Only a few of the rioters were arrested; two were placed in a cellar under the house of a beadle named Munns. On the following night the mob again assembled, wrecked two houses and burned the goods, wrenched the bars out of the beadle's cellar and rescued the two prisoners. But it happened that when the riot was at its worst a magistrate named Welch met the mob about midnight and with the aid of a military force succeeded in driving the rioters from the streets. Several of the ringleaders were arrested, and lodged in prison. On the Monday morning rioters pressed into Bow Street to rescue their comrades.

This was the position when Henry Fielding returned about noon on Monday. In no way intimidated, he sent for a company of the Guards to bring the ringleaders to his house where they arrived amid shouts of "To the rescue!" Fielding addressed them from an upper window and failing to induce them to disperse, sent a messenger to the War Office for a reinforcement to protect the court. Nine of the prisoners were committed to Newgate. That was not the end. All that night the dwellers on the Strand were in consternation. Threatening mobs were gathering at points as far east as the Tower; all the streets in the danger zone were patrolled by soldiers and peace-officers; Fielding himself sat up all night, ready to issue orders. His action, which any magistrate might have taken on either of the preceding days, put an end to the riot.

Among the prisoners committed to Newgate was a young man named Bosavern Penlez, who had been arrested by the watch in Carey Street, with a bundle of women's clothes in his possession. These were identified as belonging to the wife of Peter Wood, whose house had been pillaged by the mob. It was clear that the accused had taken advantage of the riot to commit a robbery. Now the Riot Act was very rarely enforced, and Penlez was prosecuted under that Act. Therefore when he and another man named John Wilson were sentenced to death at the August Session of the Old Bailey people were indignant. Wilson was reprieved, but the utmost efforts of his sympathizers failed to obtain mercy for Penlez, who was executed at Tyburn on October 11, 1749. Though dead he was not forgotten. Pamphlets and broadsheets poured from the Press, and Fielding was moved to write a pamphlet in defence of the government under the title of A True State of the Case of Bosavern Penlez. It was not convincing because Penlez had never been tried for theft and the Riot Act had not been read.

By the end of 1749 most of the constables used by Fielding to maintain order were due to retire after their twelve months' service. He persuaded the best of them to continue in office for another year, probably giving them some small remuneration. The point is important, because these constables were the germ of the Bow Street police force and the forerunners of professional police in England. By the end of 1750 Fielding had eighty constables under his command and he drew up a list of rules for their guidance. But Fielding had neither sufficient money nor places to keep his body of constables together indefinitely and within a year it had to be disbanded.

Despite all Fielding's efforts, the condition of the streets of London was not much improved. Fielding had submitted to the Lord Chancellor a draft Bill "for the better preventing of street robberies; "it was not adopted, but the riots of 1749 frightened the Government into action and a commission was appointed to revise the law. The Acts that followed (the Gin Act of 1751 and the Robbery Act) were passed, but since there were no police to enforce the law, all this legislation proved ineffective. People could not be induced to come forward as witnesses or prosecutors.

Alarmed at the situation and at five murders committed in quick succession, the Duke of Newcastle consulted Fielding. In four days he prepared a plan for putting down the gangs that infested the slums of London. He stipulated for a sum of £600 but received only £400.

Nevertheless with this meagre allowance he broke up one large gang by instituting "thief-takers"—  the predecessors of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. They were "men of tried courage, householders, picked from among the peace-officers; moreover, the moment any one of them commits an act either of cruelty or injustice he is immediately discharged by the magistrate from the office of thief-taker, and never admitted again."

These thief-takers seem to have been successful from the first. They broke up two important gangs and in the space of three months no less than nine "gangsters " were executed at the cost of the life of one "thief-taker." Besides these several notorious highwaymen, among whom were Parry and Fleming, "who had struck terror into all the squares about St. James's," were brought to justice.

