districts, the widely-scattered constables chiefly perform the duties of a
rural police. The great distances they have to traverse necessitates the
use of horses; here, accordingly, we find the mounted police, the
successors of the old horse-patrol established in 1805. The strength of
this force, men and officers included, is only 120; they are furnished
with powerful nags, and are armed with swords and pistols. Indeed the
foot-police, whose beats lie in unfrequented rural districts, are allowed
side-arms--a precaution which the fate of the policeman, who was brutally
murdered in a field at Dagenham, in Essex, some years since, proved to be
by no means unnecessary.
In the middle of the metropolitan police district is the City police,
under the management of the corporation. The area of this peculiar, to
borrow an ecclesiastical term, is only one square mile and a quarter; but
forming as it does the very centre of business, it is by far the richest
part of London, for, while it contains only one-twentieth portion of its
inhabitants, it possesses a fourteenth part of its wealth. This small
space is, in fact, the great heart not only of the metropolis, but of the
commercial world. Through its principal thoroughfares a vaster flood of
traffic is poured for several hours than is to be found in any other
streets in the world. In the year 1850 it was ascertained that no less
than 67,510 foot-passengers, and 13,796 vehicles, containing no fewer than
52,092 persons, passed Bow Church, Cheapside, in one day. By another
channel of communication, Aldgate, near the Minories, 58,430
foot-passengers, and 9,332 vehicles, containing 20,804 persons, passed in
the same time; and it is estimated that altogether no less than 400,000
persons are poured into this one square mile and a quarter in the course
of the twelve hours. The congregation in so confined a space of so vast a
number of people, many of whom are forced to carry about with them
considerable sums of money, must prove a great source of attraction to
thieves of all kinds, and demands the constant vigilance of a
comparatively large body of police. It was not until ten years after the
successful experiment of the metropolitan police, however, that the
corporation of London, wedded to its old system of ward-beadles,
street-keepers, and imbecile constables, could be brought to adopt the new
system; but it must be admitted that the present force, consisting of 1
superintendent, 13 inspectors, 12 station-sergeants, 47 sergeants, and 492
policemen, making a total of 565, do the duty well; and the City, with all
its stored wealth, is now as safe as the rest of the metropolis. At all
the banks plain-clothes men are constantly in attendance to keep out the
swell-mob, who buzz about such places as wasps do about a peach wall; and
in the great thoroughfares, such as Cheapside, six or seven policemen are
always to be found.
The peculiarities of the City, which produce its characteristic robberies,
are the number of its uninhabited warehouses, the perfect labyrinth of
lanes which traverse and intersect its streets in all directions, and the
vast number of carts and vans always standing full of valuable goods at
the warehouse doors. The greatest precautions are taken to mark the
fastenings on the warehouse doors, so as to betray any attempt to force
them; and these devices are generally successful. The reticulation of
lanes will always prove a trouble to the police and a security to
pickpockets. Not many years ago a bank clerk was attacked at mid-day in
one of these passages in the very heart of the City, but luckily he
retained hold of his case, which held most valuable property, and it is
now the custom to chain these bill-cases to the person, just as they used
to chain books in the olden time to the library shelves. It is also
customary for bank clerks to tear the corners off all Bank of England
notes, so as to render them unnegotiable, unless to persons who can
produce the corresponding piece,--a contrivance which, no doubt, put a
stop to audacious attacks upon these money-carriers in the middle of the
day. The most common robberies are those from vehicles loading and
discharging valuable silk and other goods at the warehouse doors. For the
protection of such goods a small dog is the best policeman; and carts are
rarely seen in the City without one of these nimble guardians. The old
restriction which prevented the metropolitan police from entering the
City, and the City force from entering the metropolitan districts, is now
abandoned. Nevertheless, the fact of their being under a distinct
jurisdiction prevents that unity of action which ought to prevail. Not
long since, a City policeman patrolling one of the streets which extended
into the metropolitan department, was informed by a passer-by that they
were killing a constable at the top of the street, to which the policeman
replied that it was out of his beat and he could not interfere! When next
the Sibyl presents her leaves to the city corporation, in all probability
the present isolated system of police will not be found inscribed on any
one of them.
