MR. HARTLEY KENNEDY, C.S.I.
1899-1901
When Mr. Vincent left India at the end of 1898, to spend the remainder
of his days in Switzerland, he was succeeded by Mr. Hartley Kennedy of
the Bombay District Police. Mr. Kennedy took charge of the Commissioner’s
office on January 9th, 1899. Like his predecessor, he had to reckon
with the continued presence of plague, and also with the effect upon
the urban police administration of severe famine in various districts
of the Presidency. These natural disasters synchronized with a severe
slump in the Bombay textile industry, due chiefly to over-production and
the consequent glutting of the China market, which at that date absorbed
the bulk of the Bombay mill-products. According to a leading mill-owner,
the industry in 1899 was in a most critical position; nearly all the
mills were closed on three days in the week, and some had altogether
ceased working. A strike of mill-hands was threatened, which the Police
were called upon, and managed, to settle before it came to a head. The
position of affairs in 1901 was very little better.
The police were thus faced with an abnormal volume of crime resulting
from disease, starvation and unemployment. In 1899 two real dacoities
of the type common in up-country districts, perpetrated probably by
Pardesis from Northern India, occurred in the suburbs and obliged the
Commissioner to establish night-patrols of mounted and foot police in
the north of the Island. The following year witnessed a marked increase
of crime against property, resulting from high prices and unemployment.
Famine-conditions were responsible for an abnormal number of cases of
exposure of infants in 1899 and for many instances of robbery by means
of _dhatura_ poisoning in 1900. But, apart from these temporary symptoms
of economic disorder, the last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed
a steady increase of cases of all kinds under the Indian Penal Code
and miscellaneous laws. Cases under the Police Act would probably have
shown a similar upward tendency, but for the fact that prosecutions were
purposely avoided, in deference to the reluctance of the Presidency
Magistrates to convict offenders on the sole evidence of police
witnesses. It has always been difficult to find private persons willing
to appear in court and give evidence in such matters.
As in most parts of India, the number of false complaints brought to the
police was considerable, many of these cases falling within the category
of “maliciously false”. The Commissioner estimated the proportion of
false to true cases in 1900 at one in 375. The false complaint, supported
by false evidence, has been a feature of the criminal administration of
India from early days and adequately explains the reason why Europeans
have always clung so strenuously to the right, secured to them by the
criminal law, of being tried by a jury containing a majority of their
own countrymen. It is the only safeguard they possess against false
prosecution and illegal conviction. Some such protection for the European
minority is essential in a country, where the administration of justice
by Indian courts has not reached so high and detached a level as it has
in England.
The year 1901 was prolific of murders, twenty-one cases being
investigated by the police. Among the chief _causes célèbres_ was the
murder in the streets by followers of H. H. the Aga Khan of certain
Khojas belonging to the Asna Ashariya section, which had announced its
determination to secede from the main body of Khojas. The precise reason
for the murders is unknown. They may have been decided upon by one of
the factions as a protest against the constant absences of H. H. the
Aga Khan, or on the other hand may have been intended by the party
which supported His Highness as a celebration of his safe return from
abroad. Faction feeling in the community was at the time running high,
and the more fanatical of the Aga Khan’s followers were incensed with
those Khojas who were disinclined to subscribe blindly to the opinions
on communal matters held by the more conservative section. His Highness
himself, who happened to be in Europe on one of his periodical visits,
had no knowledge whatever of the murder-plot; otherwise his influence
would certainly have been directed towards restraining the fury of his
Ismailia followers. He himself was much perturbed by the tragedy and gave
Mr. Kennedy every assistance in the enquiry which followed. The three
victims were stabbed to death in the streets, almost at the moment of his
arrival, and the police found their time fully occupied in trying to calm
the passions thus aroused. The murders produced such rancour between the
Ismailia and the Asna Ashariya Khojas that, for many years afterwards,
the police were obliged to prohibit the funerals of the latter passing
through the recognized Khoja quarters to their separate grave-yard in
Mazagon. It was not until 1913 that the Commissioner found himself
justified in relaxing the more stringent precautions, owing to the
passage of time and the prevalence of a better feeling between the two
sections of Khojas. The knives, with which the murders were committed,
were preserved for many years in one of the lockers in the inner room
of the Commissioner’s office, and were handed over to the Criminal
Investigation Department as an exhibit for the museum, when that branch
was reorganized in 1910.