In the beginning of 1754, Henry Fielding's health had become so bad that he resigned his office to his brother John who had long been his assistant. Sir John Fielding, who was knighted in 1760, held office until his death in 1780. The defect in his eyesight was overcome by a compensating acuteness of hearing; it was said that he could recognize many of the habitual criminals of London by their voices alone. His original and witty personality used to attract audiences to listen to his examinations of prisoners, and the figure of the blind magistrate, with a bandage over his eyes and a switch in his hand to wave before him when he left the Bench, came to be as familiar to persons of social importance as it was to the poor wretches who were brought before him. His celebrity is attested by the frequency with which his name occurs in contemporary literature.

During Sir John's long tenure of office, the system instituted by his brother was expanded; the £400 which Henry had received was continued as an annual grant for the maintenance of the professional thief-takers, who thus became a permanent force known as the Patrol. The jurisdiction of Bow Street had no limits. When seven other police offices were established in 192 under the financial supervision of a Receiver of Police, the Bow Street patrol became, as it were, a State force which might serve in any part of the country, much as the Special Branch of Scotland Yard does now.

The six officers attached to Bow Street became known later as "Bow Street Runners." Their salaries were 15s. 0d. a week, raised in 1821 to 5s. 0d.— even at that time a very insufficient wage for men who were required to be financially honest. From the beginning of the nineteenth century there was in fact an organized, armed police under the control of the magistrates. From the report of the Select Committee on police, twelve months before Peel introduced his bill establishing the Metropolitan Police, we gather that the idea of dividing the Metropolis into police divisions had already been adopted. "Occurrence " books were kept; weekly inspections were held; the men were paid weekly; there was a police surgeon. The Force amounted to one inspector, seventeen conductors and eighty-two patrols. They wore uniform— a red waistcoat which earned them the nickname of Robin Redbreasts." The Runners " wore no uniform.

It was to Sir John Fielding that the public owed an effective weapon against the highwaymen who took toll of the mail coaches and postchaises on the roads within twenty miles of London. He enlisted some twenty gentlemen with country houses within twenty miles of London to subscribe two guineas to a common pool; to dispatch a messenger on horseback to him with written particulars of any crime committed in their area, including, if possible, an accurate description of the thief and the horse he was riding, together with the name of the victim, because private persons were afraid to come forward as prosecutors, and thus no proceedings could be taken against the criminal. On his way to London the messenger was to warn all publicans, stable helpers and turnpike keepers against harbouring the fugitive, supplying him with a horse or letting him pass. He was to return with a note from a magistrate showing that he had performed his task, and for this he was to be paid out of the pool. The information and description was to be published in the Public Advertiser at the cost of the pool. Even if the highwayman got safe to London he had to run the gauntlet of the thief-takers. The highwaymen were boastful young men and were generally tempted to vaunt their exploits in one of the taverns frequented by criminals of their type, and the thief-takers, who frequented the same places of entertainment, came to hear of them.

The outcome was the Mounted Patrol, which in three months put down highway robbery. Unfortunately for the public, soon after Fielding's death the Mounted Patrol was allowed to fall into disuse, and immediately highwaymen took to the road again. It was not until 1 806 that the grants for the thief-takers and the Horse Patrol were amalgamated and increased to £1,000 a year.

Though far more courageous and energetic than his brother, Sir John Fielding shared the common view of his time on the demoralizing effects of pleasure on the lower classes, whose appetite for it he regarded as a fruitful source of crime. He was active in suppressing places of amusement; he requested mistresses of servants to send him anonymous letters about the amusements of their household staffs for so the most delicate lady may with safety give notice to the justice of any hop, gaming-house, etc., where her servants waste their time, lose their money, and debauch their morals." He tried to put down gaming in public-houses and to cleanse the streets of nuisances such as "beggars, the insolence of coachmen, carmen, hawkers, etc.; carters riding on their carts, obstructions by carriages or goods, and lastly street walkers." At any rate he was so successful that gangs of thieves left London disguised as gipsies to escape him.

3

Bow Street Experiments

IT WAS TOWARDS the end of Sir John Fielding's life that the Gordon Riots startled the public. They were a standing testimony to the lesson which he had been teaching for years— the necessity of reorganizing the police. The immediate cause of the Gordon Riots was the Relief Act of 1778, abolishing the disabilities to which Roman Catholics were subjected. A League called the Protestant Association under the presidency of Lord George Gordon, was formed to procure the repeal of the Act.

