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SCOTLAND YARD.
_Copyright in the United States of America, 1915._
SCOTLAND YARD
THE METHODS AND ORGANISATION OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE.
BY
GEORGE DILNOT.
[Illustration: Logo]
LONDON:
PERCIVAL MARSHALL & CO.,
66, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE SILENT MACHINE 9
CHAPTER II.
MATTERS OF ORGANISATION 16
CHAPTER III.
THE REAL DETECTIVE 22
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE TRAIL 32
CHAPTER V.
MAKING A DETECTIVE 41
CHAPTER VI.
MORE ABOUT INVESTIGATION 48
CHAPTER VII.
THE "CROOKS'" CLEARING-HOUSE 54
CHAPTER VIII.
FINGER-PRINTS 65
CHAPTER IX.
THE SCHOOL OF POLICE 76
CHAPTER X.
IN A POLICE STATION 87
CHAPTER XI.
THE RIDDLE DEPARTMENT 98
CHAPTER XII.
THE SAILOR POLICE 109
CHAPTER XIII.
THE BLACK MUSEUM 118
CHAPTER XIV.
PUBLIC CARRIAGES 123
CHAPTER XV.
LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED 132
PREFACE.
TO ROBERT.
MY DEAR ROBERT,
It is more than probable that since this book was written you have
changed your uniform and your beat. You are in the North Sea, in
Flanders, in Gallipoli. Nowhere can admiral or general wish a better
man.
I have known you long. I have for many years been thrown among you in
all circumstances, and at all times. I have known you trudging your
beat, have known you more especially as a detective, have known you in
high administrative and executive positions. I have seen you arrest
armed murderers, have seen you tactfully reproving a drunkard, have seen
you solving tangled problems of crime, have seen you charging a mob,
have seen you playing with a lost baby. I do not think there is any
phase of your work which I have not seen. And I want the public to know
you.
You, whether you be Commissioner or constable, occupy a position of
delicate and peculiar responsibility. You are poised between the trust
and suspicion of those you serve, and you are never quite sure whether
you will be blessed or blamed. I, who realise something of your
temptations and your qualities, know how seldom you fail in an
emergency, how rarely you abuse your powers.
You will forgive me when I say you are not perfect. You have your little
failings, and at times the defect of one man recoils on 20,000. There
are matters I should like to see changed. But, on the whole, you are
admittedly still the best policeman in the world.
The war has claimed you and others of your profession. Astute commanding
officers have recognised you as "men who are handled and made," and many
a constable of a year ago now wears an officer's stars. There are those
of you who have gained other distinctions.
There is no branch of the service here dealt with that has not sent of
its best to the fighting line. None will recognise more willingly than
you in the trenches that the luck has been yours. We know (you and I)
that others have been, by no will of their own, left behind. It is to
these, in no small degree, that the safety and equanimity of London have
been due. And it is as well that here tribute should be paid to those
who have endured without retort the sneers of the malicious and
ill-informed as well as the multiplicity of extra duties the war has
entailed upon them.
One advantage, at least, the war has conferred on you. It has exploded
the ignorance of your profession to those thousands of citizens who have
elected to share something of your responsibilities. They at least know
something of your work; they at least know that the special constable
can never replace, though he may assist, the experienced police-officer.
You always understood the Londoner; now the Londoner is coming to
understand you.
I have attempted no more than a sketch of the great machine of which you
form part. But if it enlightens the public in some degree as to the way
they are served by you it will have achieved its purpose.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE DILNOT.
London,
October, 1915.
SCOTLAND YARD.
By GEORGE DILNOT.
"By all means let us abuse the police, but let us see what the poor
wretches have to do."--KIPLING.
CHAPTER I.
THE SILENT MACHINE.
We who live in London are rather apt to take our police for granted.
