THE RIDDLE DEPARTMENT.
The perpetual solving of riddles is one of the commonplace duties of
Scotland Yard, not only in the C.I.D., but in every branch of the
business. Luck may, and sometimes does, help a detective to solve a
mystery; but luck never helps to quell a riot or maintain order on the
King's highway in times of stress.
It is for such matters as these that they keep a Riddle Department at
headquarters. They call it the Executive Department, but no matter--as
Mark Twain would say. It is there to supply the answers to the
conundrums that are always cropping up in police work.
Everyone in the Metropolitan Police who wants to know anything goes to
the Executive Department. And it does a heavy work by the sheer light of
common-sense and a meticulous organisation which is ready for anything,
for many of its riddles are simply variations of the great one:
"Here are twenty thousand men who must eat and sleep and guard seven
hundred square miles and seven millions of people; how can we
concentrate a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand swiftly into a
particular district to meet an emergency without leaving other places
unguarded?"
An unthankful task. I can imagine that at times subdued but bitter
revilings are heaped upon the head of the department.
You cannot take men from the comparatively pleasant surroundings of the
West End and dump them into Dockland, for instance, without evoking
grumbles. Naturally, every division which is drawn upon thinks it ought
to have been some other division. But discipline and tact do great
things.
Rarely is there any cause for complaint, although the known fact that
the force is undermanned naturally entails hardships on individuals at
times.
Now let me introduce you to the Riddle Department at work. In the
telegraph-room of Scotland Yard one of a cluster of tape machines breaks
into hysterical chatter, and a constable springs to read the message of
the unreeling coil of paper. It is a message from the East End. A riot
has occurred which the local superintendent fears may become greater
than the force at his disposal will be able to cope with.
The constable dashes into an adjacent room with the message, and the
superintendent of the department takes in its import at a glance.
He picks up a typewritten table, and his finger glides to a particular
spot. That table tells him how many men a 5, 10, or 20 per cent. draft
from neighbouring divisions will give.
In another minute he is in consultation with Sir Frederick Wodehouse,
the Assistant Commissioner who controls the department, and possibly
with Sir Edward Henry himself. All three are men used to unhesitating
decisions, and with an intimate knowledge of the force.
A few sharp words and the private wires again begin to get busy. Almost
immediately the reserves from the neighbouring divisions commence to
mobilise, and are poured into the disturbed area as swiftly as means of
communication allow. It is a riddle solved with quiet precision, and no
district is bereft of adequate guardianship. One of the exigencies of
the business has been met.
If the public ever thought about such a feat at all, they would consider
it as something of a miracle. But it is not as spectacular as the
catching of a criminal, and the only persons who call indirect attention
to it are those who would have us believe that great, hulking policemen
have batoned helpless men and women who were, of course, doing nothing,
although broken bottles and stones may litter the thoroughfare where an
affray has taken place.
It is curious this suspicion of the police which sometimes affects
otherwise clear-headed people. You pick out men whose character is
without flaw from their childhood upwards. You put them into a blue
uniform, and lo! their whole personality alters. They are hypocrites and
bullies, bribed by bookmakers and prostitutes, and capable of any sort
of baseness.
Let us return to the Riddle Department. The secret of dealing with such
a happening as I have painted above lies naturally in the organisation.
Every division has a certain number of reserve men--approximately 10 per
cent.
They are picked veterans of not less than eight years' service, who
receive an additional eighteenpence per week, and must always be ready
to carry out special work when called upon. These, then, are first
called out, and other men are taken as occasion demands.
There are other branches of the Metropolitan Police where a mistake
would make havoc in a department or division; here it would affect the
service as a whole.
The Executive Department is as much concerned in the work of every other
part of that complex machine as the engineers of a great ship are in
keeping the vessel moving. Sir Frederick Wodehouse, who is at its head,
in his quarter of a century's service as police administrator--twelve of
which have been spent with the City Police and the remainder at Scotland
Yard--has always been keenly alive to the necessity of keeping pace with
the science of organisation. He has as his right-hand men
Superintendents West and White, who split up the work between them--one
in charge of the Executive Department itself, the other supervising the
Statistical Department.
