CHAPTER X.
In a Police Station.
Ten o'clock at night, and the West End.
In a back street a lonely blue lamp twinkled, a symbol of law and order placed high above the door of the police station. The street itself was appallingly quiet and gloomy. Yet a few hundred yards away the radiantly lighted main thoroughfares seethed with thousands of London's pleasure seekers, and an incessant stream of cabs and motor cars flowed to and from restaurants and theatres.
Here were men and women in search of pleasure and excitement, and other men and women on the alert for opportunities of roguery that might present themselves amid the stir of gaiety. There were the "sad, gay girls" sitting in the night cafés and strolling the streets. Pickpockets, beggars, and blackmailers were mingled with the crowds. A little later and unwise diners would begin to come unsteadily into the streets.
The West End, as the police know, is always pregnant with possibilities. And things usually happen after the time I have sketched. A fight, a robbery, even a murder is always a contingency.
There is a class of men and women who frequent the neighbourhood among whom passions run high. From a police point of view, it is a difficult place to handle—a district even more difficult than the East End, for here the iron hand must be concealed in the velvet glove. Every officer, from constable to inspector, must be possessed of infinite tact and firmness. Every man on patrol, point, or beat has usually at least one delicate decision to make in a night.
Yet the lonely blue lamp shines serenely, and serenely the constable on reserve duty at the door stands at ease. Within, under the shaded electric lights, men are at work as quietly and methodically as though they did not hold the responsibility for the safety of one of the richest quarters of the richest city in the world in their hands for eight hours at least. During that time, as a rule, it is the busiest police station in London.
For all that it has special problems to deal with, this station is typical in procedure, discipline, and other essentials to nearly two hundred others scattered over London. There can be no uniformity in the classes with which the Metropolitan Police has to deal.
For the convenience of visitors and inquirers, a couple of waiting rooms are provided, a first and second class, so that the respectable citizen does not find himself in the unpleasant company of a "tough," who may be a pickpocket come to enquire about a friend's welfare, or a not too cleanly ticket-of-leave man.
Near by is the inspector's room, a lofty, well-lighted chamber furnished with high desks, tables, and a variety of official books and papers. Everyone is quietly busy here, for there are always reports and records to be made of everything that occurs, of callers, complaints, lost property, inquirers, charges, particulars of persons reported for summonses.
Clerks in police officers' uniform bustle to and fro. In an adjoining room there are telegraphists and telephone operators receiving and dispatching messages.
There are two telephones—one attached to the ordinary public system, the other to the private system of the Metropolitan Police. The telegraphs are a couple of tape machines—one for receiving, the other for dispatching. Every message is automatically recorded.
A small, quiet room, one side occupied by a couch, and all sorts of medical and surgical appliances at hand—this is the divisional surgeon's room. He lives close by and can be on the spot in three minutes, if necessary, but on busy nights he is at the station.
On the first and second floors are the offices of the superintendent (for this is the chief station of the division) and the C.I.D. The detective force is a strong one, composed of men, specially picked—men of good appearance and address, who have never-ending work in the district.
Below the ground floor there are open pillared halls with asphalted floors where the men assemble for parade, and, before they are marched off under the command of their section-sergeants, have orders and information read to them. There is a drying-room through which a current of hot air continually passes, where an officer may place his sodden clothes after a wet day or night in the street, and a room where the instruction of young constables is continued under the supervision of a sergeant after they have been drafted from Peel House.
The personnel of the station is interesting. Apart from the superintendent and the chief-inspector, who are in control of the whole division, it is in charge of a sub-divisional inspector, with a dozen or more other inspectors under him and over three hundred sergeants and constables.
The bulk of the men are single—it is an expensive district for married men to find quarters in—and live, not at the station itself, but at a couple of section-houses some little distance away. There they have cubicles, where they sleep, big reception rooms, sitting-rooms, dining-rooms, a canteen, and all the comforts of a club.
With these men a complex game of chess has to be played, varying according to the ever-changing conditions of the West End, where one day may see a Suffragette window-smashing campaign, and the next a royal procession, and the following a riot in a park. To deal with these occasions a number of depots are available—private houses, garages, and other places where bodies of police may remain out of sight, but instantly available.