Most of the crime in respect of property was, as usual, committed by
Mhar and Mang robbers from the Deccan, by the Wagris or gipsy tribes, by
professional thieves and beggars from Kathiawar, and by north-country
Hindus and Pathans. Bombay has a large floating population of these
wanderers, who visit the city for criminal purposes, and, having attained
their object, travel to other parts of India, where all trace of them is
frequently lost. Among cases of special importance were the prosecutions
of two licensed dealers in arms and ammunition in 1899, a “golden
gang” or swindling case in which a respectable Indian firm was cheated
of Rs. 63,000, and which was successfully investigated by Inspector
(afterwards Superintendent) Sloane, and the conviction for sedition of
the editor of a vernacular newspaper, the _Gurakhi_, which, as an organ
of the revolutionary party in Western India, had indulged in violent
anti-British propaganda. The effect of plague and famine conditions upon
the activities of the police was apparent in the returns of recovery
of stolen property; and their normal duty of watch and ward suffered
also to some extent from the imposition of such emergent tasks as the
registration, accommodation, feeding and repatriation of a large number
of war-refugees who arrived from the Transvaal in 1899. The restrictions
upon the Haj traffic continued; but this did not absolve the police
from the task of “shepherding” large numbers of returning pilgrims—the
backwash of former pilgrimages—or of repatriating hundreds of poor and
illiterate Moslems, who, knowing nothing of the stoppage of the traffic,
arrived every year in Bombay in the hope of being allowed to embark for
Jeddah.
The total strength of the police-force remained unaltered during Mr.
Kennedy’s term of office. Including the constables attached to the
Veterinary Department, the force numbered 2118. The annual cost,
however, had increased in 1900 to Rs. 792,959, in consequence of extra
allowances and contingencies. These charges were met partly from
imperial, partly from provincial, and partly from municipal and other
revenues. The municipal contribution was recovered under section 62 of
Bombay Act III of 1888, and continued to be so till 1907, when under
the provisions of Bombay Act III of that year the Government became
responsible for the whole cost of the force. Besides the police-force
proper, the Commissioner recruited and controlled a force of 1048
Ramoshis or night-watchmen, whose wages, as previously mentioned, were
recovered from the individuals and firms employing their services. The
Ramoshis as a class were not very satisfactory; and though nominally
under the supervision of the police-officers of the division or section
in which their post lay, there was really no one to see whether they
kept awake at night and really did their duty. Had there been any proper
and comprehensive beat-system for the divisional constabulary, such as
there is in London, the existence of a Ramoshi force would have been
quite unnecessary: but the total number of police-constables was never
sufficient to admit of the introduction of such a system.
For administrative purposes, Bombay was composed in 1899 of the eleven
police divisions mentioned below, which were sub-divided into sections
or areas controlled by a “police-station”. The staff of a station
comprised usually an European inspector and sub-inspector and a number of
subordinate native officers (jemadar, havildar, naik) and constables.
+----------+-----------------------------------------------+
| Division | Sections |
+----------+-----------------------------------------------+
| A | Fort |
| B | Umarkhadi, Market, Mandvi |
| C | Bhuleshwar, Nal Bazar, Dhobi Talao |
| D | Girgaum, Khetwadi, Mahalakshmi and Walkeshwar |
| E | Byculla, Mazagon, Kamathipura |
| F | Dadar, Sewri, Matunga, Parel |
| G | Worli, Mahim |
| H and I | Harbour and Docks |
| K | Detective Branch |
| L | Reserve (Armed and unarmed) |
+----------+-----------------------------------------------+
Housing-accommodation was provided for only about one-tenth of the
force. The Head Police Office at Crawford Market, which Colonel Wilson
had so often asked for, was completed and occupied in 1899, and lines
for 120 men had been built on the western boundary of the parade-ground
adjacent to the Gokuldas Tejpal hospital. Stabling for twenty horses
of the mounted police was also built, the main body of the mounted
police being accommodated in the old Government House Bodyguard lines at
Byculla. With the exception of the 200 men or so, who occupied the old
police-lines in Byculla and the newly-erected quarters in the compound of
the Head Police Office, the whole force was living in hired rooms of an
undesirable and insanitary type in various parts of the city. The monthly
house-allowance paid to constables barely sufficed to pay the rents of
their squalid rooms, while in the case of the European officers it was
quite insufficient to secure proper accommodation. The difficulty was
acute in the A. division (Fort and Colaba), where suitable residential
accommodation was extremely limited and fetched a high rent. To anyone,
like the author of this book, who has seen the very unsuitable quarters
in which most of the European and Indian police were obliged to reside
at the beginning of the present century, it will always be a matter of
surprise that the force accomplished as much as it did and that the
death-roll among both Europeans and Indians was not far heavier. Even
the comparatively modern buildings at Bazar Gate and Paidhoni left much
to be desired in the way of reasonable space and ordinary comfort. The
occupants of the Paidhoni station, which mounts guard over a crowded
lower-class neighbourhood, possessed the additional disadvantage of an
atmosphere heavy with the smells and miasmata of an Eastern city. It says
much for the _dura ilia_ of the British soldiers recruited for the Bombay
police force that so many of them were able to live and carry on their
work in these conditions without a permanent loss of health.