It will be understood why I call it a Riddle Department when I explain
some of its duties. It is concerned with the discipline and
administration of the force as a whole; the organisation of men when
they have to be used in mass; it controls the public and private
telephone and telegraph service of the force; it compiles statistics on
all sorts of police subjects: it edits and issues "Informations," "The
Inebriates' List," "The Cycle List," "The Pawnbrokers' List," reward
bills, and police notices; it makes traffic regulations; it works with
the Board of Agriculture when cattle disease breaks out; it issues
pedlars' and sweeps' certificates; it keeps a gruesome record--a sort of
photographic morgue--of all dead bodies found in London; and it has to
give its consent before any summons may be taken out by a police
officer.
That is the merest inadequate list of its duties. While other
departments are clean-cut, knowing where their work begins and ends, the
Executive Department has no limit.
Anything that does not properly belong anywhere else goes to the
Executive Department. That is why it specialises in solving riddles.
It is in such a department as this that alertness of mind and elasticity
of resource are developed. When war broke out, it had to spend many
sleepless days and nights in what was practically a redisposition of the
force. Hundreds of the force had enlisted, and innumerable new duties
and problems arose. A system of co-ordination between the immense new
bodies of special constables and the regular force had to be evolved.
Depleted divisions had to be readjusted, men selected for particular
work, a system of co-ordination with the Special Constabulary made, and
a hundred re-arrangements made.
So, when a great procession takes place, as at the Coronation
festivities, the most meticulous organisation is necessary. It seems
simple to order so many men to arrange themselves at so many paces apart
over a certain number of miles. But the problem is much more complex.
First it has to be decided where the men are to come from. Then they
have to be disposed strategically so that no man shall be wasted where
he is not needed; there have to be reserves ready at hand for
emergencies; it has to be decided what streets shall be closed and
when, what streets shall remain open; how a vast number of men shall
obtain food and rest, and so on.
All this without offending an eager populace, thronging the streets
night and day, and without exposing outer London to the risk of
marauders when its guardians are enormously diminished in numbers.
We all know that it has been done, and how cheerfully every man in the
force, from constable to Commissioner, give up leisure and comfort to
carry out the demands made upon them.
But of the long, long planning and scheming we know little. The working
out of draft schemes; the hours spent in conference with superintendents
of divisions; the poring over maps and sectional plans--of this
unceasing labour we never heard, although we accepted its result almost
without comment.
Such work as this goes on whenever there is likely to be a gathering
anywhere in London, be it a boat-race or a Suffragette procession.
A point that is always borne in mind, and which is emphasised in the
"Police Code," is that "traffic should never be closed until the last
moment consistent with public safety, and be re-opened as soon as
possible." Something of the same process goes on when there is a
likelihood of riot and disorder, but in some contingencies it is often
necessary to act immediately, as I have already pointed out.
Nevertheless, in a district where it is known that disorder may break
out the police are usually reinforced beforehand.
The department is responsible for the communications of Scotland Yard.
The telegraphs and telephones are continually at work night and day.
With a few exceptions, every station is linked by wire to headquarters.
Tape machines record every outgoing and incoming message so that a
message is clear and unmistakable. One operator at work at Scotland Yard
can send a message simultaneously to every main station. There is a
private telephone system by which stations can talk with stations and
headquarters without delay, and without fear of secrets being "tapped,"
and the public system is also used.
It is not so very long ago that the only wire communication was by an
antiquated A.B.C. instrument which worked laboriously and slowly, and
such a thing as a telephone was undreamed of.
Then it was a matter of much formality and sometimes intolerable
slowness for a provincial force to get in touch on a matter of urgency.
Now it is merely a question of a trunk call.
This naturally brings me to a consideration of Scotland Yard in a new
and little-known light--as a newspaper office. For daily, weekly, and
evening papers are issued from the big, red-brick building. Some of them
are issued by the Criminal Record Office, some by the Executive
Department. It will be convenient, however, to deal with them in a mass.