There have been many fantastic stories told, to which the public lend a sometimes too ready ear, of what occurs in police stations. Always one can find some person to assert positively that the police as a body are bribed by bookmakers or prostitutes—that, in fact, there exists a practical blackmail. These things were investigated and disproved at a Royal Commission some years ago. They are pure silliness.
Take the case of the police station with which I am dealing, situated where it might be supposed there were ample chances of such a thing. Such a suspicion involves a gigantic conspiracy among more than 300 men. And by the Metropolitan Police system every man promoted is transferred to another division, so that the rank and file would have to induce a continually changing series of strangers to connive at their malpractices. It is on the face of it absurd.
I recall a little story which shows how keen an eye the public has for the probity of the police. A famous detective had occasion to question a veteran constable, and took him into a tea-shop to do so. At the close of the conversation he handed the officer a half-crown. A day or two later a highly respectable country vicar wrote to Scotland Yard. He had been having a cup of tea at a certain tea-shop. There he had seen a constable, Mr. So-and-So, in talk with a suspicious character, and had seen money pass. Of course, there was an investigation, and it was a long time before the "suspicious character"—who is one of the best-dressed men at Scotland Yard—heard the last of it.
Let us see the method of "taking a charge." Prisoners, as they are brought in, are placed in one of a couple of large rooms, with a low partition, near the corridor, over which it is impossible for anyone to see them. There they are kept for a while until the inspector is ready to take the charge. Presently they are ushered into the charge-room, a big apartment with a tall desk in the centre, and a substantial steel structure a few paces away—the dock. But the dock is not used nowadays except when a person is violent.
The first charge is that of begging, the accused being a boy who looks 17, but says he is 13. The policeman who arrested him stands by his side, and a reserve man stands at attention a little distance away. The boy is quite at ease. There is little of the terror of the law here. He admits that he was begging, his father is on strike, and he hadn't done well at selling papers.
"Don't be frightened, my lad," says the inspector kindly. "What's your name? Where do you live?"
The boy hesitates, but at last gives an address.
"He gave me a different address, Sir," says the constable, and the boy hurriedly protests that he has told the truth now.
"H'm," comments the inspector calmly. "Look here, sonny, you don't want to stay here all night. You'll have to, you know, if we can't find your father. Tell us the truth."
The facts elicited, the boy is searched, the main contents of his pocket are a handful of coppers and a cigarette end.
The inspector picks up the latter. "Do you know it's against the law for a boy of 13 to have cigarettes? All right. Put him in the detention-room until his father comes. You'll be charged with begging, my boy."
In an hour the youth is free, his father having entered into recognisances for his due appearance at the police court.
It should be explained that no person is detained at the police station, except on a serious charge, who can prove his identity. Often no further inquiry is necessary than reference to a directory.
The detention-room, too, which is attached to every police station is intended to spare a respectable person the ignominy of the cells. It is a comfortably furnished room, with tables and chairs, and sometimes with a few papers and magazines.
The charges begin to multiply towards midnight. There are several beggars, one of whom is a dirty, round-shouldered old ragamuffin with a long, matted beard. He cringes in front of the inspector's desk, and suddenly his hand flickers upwards with a deft movement. The next instant he is looking as innocent as though butter would not melt in his mouth.
There is a sharp "Put that down" from the reserve man, and it is discovered that a cigarette end taken from the boy has found its way to his pocket. He curses the keen-eyed officer as he is led away to the cells.
Then there are the "drunks," some quiet, some riotous, some still in a torpor, others defiantly asserting that they are perfectly sober. Some of these latter are seen by the police-divisional-surgeon, who by now is in the station. The Inspector sifts each case thoroughly, making sure that there is a prima facie case before allowing the charge to proceed. It is at his discretion to grant or refuse bail.
It is after one o'clock. A girl is brought in by a constable, pale and sullen, and with dark eyes a little apprehensive, a little triumphant. The officer handles a man's jacket carefully. The whole of one sleeve and one side of the coat is wringing wet—but it is with blood, not with water. It is a more serious case this—one of attempted murder, which later developed into one of murder. There was an altercation with a man, a lover who had abandoned her, and she stabbed him with a pocket knife, and waited without attempting to escape. An unsavoury, sordid drama, but it is treated in the same cool, business-like way as the other trivial charges.