The reiterated complaints of successive Commissioners had impressed upon
the Bombay Government the need for the proper housing of the force. But
their wishes were dependent upon the state of the provincial exchequer,
which after several years of plague and a series of disastrous famines
was quite unable to provide money for police-accommodation schemes. A
solution of the difficulty was, however, secured by the passing of Act IV
of 1898 (City Improvement Trust Act), under the provisions of which the
newly-constituted Trust could be called upon by the Government to build
quarters and barracks for the police in various parts of the Island.
By 1901 the Government had already formulated their first demands,
and the engineers of the Trust were preparing plans and schemes for
police stations, quarters and lines, in Colaba, Princess Street (a new
street-scheme of the Trust), Nagpada and Agripada and in other crowded
localities. These buildings took many years to complete, and some of
them in the northern suburbs had not been commenced in 1916. But the
first step towards a comprehensive solution of the grave problem of
police-accommodation was taken during Mr. Kennedy’s _régime_, when the
City Improvement Trust assumed the task which the Government with the
best will in the world, found themselves quite unable to fulfil.
Though his period of office was not long, Mr. Kennedy left his mark
upon the police administration, and there are persons still alive who
remember the energy and activity with which he tackled some of the evils
of urban life. He was a sworn foe of gambling in any form, and had barely
gripped the reins of office ere he commenced an offensive against the
bagatelle-players, the cardsharpers and the dice-gamblers of the lower
quarters. The divisional police learned to their cost that it did not pay
to wink at gaming, and that the Commissioner, working through private
agents of his own, possessed an uncomfortably accurate knowledge of what
was going on in various quarters of the city. The performances of one
of his chief informers are still within the recollection of the oldest
members of the force and of some of the superannuated gamblers of the
old B. and C. divisions. The immediate result of Mr. Kennedy’s action
was a large increase of cases under the Gambling Act, sixty prosecutions
being launched in the year 1900 alone. The effect of these prosecutions,
however, was minimised by the Magistrates’ practice of imposing merely a
fine on conviction. Such fines acted as very little deterrent to men who
dealt week by week with comparatively large sums of money. In the case of
the most inveterate gamblers a short term of imprisonment would probably
have had a more salutary effect.
Another problem, which occupied Mr. Kennedy’s attention, was that of
the beggars who infest Bombay. They comprised not only the thousands
of able-bodied religious mendicants, who form an integral feature
of Hinduism and are largely protected from official action by the
religious atmosphere surrounding them, but also the still larger class
of professional beggars of every sect, who descend on the city like
locusts from the rural districts and do not hesitate, as opportunity
occurs, to commit crime. In 1899 Mr. Kennedy raised the question of the
best method of dealing with the latter class, and pointed out that daily
prosecution, followed by the imposition of a small fine, failed entirely
to effect any amelioration of the evil. He therefore decided on more
drastic measures. In 1900 he deported 9,000 beggars to the territories
of Indian Princes and 10,000 to various districts in British India. This
wholesale expulsion caused a temporary improvement in the condition of
the streets. But such deportations, to be really effective, must be
carried on ruthlessly year by year; and methods would have to be adopted
to penalise beggars of an undesirable type, who dared to return after
deportation. Mr. Kennedy’s action was not pursued by his successors,
and the beggar-nuisance consequently continued unabated. In 1920 it
had become so intolerable that a special committee of Government and
Municipal representatives was appointed to study the problem in all its
bearings and devise measures for its solution.