Scotland Yard, as we have said, is the brain or central ganglion which
directs the system of metropolitan police. Here the commissioners sit
daily, and are ready to receive the complaints or other communications of
the public. Its rooms are full of clerks, but all in the uniform of the
police; in one office may be seen the constables wielding the pen instead
of the truncheon, preparing daily returns and reports; in another, reading
the morning and country papers, to learn what is doing that may require
their presence, and to know what thieves have turned up in the police
courts; in a third room an inspector is reading to the clerks from the
different divisions any particulars it may be advisable to communicate to
the entire force; in a fourth we see the secret chamber of the detective
police--those human moles who work without casting up the earth lest their
course should be discovered. In an office apart from the rest are the
foreign detectives, who watch over _mauvais sujets_ from abroad. The
entire floating foreign population in the metropolis is well known to the
police, and no plots against allied governments could well be hatched in
London without their cognizance. All articles lost in public conveyances
are here taken charge of. The "Lost Property Office" contains piles of
umbrellas, parasols, and walking-sticks, together with a curious
assemblage of articles of jewellery and wearing apparel, brought by honest
cabmen. On one occasion a parcel with cash to the amount of 1,600_l._ was
deposited; and on another a thousand-pound note. Valuable property is
always claimed immediately; but sticks, parasols, and umbrellas accumulate
in a manner which proves that their loss is due to the carelessness of
their owners and not to the loose morality of others. The offices for the
inspectors of dangerous structures and for licensing common lodging-houses
and the drivers and conductors of public conveyances, all of which
departments are managed by the police, are close at hand.
In the drilling-ground of the force--an open space surrounded by a
hoarding close to the State Paper Office--there are generally from thirty
to forty men in course of training, to fill up the gaps caused by
dismissals, resignations, &c. On the occasion of our visit the yard was
occupied by two bodies--the raw material, in the shape of some twenty
individuals dressed in every variety of costume; and another batch of the
finished article, buttoned up in blue and resplendent with plated buttons.
The eye had only to run along the "gammut of men," if we may so term the
fresh recruits drawn up before us, in order to see from how many ranks of
society the police brigade is reinforced; smock-frocks, shooting-coats,
frock-coats, tail-coats, some seedy and worn, some still good and fresh,
denoted the condition in life of their owners, and the necessities to
which some of them were reduced. Young men flushed with hope come from the
provinces to push their fortunes, after a brief struggle find themselves
stranded, and accept this, the most readily-obtained respectable service.
As every policeman must be able to read and write, have a good character,
and be of sound body and mind, the mere overflowings of the labour-market
are excluded from the force; moreover, persons can always leave the
service by giving a month's notice. For these reasons a much more
intelligent class of men recruit the police than the army, and it is
singular to note how this intelligence tells. The drill of constables and
soldiers is nearly alike, yet the former learn all their movements in a
fortnight, whilst the latter require at least two months. Intelligence of
a certain kind, however, may be carried too far; your sharp Londoner makes
a very bad policeman; he is too volatile and conceited to submit himself
to discipline, and is oftener rejected than the persons from other parts,
with whom eight-tenths of the force are recruited. The best constables
come from the provincial cities and towns. They are both quicker and more
"plucky" than the mere countryman fresh from the village--a singular fact,
which proves that manly vigour, both physical and mental, is to be found
in populations neither too aggregated nor entirely isolated.
The policemen, perfect in their material drill, next undergo a mental one.
Drawn up in line, a sergeant or inspector questions them as to their
duties. "Supposing you see two men fighting, what would you do?" or, "If
you were to discover a house on fire, how would you act?" Sometimes the
constable addressed answers the question, but more generally his
interrogator does it for him. When drilled and catechized to the full
pitch, he doffs his plain clothes for a uniform, and comes out in the full
bloom of a policeman. But he is still a neophyte, and before he is
intrusted with a beat he attends at a police-court in order to watch the
manner in which trained constables comport themselves in the witness-box.