On June 2, 1780, 60,000 "good protestants " assembled on the south side of the river and marched upon Westminster; waving banners and singing hymns. Bishops and peers entering the House of Lords were assaulted. The Bishop of Lincoln was dragged from his carriage and half strangled and a number of lay peers were roughly handled; Lord North's hat was snatched off and cut in pieces which were sold for a shilling each. The mob forced its way into the Lobby and members were imprisoned until nine o'clock when a body of horse- and foot-guards appeared.

There followed attacks upon the chapels of foreign embassies. That of the Sardinian Minister was attacked, and attempts were made on those of the Bavarian and the Portuguese Ministers, but the Bow Street magistrate obtained a hundred bayonets of the Guards which scattered the mob. After his escape from the House of Lords Lord Stormont ordered the Bow Street magistrates "to take immediately every legal method to keep the public peace, and that a sufficient number of justices, constables and peace-officers attend to-morrow to secure to the Lords and members a free access to and regress from both Houses of Parliament."

In spite of every effort the riots continued for over a week, and were not got under until 12,000 troops were quartered in London and had blocked the three bridges over the Thames. It was a sinister object-lesson of the danger the capital was running through the parsimony of Parliament. It is difficult to estimate the strength of the civil forces. Sixteen years later it consisted of only 1,000 peace-officers of whom only 149 were paid to give their whole time to the service. There were besides about 2,000 watchmen, mostly beyond work. The rioters were favoured by the apparent disloyalty of Kennet, the Lord Mayor, and most of the Aldermen. Mr. de Castro writes;

"Until it became patent that the metropolis was at the mercy of the rioters, their methods were countenanced (to use no harsher term) by the aldermen of the city, whose dislike of George III knew no bounds."

The next day thirteen prisoners arrested the night before were brought up at Bow Street before Justices Addington and Wright, who committed all but one (who was admitted to bail) to Clerkenwell prison. The evidence against them was slender; probably some of them at least were harmless spectators who had been forced into the chapels as places of safety. The riots continued over the week-end. The Catholic chapel at Moorfields was destroyed. On the Monday the pulpit and furniture looted from the Sardinian Minister's chapel were burned; the houses of men who had given evidence at Bow Street were attacked and set on fire. Five hundred rioters were threatening Lambeth Palace; others assembled outside the Houses of Parliament and afterwards burned the house of Justice Hyde, who had read the Riot Act in Parliament Square. Rioters paraded the streets armed with cutlasses and clubs; Lord Mansfield's house was burned because he had recently summed up in favour of a Roman Catholic prisoner who was acquitted.

The constables for Westminster were for the most part local tradesmen selected by a Leet Jury and formally appointed by the annual Court of Burgesses. They numbered eighty and their principal duties were to be in attendance at the Houses of Parliament, and to supervise the night watchmen, but one may judge their efficiency from the fact that when the mob had invaded Palace Yard, only six could be found !

The same evening the mob set the new prison of Newgate on fire and released a large number of the prisoners; another party attacked the Bow Street police office. It was more than an object-lesson to the government of the urgent need of police; it was a revelation, for the rioters were allowed to pursue their outrages from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., and the ground floor was entirely gutted. Sir Henry Fielding's son, who was present, declared that ten constables only would have sufficed to stop the rioting in Bow Street.

On the following day the rioting grew worse. Swollen by the prisoners released from Newgate the mob attacked the Sessions House and the Old Bailey, burned the Fleet and the King's Bench Prisons to the ground, and made an attempt upon the Bank of England. The regular troops were insufficient in number to cope with the riot and the militia were called out. Although a few houses were burned on the Thursday, the troops were now shooting to kill and before evening the streets were quiet and empty. On the Friday Lord George Gordon was arrested and the riot was over.

London had been in the hands of the rioters for a week. The great objection to employing troops as police was that they were unwilling to act unless a magistrate was present to authorize military action. In the subsequent inquiry it was disclosed that only a few magistrates attended to do their duty, the great majority pleading that if they did, their houses would have been burned down. Probably Sir John Fielding was physically unfit to discharge his duty. He was ill in Brompton when the magistrate's court in Bow Street was sacked.