"I only meant to hurt him," says the girl, and she is led away by the matron. I may as well finish the story here. The man she had stabbed died in hospital, and she was charged with murder. Eventually she was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment.
In the intervals of taking charges, there are other things to be done. There is a woman half hysterical because her daughter is missing. A couple of people walk in to hand over a gold match box and a purse found in the streets. These things have to be entered in official documents for prompt communication to headquarters.
The tape machine rattles out a report of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey, and fresh orders relative to the passage of cattle through London. This will have to be made known to the reliefs when they go out.
A constable hurries in with the report that a window in a certain big business firm's premises is open. A man has been left to guard it.
The inspector is a little impatient. "They're always leaving windows open," he says, and gives a few instructions. Half a dozen men are sent out to surround the place, while a search is made for possible burglars. Of course, there are none. The window has been left open by a careless clerk, which was what the police knew all along, but they could take no risks.
Several of the cells are occupied now. There are about a dozen of them all told. You pass through a locked door from the charge-room into a wide, stone-flagged corridor, lined on each side with massive doors. Swing back one of these doors, and you will enter a high pitched room with a barred window at the farther end, and a broad plank running down one side, the full length of the cell. This serves either as a seat or a bed. Washable mattresses and pillows are served out at night-time, and I can imagine that, if lonely, the cells are not uncomfortable. The doors lock automatically as they are swung to. There is an electric bell in each cell which communicates directly with the inspector's room. Thus the senior officers are made responsible for sending to answer a prisoner's ring.
Besides these cells there are a couple of large apartments—technically also cells—where a large number of prisoners may be kept together. They are often useful when suffrage demonstrators are on the warpath, or when, say, a gambling raid has taken place. These, like the other cells, have what their most frequent occupants call "Judas holes"—a small trapdoor which can be let down from outside to see that all is well within.
The matron's room also opens into the corridor—a pleasant little chamber where often women prisoners who cannot be allowed bail, but whom it is felt should not be placed in a cell, are allowed to sit.
I have said that all the prisoners are searched. This is done thoroughly with a twofold object—to ensure that no prisoner has means of doing himself bodily harm, and to discover whether he carries on him anything bearing on the charge, as, for instance, in a case of picking pockets. Everything discovered has to be entered with particularity; but although such things as matches or a knife might be taken from a man, he would usually be left with his own personal property, watch, keys, pocket-book, money, and similar things.
Every person having business at a police station is treated with courtesy, whether prisoner or prosecutor. That is one of the rigid rules of the service which is rarely neglected. Even the man on duty at the door is not allowed to ask a caller his business without permission. That is for a senior officer.
I was much struck by the fair and impartial manner in which the inspector elicited the facts of a case before accepting a charge. Always polite, with no leaning to one side or the other, he endeavoured by careful questioning to elicit whether an arrest had been made on reasonable grounds. There was no bullying, no taking it for granted, except in an obvious case of drunkenness, that a charge was proved.
I have, perhaps, not made clear the distinction between reserve men at a station and reserve men in a division. The latter do ordinary duties, and are the first called upon in the event of emergencies anywhere in London. They receive a small sum in addition to their ordinary pay. The former are men who, instead of doing eight hours' duty in the street, do it at the station itself, and are available for any sudden contingency that may present itself within the subdivision.
The personnel of the London police is, as I have indicated, selected and tested under the most rigorous conditions. No less relentless in the search for efficiency are the promotion conditions. The Commissioner is an absolute autocrat so far as promotion is concerned, though, in practice, he usually acts upon the recommendation of the superintendents.
A constable, before he is promoted, must serve at least five years—in practice, the average is eight years—and must then pass two examinations. One of these is set by the Civil Service Commissioners to test his education, the other is an examination in police duty before a board of high officials. Should he be approved then for promotion he is immediately transferred to another division. These examinations are carried out at every step in promotion. In the words of a keen American observer:
"That such a system is successful in bringing to the front the best men available, that it is carried through without favouritism or political considerations, that, in its fairness and justice, it has the confidence of the uniformed force is a splendid commentary not only on the integrity of the Commissioner and his administrative assistants but on the stability and sound traditions of the entire department."