Occasionally, in a mood of complacency, we boast of the finest police
force in the world; at other times, we hint darkly at corruption and
brutality among a gang of men too clever, too unscrupulous to be found
out. We associate Scotland Yard with detectives--miraculous creations of
imaginative writers--forgetting that the Criminal Investigation
Department is but one branch in a wondrously complex organisation. Of
that organisation itself, we know little. And in spite of--or perhaps
because of--the mass of writing that has made its name familiar all over
the world, there exists but the haziest notion as to how it performs its
functions.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this ignorance is that Scotland Yard
never defends itself, never explains, never extenuates. Praise or blame
it accepts in equal silence. It goes on its way, ignoring everything
that does not concern it, acting swiftly, impartially, caring nothing
save for duty to be done.
There is romance in Scotland Yard--a romance that has never been
written, that may never be written. It concerns the building up, in the
face of incredible obstacles, of a vast, ingenious machine which has
become one of the greatest instruments of civilisation the world has
ever seen.
Imagine an army of 20,000 men encamped over seven hundred square miles,
with its outposts in every quarter of the globe--an army engaged in
never-ceasing warfare with the guerillas of crime and disorder. Imagine
something of the work it does.
In a city of seven million souls, crammed with incalculable wealth,
there are less than a thousand habitual thieves--the exact number is
706--and 161 receivers of stolen goods. In spite of all its temptations,
there are but seventeen thousand serious crimes in a year, while the
number of more trivial offences is only one hundred and seventy
thousand. Few of the perpetrators escape justice. Compare this record
with that of any city in the world. Ask Paris, ask New York, ask
Petrograd, and you will begin to realise how well protected London is.
In a large soft-carpeted room, its big double windows open to catch the
breezes that blow from the river, sits the man upon whom the ultimate
responsibility for all this devolves, a slim-built, erect man of sixty
odd, with moustache once auburn but now grey, grey hair and shrewd hazel
eyes--Sir Edward Henry.
Imperturbable, quiet-voiced, quiet-mannered, he sits planning the peace
of London. He is playing a perpetual game of chess on the great board of
the metropolis with twenty thousand men as his pieces against a
cosmopolitan fraternity of evil-doers who never rest. He is the one man
in the service who must never make a mistake.
The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police sleeps on no bed of roses.
He must be as supple as willow, as rigid as steel, must possess the tact
of a diplomatist, with the impartiality of a judge.
Since the days when Sir Richard Mayne built up the police organisation
in its infancy, there has been no Commissioner who so nearly fulfils the
ideal of a great police administrator as Sir Edward Henry. Unlike most
of his predecessors, practically his whole life has been spent in the
study of police science.
It is something more than forty years ago since he entered the Indian
Civil Service as assistant magistrate collector. He became ultimately
Inspector-General of the Bengal Police, and then commissioner of a
division.
It was there that he first established the finger-print system of
identification, as a police device for the registration of habitual
criminals which he was to introduce later at Scotland Yard, and which
has tightened the meshes round many a criminal who would otherwise have
escaped justice.
The man in the street knows little of the silent man who is undoubtedly
the greatest police organiser in the world. Even on this very matter of
finger-prints there is a general confusion with Bertillonage--a totally
different thing. The Henry system has practically ousted Bertillonage in
every civilised country. If Sir Edward had done nothing but that he
would have ranked as one of the greatest reformers in criminal
detection. But he has done more--much more.
Fourteen years ago he resigned his Indian post to become
Assistant-Commissioner in charge of the Criminal Investigation
Department. Even then the intention was to "try" him for Commissioner.
He spent a period in South Africa during the war reorganising the civil
police of Johannesburg and Pretoria. In 1903, when Sir Edward Bradford
retired, he was appointed Commissioner.
He found that the vast complex machinery of which he assumed control was
running a little less freely than it should. The police force was like
an old established business--still sound, but inclined to work in a
groove. It needed a chief with courage, individuality, ideas,
initiative, and the organising powers of a Kitchener. These qualities
were almost at once revealed in Sir Edward Henry.
In the force it was soon felt that a new power had arisen. The
Commissioner was not only a name but an actuality. Nothing was so
trivial as to escape his attention; nothing too wide for him to grasp.
He knew his men--it is said that he knows every man in the force, an
exaggeration with a great deal of truth in it--and they soon knew him.