The Gordon riots might easily have been quelled at the outset if the military had made use of their arms, but the authorities remained for nearly a week under the mistaken impression that soldiers could not fire on the mob without an order from a magistrate, and no magistrate could be found with sufficient courage to give such an order. King George himself referred the point to the Attorney-General who gave a considered opinion that they could, and as soon as the soldiers began to fire the riot collapsed.

The magistrates and the police had now to face a storm of indignation from all sides, and it was believed that Parliament and the public were now ripe for making drastic reforms. But The London and Westminster Police Act of 1829 was thrown out by the influence of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen on the ground that it would mean "the entire subversion of the chartered rights of the greatest city in the world" — a view that obtains even to this day in confirming to the City of London its own police force. This imperium in imperio works quite smoothly because there has always been a perfect understanding between the heads of the two forces.

After the Gordon riots Sir John Fielding retired, and in 1782 Sir Sampson Wright succeeded him as chief magistrate at Bow Street. In 1786 he founded the Hue and Cry — the forerunner of the Police Gazette — a four-page bi-weekly paper entirely devoted to police matters, accounts of crimes committed, descriptions of stolen goods and of suspected or escaped thieves. The back page was devoted to a list of deserters from the army and navy with their descriptions.

In the year 1801 London was startled by the appearance of a new crime— the stealing and killing of dogs for the sake of their skins. Robert Townsend, one of the patrol, having received information that stolen dogs were concealed in the house of a woman named Sellwood, demanded admittance and found in a back room a pile of dead dogs and under the floor many more in a putrid state. Further inquiry showed that dog-stealers were in the habit of taking small houses and when they had collected as many carcases as the house would contain, they absconded without paying any rent. Further inquiry showed that Sellwood and Pollett were members of a gang.

On information received, Townsend visited the house of Anne Carter in Blackfriars Road and found ample evidence that she, too, was practising the trade. On the premises were two terrier bitches smeared with a preparation which attracted dogs and lured them to the house. While Townsend was there the father of the boy Pollett called at the house and was also taken into custody.

This crime of dog-stealing for the skin would now cause even more indignation than it did in 1801. Repro- bation of cruelty to animals had yet to be born. Melville Lee thus describes the "sport" of bullock-baiting which flourished in Hackney and Bethnal Green in the early years of the century;

A fee having been paid to a cattle-drover, an animal was selected from his herd, peas were put into its ears, sticks pointed with iron were driven into its body, and the poor beast, mad with pain and rage, was hunted through the streets with a yelling mob of men, women and dogs behind it. The weavers left their looms to join in the pursuit and passers-by continually augmented the crowd until the exhausted victim could no longer be goaded into any show of resistance or movement, when it was left to die where it fell, or when sufficiently recovered, to be removed to some butcher's slaughterhouse.

The Bow Street magistrate, Sir Richard Ford, was called upon to deal with an alleged breach of the Combination Law. Three journeymen bootmakers were brought up at Bow Street charged with a number of others of forming a combination against their masters to exact an increase of wages. The court was crowded with employers. It was proved that meetings had been held and that men who expressed themselves satisfied with their wages had been threatened with personal violence. The men had addressed letters to their employers asking for arbitration, and, what added to the crime, though they had signed individually, they had employed the plural pronouns "us" and "we."

The men's defence was that they could not maintain themselves on their wages; that they had taken legal advice which was to the effect that individually they could refuse to work. The magistrates held that to persuade others to refuse to work was an offence against the Combination Laws, but they added that if it could be proved that two or more masters had combined, a similar egal remedy was open to the men. We have moved far in labour matters since 1802.

About the same time (September 1801) Bow Street had to deal with a case that had thrown the Church of St. Martin in the Fields into consternation. The curate was ill and a young man officiated in his stead for a whole month, calling himself Lord Eldon's nephew, buying vestments, marrying over one hundred couples, administering the sacrament, christening several babies and burying twelve. He had obtained his canonicals on credit. The imposter was twenty-three years old, an eloquent preacher and a dignified and devout clergyman, but the magistrates found him to be half-witted. The absent rector had to re-solemnize all the ceremonies he had performed.