Having learned to give evidence clearly and briefly, to listen to
ludicrous scenes without smiling, and to bear bad language with
imperturbable patience, he is marched off to the division in which he has
elected to serve (the policeman is always if possible allowed this
privilege), and with his armlet on his wrist, his staff in one pocket, and
his rattle in the other, he patrols his beat.
Two especial injunctions are given to him--never to show his staff except
to protect himself, and never to spring his rattle at night except in a
case of great urgency. The care taken to hide his offensive weapon is one
of the best points of our police arrangements. The officers sent over here
to gain information, prior to the introduction of the English police
system in Paris, were astonished at this forbearance: the Frenchmen could
not understand why a man should carry a deadly weapon, unless to make a
demonstration with it! In this little incident we see the essential
difference between the French and English character. In six months' time
it is expected that the young hand will prove a steady officer; that a
wild young fellow, who perhaps only a few months before knew no restraint,
should become a machine, moving, thinking, and speaking only as his
instruction-book directs; and so wonderful are the powers of organization
that such an officer he generally becomes. We all know him, for we see him
day by day as we promenade the streets. Stiff, calm, and inexorable, he
seems to take no interest in any mortal thing; to have neither hopes nor
fears. Amid the bustle of Piccadilly or the roar of Oxford Street, P. C. X
59 stalks along, an _institution_ rather than a man. We seem to have no
more hold of his personality than we could possibly get of his coat,
buttoned up to the throttling-point. Go, however, to the section-house, an
establishment generally attached to the chief station of each division, in
which the unmarried policemen are lodged, and enter the common hall or
reading-room, and you no longer see policemen, but men; they have cast off
their tight coats, as certain other unboiled lobsters, at fixed intervals,
cast off their shells. They are absolutely laughing with each other! Some
are writing, some are reading the morning papers, a group are grinning at
the caricature of P. C. X 202 in "Punch;" some are deep in the horrors of
a romance, extended at full length along a bench, with their trowsers
tucked up; all are at their ease, taking rational amusement. In the common
room of every section-house there is a library.[47] That in King Street,
Westminster, contains 1,200 volumes, a well-selected medley of subjects,
grave and gay. Some of the volumes, indeed, surprised us, as they seemed
to indicate an erudite taste which we did not give police constables
credit for possessing. We give a few of their titles as they came under
our notice:--
Taylor's Holy Living.
The Annals of the English Bible.
Macaulay's Essays.
Alison's Europe.
Paley's Works.
Byron's Works.
The Waverley Novels.
James's Naval History.
Lane's Modern Egyptians.
Life of Mohammud, by Mohun Lal.
Tom Cringle's Log.
Bishop Heber's Journal.
Washington Irving's Works.
Colonial and Home Library.
What do you think of the list, good reader? Policemen reading Paley! Can
we wonder that they are so very blue? But we must not misrepresent the
force. If volumes such as these are thumbed sufficiently to show that some
Scotch sergeant has a taste for theological reading and "fee-lo-so-phy,"
the prevalent inquiry is after good English literature; and, although the
"Wandering Jew" and the "Mysteries of Paris" are in the library, we are
told that the men do not like, and apparently do not understand, French
romances. The library is only open on Thursdays, and then but for two
hours. For this there is a philosophical reason. "What we can always see,"
said the superintendent who kindly showed us over the Section, "we never
see: it is only strangers that know all the sights of the metropolis." On
the same principle, the issue of books is limited in the manner we have
stated, and we are told that the plan answers admirably. The dormitories
at King-street accommodate about ninety persons, the great portion of
whom, having done night-duty, we saw fast asleep, on a fine tempting
afternoon. It takes full three months for the men to acquire the habit of
sleeping in the day; but, once acquired, they never lose it afterwards,
although they return at stated intervals to day-duty again. They find
their own breakfasts and suppers, but they mess together at dinner. They
take it in turns to cater for the week; and the emulation thus created
proves to the advantage of the mess, as we hear that early peas, and other
delicacies of the season, find their way to the policemen's table.[48] It
would be an immense boon to the Benedicts of the force if accommodation
could also be found for them in the section-houses. In these days of model
lodging-houses such an injustice to family men should scarcely be allowed
to exist.