They are papers sometimes much more interesting and informative than
those to be procured on the bookstalls, but much gold could not buy one
for a private person.
Best known of all, perhaps, is the _Police Gazette_, a four-page sheet
published on Tuesdays and Fridays, and issued broadcast over the
kingdom. Its correspondents are police officials everywhere. It
publishes photographs occasionally, usually official ones taken in
profile and side-face. It deals with what the newspapers call
"sensations" unsensationally, and its editor is free from that bugbear
of most editors--the fear of a libel action.
The Tuesday edition deals almost entirely with deserters from the Navy
and Army, while Friday's issue is concerned with bigger fry--criminals
and crime. It is an interesting paper with an extensive circulation, and
is, perhaps, more carefully read by those into whose hands it falls than
any other publication, however fascinating.
The official title of what may be called the evening paper is _Printed
Informations_. This is a sheet about foolscap size, and its publication
is confined to the Metropolitan Police. It is printed four times a day,
except on Sundays when it is issued twice, and distributed by brisk
little motor cars among the various stations. Some idea of its contents
may be gathered from the headings: "Wanted for Crime," "In Custody for
Crime," "Property Stolen," "Property Lost or Stolen," "Persons or Bodies
Found," "Persons Missing," "Animals Lost or Stolen."
Apart from these papers, which are purely confidential, there are other
papers issued. There is the "Black List" issued to publicans, with
portraits and descriptions of persons to whom it is an offence to supply
liquor, and the "Pawnbrokers' List and Cycle List," which has to be sent
to those persons to whom stolen property might be offered for pledge or
sale. These latter are distributed from each station by hand.
It is at the Statistical Department that many of the riddles are fired.
It has the record of each man in its files, knows his official
character, his medical history, and so on.
Now and again some one wants to know how many street accidents occurred
in London during a particular week. The department produces a carefully
prepared table showing the number and details in each case.
Figures may be unattractive things, yet at any moment the statistics
collected in that quiet, methodical office may have a direct effect on
any one of London's teeming millions.
When the order went forth that all cyclists in London should carry rear
lights it was probably a string of figures put together in that
department which was responsible--figures which showed the number of
accidents that had been caused in the absence of any such precaution.
It keeps track of everything done by the police, individually and
collectively. Ask how many charges were preferred by the police in one
year. You will learn at once that there were 133,000, that 26,000
summonses were issued by police officers, and 63,000 were served on
behalf of private persons.
There are about three hundred mounted police in the force, and these, as
a whole, come under the control of the department, although at ordinary
times they are attached to divisions.
They used to be attached to the outer divisions, but it was found that
they were too far away when an emergency arose, for, after all, the
mounted man is of most use in controlling unruly crowds. So now they are
with the inner divisions, within easy reach of the most crowded
thoroughfares when needed.
All the men in this branch of the service have been thoroughly trained
in horsemanship, and those who have seen them at work on their adroit
horses, keeping back a mass of pushing, struggling people, or
dexterously dispersing a threatening crowd, know their worth as
maintainers of order.
Both the Executive and Statistical Departments are concerned with
reports which are the basis of all discipline and organisation in the
Metropolitan Police. The first--"The Morning Report"--is compiled by the
superintendents of divisions, and passed and commented upon by the Chief
Constables in charge of districts.
This is London's bill of criminal health. It shows what has happened
beyond the ordinary over seven hundred square miles in the preceding
twenty-four hours. A murder, a riot, a robbery, a fire, a street
collision--all things are recorded. Every police station, it should be
said, keeps an "Occurrence Book" and it is from this that the reports
are compiled.
Then there is the "Morning Report of Crime." This is largely the work of
the divisional detective-inspectors. Every crime for which a person can
be indicted is included here, and an elaborate report of the steps that
have been taken. Comments are made upon this by both the Chief Constable
of the district and the Assistant-Commissioner of the
C.I.D.--commendations, reprimands, suggestions.
The third report is the "Morning State," which deals with matters of
internal administration of the force itself--numbers available,
disciplinary matters, affairs of health.
All these reports ultimately reach the departments for record and for
the transmission of orders.