Quick to observe, quick to commend or punish, whether it be high
official or ordinary constable, he has come to be regarded with
unswerving devotion by those under him. The police force as he took it
over and as it is now may seem the same thing to the ordinary observer.
To those who knew something of its working it is a vastly different
thing.
I have passed many years among police officers of all grades and all
departments. Many of these have been veterans of from twenty to thirty
years' service. They have told me of things done for the well-being of
the force, the convenience of the public, and the confusion of the
criminal.
Telephone and telegraphic communication have been perfected between
stations, head-quarters and provincial police, the system of
identification has been revised, young constables are taught their trade
with care and thoroughness, higher pay has been granted to all ranks,
men are housed in greater comfort, red tape has been ruthlessly cut
through, the relations between police and Press have been improved;
there is a wider, broader spirit in all. A clean esprit de corps, very
different to that which at times long gone by has threatened the
interests of the public, has sprung up.
In all these things is to be seen the hand of Sir Edward Henry. Scotland
Yard is not yet perfect; there still linger relics of the old
conservative spirit in certain directions; but the new method has made
itself felt. Initiative is encouraged in all ranks. Suggestions and
criticism from without are welcomed.
The Commissioner is a man of instant decision. Let anyone make a
suggestion, and he ponders it for a second or so. Then he reaches for a
pen. "Yes, that's a good idea. We'll have an order on that." And in a
little the suggestion has become an official fact.
Little escapes his eye, but he is a man who makes sure. Every morning a
bundle of newspapers and periodicals is delivered at Scotland Yard to be
carefully scrutinised and to have every reference to the force marked
with blue pencil. Where there is an accusation against a particular man,
or a criticism of methods in general, special attention is directed to
it. But there is rarely any need for this. The Commissioner has probably
read it at breakfast. The point, whatever it is, is usually in a fair
way to being dealt with before lunch.
From the moment a constable has been sworn in he is watched and selected
for the post that best suits him. A man may do well in a semi-rural
district who would be a failure in Commercial Road, E. He may be
selected for office work, regulation of traffic, for the Criminal
Investigation Department, for the Thames Division, or for routine duty
in the street. Wherever he is he is the best man who can be found for
the work, and so from top to bottom of the ladder of promotion.
Many romances have been written of Scotland Yard, but imagination has
supplied the place of facts, for the tongues of those who have taken
part in dramatic episodes, more stirring than any in fiction, are
locked.
Yet, in spite of all its cold, business-like atmosphere, the story of
the Metropolitan Police is in itself a vivid romance which only a
Kipling could write as it should be written. Imagine the Commissioner,
whose power is almost autocratic, weaving a net that is spread broadcast
to catch within its meshes any person who breaks the King's peace or the
King's laws.
And, although now and again the personal factor is discernible in some
piece of work, it is mainly cold, precise, business-like organisation
which holds the net so close. Telephones, telegraphs, and motor cars
link the police stations of London closely--so closely that within less
than half an hour 20,000 men can be informed of the particulars of a
crime.
As an instance of organisation, it may be interesting to recall that
during the Coronation procession, when close on 600 detectives were on
duty mingling with the crowds, it was possible for Mr. Frank Froest, the
then Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, in his
office, to get a message to or from any one of them within ten minutes.
A large proportion of the whole body could have been concentrated on one
spot within twenty minutes.
It is organisation that makes Scotland Yard able to carry out its myriad
duties, from testing motor omnibuses to plucking a murderer from his
hiding place at the ends of the earth, from guarding the persons of
Emperors and Kings to preventing a Whitechapel bully from knocking his
wife about. The work must go on smoothly, silently, every department
harmonising, every man working in one common effort.
The administrative and financial sides of the police are divided, the
former being under the Commissioner, the latter under the Receiver, Mr.
G. H. Tripp. The maintenance of the Metropolitan Police is naturally
expensive, the average cost of each constable annually being L102. The
gross expenditure during 1913-14 was L2,830,796; of this, L886,307 was
received from the Exchequer, L244,383 was from sums paid for the
services of constables lent to other districts, L1,512,072 from London
ratepayers, and the remainder from various sources.