One of the strongest reasons which weighed with Mr. Peel in proposing the
establishment of the new police in 1829 was the expediency of instituting
a force powerful enough to cope with mobs, and to repress those incipient
commotions which, if too roughly dealt with by the military, are apt to
leave an abiding sense of irritation in the public mind. The massacre of
"Peterloo," as it was vulgarly called, without doubt proved to the
reflective mind of Peel that civil disturbances could no longer be dealt
with by the sharp edge of the sword, and that a knock-down blow of a
truncheon was far more congenial to the English skull than the sabre of
the yeoman or the bullet of the "sodger." That view was undoubtedly
correct. The new police have not, it is true, come in contact with excited
mobs on more than three occasions,--the affair of Coldbath Fields, in the
year 1833, the Chartist gathering in 1848, and the skirmish in the Park,
of July, 1855. On each of these occasions the crowd was immediately
dispersed, and whatever irritation might have existed at the time, it
quickly died away. There seems to be no fear that a London mob will ever
prove a serious thing in the face of our present corps of policemen. A
repetition of the Lord George Gordon riots would be an impossibility.
Those who shudder at the idea of an outbreak in the metropolis, containing
two millions and a half of people and at least fifty thousand of the
"dangerous classes," forget that the capital is so wide that its different
sections are totally unknown to each other. A mob in London is wholly
without cohesion, and the individuals composing it have but few feelings,
thoughts, or pursuits in common. They would immediately break up before
the determined attack of a band of well-trained men who know and have
confidence in each other. The genuine Londoner, moreover, is no fighter;
he will "slang" and "chaff" wittily with his tongue, but he will not come
to blows. Those who have any experience in the _gamins_ of the great towns
in England must have observed the vast difference between the want of
pugnacity in the cockney-bred boy, and the love of fisticuffs among the
youths of Bristol, Birmingham, or Manchester, which are the nurseries of
prize-fighters. The great town has sharpened the brain of the Londoner,
but unstrung his sinews and cowed his courage, and he is a pigmy in the
hands of the vigorous provincials. The middle classes are an exception,
and we doubt not that the same spirit which marched with the trained-bands
from London to Gloucester, in the civil war, is still to be found among
them.
We believe that the only quarter in which any formidable riot could take
place would be eastward, in the neighbourhood of the Docks, where there
are at least twelve thousand sailors in the river or on shore, ready for a
spree, fearless and powerful, and acting with an undoubted _esprit de
corps_. These, if associated with the seven or eight thousand
dock-labourers and lightermen, would certainly produce a force difficult
to cope with. For such emergencies the police are provided with side-arms,
but we fear they are not well trained to their use, and it would take at
least fourteen days to perfect them. If in any civil disturbance, however,
it should come to cold steel, we think that the soldiers would prove far
more effective, and their interference would be less galling than that of
the police armed with murderous weapons. Prevention is the true duty of
the civil force. One of the simplest methods for breaking up a crowd, in
order that it may have no unity of action, is to march sections of
constables, in double files of say fifty each; these sections moving a few
yards apart speedily cleave by their weight the densest mob in twain. When
once this division is made, the order is given to face right and left and
march; by this means the mass is riven into a dozen helpless portions. If
the mounted police can be brought into action, it is customary to march
them in every direction through the crowd. Those who were in Hyde Park on
the evening of the great Sunday gathering in July 1855, witnessed how
effectually this singular manoeuvre was executed under the orders of
Captain Labalmondiere. The horsemen, circulating among the immense crowd,
entirely disintegrated the mass, and rendered it helpless for a common
movement, and this without any altercation; for what use could there be in
arguing with horses' heels? A policeman's staff thrust in your chest,
accompanied by a peremptory order to stand back, would probably "rile" the
best of us; but what is to be said against the push of a horse's flank or
the descent of a heavy hoof? Everybody is glad to get as quickly as
possible out of the way, and thus the whole company break as it were of
their own accord.