In the matter of the immoral traffic in women Mr. Kennedy displayed
equal activity and achieved more success. The foreign pimp and procurer,
who swooped down at intervals upon Bombay to acquaint himself with the
demand for fresh women and to relieve the European prostitutes of their
earnings, met with no mercy at his hands. He used the provisions of the
Aliens Act freely against them, deporting 30 of them in 1900 and 37 in
1901. Officers of the detective branch were entrusted specially with the
duty of watching the European brothels, meeting the steamers of foreign
shipping-companies, and marking down every Jewish trafficker who showed
his nose in Bombay. It is only quite recently that the Indian Government,
in response to domestic and international opinion, have strengthened
the provisions of the Foreigners Act, in order to give the police in
Bombay and other large maritime cities more effective control over these
disreputable and degraded persons: and as a result of the pressure of
public opinion, endorsed by the League of Nations, the activities of the
international trafficker are more restricted and more easily controlled
than they were at the close of the nineteenth century. It is much to Mr.
Kennedy’s credit that, working with the unamended Act, he was able in
two years to secure a definite reduction in the number of professional
traffickers visiting Bombay.
He paid constant attention also to the offence of kidnapping or procuring
minor Indian girls for immoral purposes. It is well known that both Hindu
and Muhammadan recruits for the prostitutes’ profession are obtained
from among the illegitimate children of courtesans, or from among female
children adopted by prostitutes, or thirdly, by purchase from agents
who travel throughout Gujarat, Central India, Rajputana and other
districts, picking up superfluous and unwanted girls of tender age for a
small sum, sometimes as little as Rs. 5 or Rs. 6, and then selling them
at a profit to brothel-keepers in the large cities and towns. Leaving
out of consideration the custom, prevalent among Maratha Kunbis and
Mhars, of dedicating their female children to the god Khandoba, which in
practice condemns the girls to a life of prostitution, and the customs
of degraded nomadic tribes like the Kolhatis, Dombars, Harnis, Berads
and Mang Garudas, who habitually prostitute their girls, it may be said
that among the lower social strata in India female life is held very
cheap. A daughter is apt to be regarded rather as a domestic calamity,
owing largely to the heavy expense usually involved in getting her
married. Cases therefore often occur of young girls being abandoned by
their relatives, who are unable to provide the funds required for their
regular betrothal; and these little derelicts sometimes drift into
brothels, where they are fed, clothed and taught singing and dancing
until they reach puberty, when the brothel-keeper arranges to sell their
first favours for a round sum to some well-to-do libertine. Muhammadan
prostitutes, who are numerous throughout India and range from the inmate
of the low-class brothel to the wealthy courtesan, who earns a high fee
for her singing, occupies well-furnished quarters, and drives in her own
motor-car or carriage, are recruited in the same way. In one case, which
occurred a few years ago, a lower class Moplah of the Malabar coast,
having borrowed money at a high rate of interest to provide dowries for
his two elder daughters and being unable to raise any further sum for his
third daughter’s betrothal, sold her outright to a Bombay brothel-keeper
for Rs. 40. The girl was about eight years of age when she entered
the brothel, and by the age of thirteen she was helping to support
her worthless father and two young brothers out of her earnings as a
prostitute.
Mr. Kennedy also pointed out to Government that year by year “scores
of young girls,” belonging chiefly to Gujarat and Kathiawar, were
either picked off the streets by native pimps of both sexes or were, as
mentioned above, brought down from rural areas by regular traffickers and
sold to the local brothel-keepers for sums ranging from Rs. 10 to Rs. 50.
In many cases the police rescued these waifs and restored them to their
homes: but they could not make much headway against a system which had
attained such large proportions. Moreover, in addition to the difficulty
of tracing the girls’ relatives in a country like India, their task was
not rendered easier by the absence of any strong public opinion against
such practices, and by the non-existence of properly organized orphanages
and homes. In several instances girls were discovered prostituting
themselves under compulsion from a male “bully” or female brothel-keeper;
and in such cases, as well as in cases of kidnapping, every effort was
made by the police, under Mr. Kennedy’s orders, to arrest the offenders
and bring them to trial. Wherever it was impossible to secure the
conviction of an offender under the Indian Penal Code, Mr. Kennedy had
resort to the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Here he met with more success than his predecessor, who, as already
mentioned, complained that the Magistrates required evidence under that
chapter which it was extremely difficult to procure. Mr. Kennedy found in