Curiosities of Civilization

by Andrew Wynter

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 manœuvre 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.

Between the detective and the thief there is no ill blood: when they meet they give an odd wink of recognition to each other—the thief smiling, as much as to say, “I am quite safe, you know;” and the detective replying with a look, of which the interpretation is, “We shall be better acquainted by-and-by.” They both feel, in short, that they are using their wits to get their living, and there is a sort of tacit understanding between them that each is entitled to play his game as well as he can.