Let us now revert to the Detective Police. When the Metropolitan force was
established in 1829, the old Bow-street officers, not caring to work with
the new system, retired from public life, and set up a private practice
in hunting out offenders, in which occupation some of them continue to
this day. For fifteen years there was no establishment of detectives
connected with the police; but the inconvenience of not possessing so
necessary a wheel in the constabulary machinery induced Sir James Graham,
who had, perhaps, a leaning towards this branch of the profession, to
revive the fraternity. The force consists of three inspectors, nine
sergeants, and a body of police termed "plain-clothes men," whose services
can be had at any moment. There are about six policemen in each division,
who take upon themselves the duty of detectives when wanted, which affords
a total number of 108 auxiliaries, upon whom the inspectors and sergeants
can rely to carry out their orders with silence and address. In all great
gatherings, these men are distributed among the crowd, dressed according
to the character of the assembly. Thus, at an agricultural meeting,
smock-frocks are worn, or the dress of a small farmer; at a review, the
habiliments of a decent mechanic in his Sunday best. In this respect they
follow the principle of Nature, who protects her creatures from
observation by giving them coats of a colour somewhat similar to that of
the soil they inhabit,--to the arctic fox, a fur white as the surrounding
snow; and to the hare, a coat scarcely distinguishable from the brown
heath in which she makes her form. It is the general rule to station these
plain-clothes men as near as possible to the policemen of their own
division, in order that they may be assisted in capturing prisoners.
Man is eminently a hunting animal, but there is no prey which he follows
with such zest and perseverance as his fellowman. Some policemen, directly
they enter the force, show the taste so strongly that they are at once
marked off for this special service. Others, on the contrary, will remain
years without detecting a single crime. From among the 6,000 persons
composing the force, a splendid field is afforded for selecting good men;
and Bow-street, great as was its fame, did not turn out more intelligent
detectives than we now possess. The officers, although they are not
hail-fellow-well-met with every thief, as in the last century, still find
it necessary to keep up a personal knowledge of the criminal population,
especially with that portion of it whose members they may at one time or
other be likely to "want." The detectives, as well as thieves, are
generally famous for some particular line of business. One is good at
housebreakers, another knows how to follow up the swell-mob, and a third
is a crack hand at forgers. By confining themselves to distinct branches
of the art, they acquire an especial sense, as it were, for the work; and
it is remarkable how much their trouble is lightened by the division of
labour. The detective stands in a very different position from the
ordinary policeman; his work, long and laborious though it may be, must,
to succeed, never see the light. Although he may have followed a case for
years, all the public knows of it is summed up in the four words used by
the constable who states the charge at the police court--"from information
I received," &c. The detective lays the foundation which, from the
shifting soil he has to deal with, is frequently far more extensive than
the superstructure. His duty is to pursue the criminal through all his
shiftings and turnings, until the case is clear against him; and then
fearlessly to draw him forth from his hiding-place, as a ferret would a
rabbit, and hand him over to an ordinary constable to bring to the
judgment-seat.
Much of the information by which the perpetrators of crimes are discovered
comes from their own body: thus two thieves fall out, and one, prompted by
revenge, and stimulated by the hope of a reward, splits upon his
confederate; or some abandoned woman, jealous of another, gives
information which leads to her paramour's apprehension. The revenge taken
by members of the fraternity upon a "pal" whose treachery has been
discovered, is often so signal, that the utmost caution is exercised in
communicating with the police, lest suspicion should be excited. The
constable, whose aim is to encourage these revelations, must never, by his
want of address, give any hint of the source from which he receives his
information; nay, he finds it necessary sometimes to pursue keenly a false
scent in order to divert attention from the betrayer.