It is strange to read that the pillory was in use as late as 1810. The theory of exposing convicted criminals in the pillory for an hour was, no doubt, to invest the right-thinking citizen with the power of punishment. In practice, however, at any rate in these later days, it was resorted to only when it was known that the crime had outraged public opinion and it was then tantamount to public torture, ending sometimes in death. A house of ill-fame was raided; the men taken in the raid were sentenced to exposure in the pillory in the Haymarket. Before any of them reached the place of punishment they were pelted with filth and blinded with blows. We learn from the Morning Herald of the day that "Vigers, the miscreant placed in the pillory in Cornhill, is at present blind in consequence of the pelting he received. He was so much bruised and lacerated that he is not expected to survive."

In 1816 a serious scandal involving certain police officers was discovered. There had been an epidemic of burglaries. Rewards were offered and on the arrest of the burglars it was found that the crimes had been prearranged by a member of the horse patrol, who was to share the reward with the burglars themselves. The guilty patrol went into hiding, but he was afterwards arrested and the case was proved against him. This led to further inquiries and the magistrates found it necessary to clean up their staff. Five officers were convicted of these malpractices.

The most famous of the Bow Street runners was undoubtedly Townsend, who began life as a costermonger and ended it as a familiar character at Court as protector of the King and the Royal Family. He was, for those times, passably honest, though he was assiduous in calling upon his noble acquaintances at Christmas time. He was a Bow Street runner for thirty years and left a considerable fortune when he died. In his old age he became boastful and garrulous about his intimacy with the great. He used to boast that the King copied him in dress— the fact being that he paid attention to the King's tailor from whom he would cunningly elicit advance information about the last suit ordered by the King, and would order the same, contriving that his suit should be delivered first.

After Townsend the most famous of the "runners" were Sayer, * Ruthven and Vickery. Though they were attached to Bow Street and were paid a regular wage of a guinea a week and fourteen shillings while travelling, they were rather private detectives than official police. Any bank or business in the country could hire their services and reward them if they were successful, Townsend was adept at procuring jobs to which special pay was attached. He and Sayer had for twenty-five years done ten days' duty a quarter at the Bank of England, and after the attack made upon the King by Margaret Nicholson they received an allowance of £100 a year in addition to their pay. Their knowledge of thieves and their ways had been acquired by frequenting "flash-houses"— the meeting-places of thieves and highwaymen who had stolen property to dispose of. Owing to this inside knowledge they became a terror to the thieves. In most respects they were rather what we should call private detectives in these days.

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*  Sayer, the Bow Street runner, said that Duck Lane, Gravel Lane and Cock Lane in Westminster were infested with so dangerous a gang of criminals that the police must go there in parties of five or six for safety.

When a committee was appointed to inquire into the causes of the high figures of crime and the conduct of the police and the magistrates, Townsend and Sayer gave evidence. Townsend was then an old man, who was reputed to have " made his pile; " his evidence was therefore likely to be unprejudiced. He condemned the scale of pay and the practice of giving rewards to informants who brought about the conviction of offenders. A prospective share in the reward, he said, put temptation in the way of the officer to give evidence that would result either in condemning or acquitting the prisoner; the officer would naturally do all in his power to secure a conviction even when the evidence was doubtful; he thought, however, that at the most an officer received a year from such rewards. This, undoubtedly, was an understatement of the facts, for in the same year Vaughan, one of the Bow Street runners, was convicted of a very serious offence. Vaughan and two other runners had conspired to induce a number of boys of thirteen to commit a burglary and to arrest them in the act, thus earning for themselves the £40 for what was not improperly called " blood money." All the three men were found guilty and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Vaughan was subsequently charged in the same session with a robbery committed during the previous year and was sentenced to transportation.

In practice any of the runners were at the beck and call of private persons or firms in any part of the country, provided that their pay and travelling expenses were defrayed and they could be spared. The rewards they earned when they were successful amounted to a considerable sum and their knowledge of the ways and the whereabouts of the professional criminals in London, gleaned from the talk of fellow-criminals in the "flash-houses" of the metropolis, very often brought them success with its accompanying monetary rewards.

Even as late as 1822 a committee reported that, outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and the establishment of Bow Street, there were still separate parochial police establishments consisting of a high constable, a beadle and petty constables and watchmen for the greater part of London, who were practically useless, because the constables could not make arrests in any parish but their own without a special warrant. Selected in rotation as they were, the constables were indolent and did not take the trouble to pursue criminals when once they were outside their own parish boundary. The report of this committee which recommended that there should be one central police force for the whole of the metropolis, excluding the City, was the starting point of the Metropolitan Police as we know its history.

4

The Cato Street Conspiracy

NOT EVEN the horror excited by the Ratcliffe Highway murders in 1812 could move the government to adopt a measure recommended alike by the Fieldings, by Colquhoun, the founder of the Thames River Police in 1798, and by the Parliamentary Committee which sat from 1816 to 1818. Samuel Romilly scarcely overstated the case when he said that the criminal law in England was written in blood. In 1805 Romilly, in advocating a reduction in the number of capital punishments, said "If it were possible that punishment as a consequence of guilt could be reduced to an absolute certainty, a very slight penalty would be sufficient to prevent every species of crime, except those which arise from sudden gusts of ungovernable passion. If the restoration of the property stolen and only a few weeks' or even but a few days' imprisonment were the unavoidable consequence of theft, no theft would ever be committed. No man would steal what he was sure he could not keep."

Thefts of property worth more than one shilling could be punished, like murder, with death, and the saying that one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb must have been on the lips of the young criminals reared in the stews of London where all the inhabitants were criminals. But at a moment when the statistics of crime had increased by thirty-six per cent,, and the Solicitor-General had declared in the House of Commons that "no man could promise himself security even in his bed," it was not to be expected that Parliament should make concessions to the criminal gangs that held London by the throat. The law- abiding were still convinced that the way with criminals should be to terrorize them into good behaviour by getting rid of them either by executing them in public or by transporting them to the Antipodes where they would trouble London no more.

One of the most harmful practices of the time was the payment of "blood-money " to informers and the police who were reluctant to arrest a malefactor until he "weighed"— that being the amount paid by the government. According to Lee £80,000 was paid in 1815 and the runner Townsend testified that officers were tempted to turn the scale against the wretched prisoner on his trial in the hope of winning this reward.

The punishment of the Cato Street conspirators as late as 1820 is a case in point.

On February 24, 1820, the Morning Post published the following announcement :

We received late last night information which we communicate to the public with the strongest feelings of horror. The existence of a treasonable conspiracy of the most atrocious character, has, we understand, been for some time known to the government. The first blow was to have been struck yesterday by the assassination of His Majesty's ministers when assembled at a Cabinet dinner.

About seven o'clock in the evening, Mr. Birnie, the Magistrate, under the direction of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, proceeded to the rendezvous of the conspirators on the Edgware Road with a warrant to apprehend them. They were at that time upwards of twenty in number with Arthur Thistlewood at their head.

Arthur Thistlewood had been a lieutenant in the militia. He was a man of middle age and had already once been acquitted on a charge of high treason. Learning that the entire Cabinet were to dine together at the Earl of Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square he had got together in haste twenty-five persons to join him in a plot to assassinate every person found in the house and then to seize the Mansion House and the Bank of England and proclaim a provisional government. In the existing state of the police such a plot might have been successful in its initial stage. When all the Ministers were assembled one of the conspirators was to ring the bell at Lord Harrowby's house with an urgent letter, and while the footman left the hall with the letter, the others were to run in, armed with pikes, cutlasses and hand grenades, leaving two of their number standing outside the door in military uniform to keep the curious at a distance.

Unfortunately for the conspirators they had not taken sufficient care to sift the character of their recruits. On the Tuesday before the intended dinner the Earl of Harrowby was riding in the park to attend a council at Carlton House with a servant when a man stopped him at Grosvenor Gate and handed him a letter addressed to Lord Castlereagh, saying that it was important to Lord Harrowby himself. Lord Harrowby met the same man by appointment on the following morning among the young plantations in Hyde Park and received from him details of the conspiracy. He had already heard some rumours of the plot.