to the river and dockyard police. I have already described on earlier pages[14] the systematic depredations that went on amid the Thames shipping in earlier days. This called imperatively for reform, and a marine police was established to watch over our ships and cargoes and guard the wharves and quays. Regular boat patrols were always on the move about the river, and the police, who carried arms, had considerable powers. This Thames branch was not immediately taken over by Peel’s new police, but it is now part and parcel of the Metropolitan force, and a very perfect system obtains. The river police has its headquarters in the well-known floating station at Waterloo Bridge, formerly a steamboat pier, with a cutter at Erith, and it also has the services of several small steam launches for rapid transit up and down the river. There is very little crime upon the great waterway, thanks to the vigilance of the Thames police, who also do good work in preventing suicides, while they have many opportunities of calling attention to possible foul play by their recovery of bodies floating on the stream.
What is true of the Metropolitan force applies equally to the City Police. The City forms an imperium in imperio, one square mile of absolutely independent territory interpolated in the very heart and centre of London. The City Police was formed at the same time as the Metropolitan, but the great municipality claimed the right to manage its own police affairs, declining Government subsidies as resolutely as it resisted Government control. The House of Commons in 1839 frankly acknowledged that the City was justified in its pretensions, and that it was certain to maintain a good and efficient police force. That anticipation has been fully borne out, and the City Police is admitted on all hands to be a first-class force, well organised and most effective, filled with fine men who reach a high standard both of intelligence and of physique. It has lighter duties by night, when the City empties like a church after service, but during the day it has vast cares and responsibilities, the duty of regulating the congested street traffic in the narrow City thoroughfares being perhaps the most onerous. Like their comrades beyond the boundary, the City police are largely employed by private individuals; banks, exchanges, public offices, and so forth, gladly put themselves under official protection. It should have been mentioned, when dealing with the Metropolitan Police, that some 1,800 officers of all ranks, from superintendents to private constables, are regularly engaged in a variety of posts outside ordinary police duty. Every great department of State is guarded by them; the Sovereign’s sacred person, the princes of the blood, the royal palaces, all public buildings, museums and collections, many of the parks and public gardens, the powder factories, are among the institutions confided to their care. Going farther afield, it is interesting to note that great tradesmen, great jewellers, great pickle-makers, great drapers, great card-makers, the co-operative stores, great fruit-growing estates, the public markets—all these share police services with Coutts’ and Drummond’s Banks, Holland House, Roehampton House, and so on. The whole of our dockyards are under police surveillance; so are the Albert Hall, Brompton Cemetery, and many other institutions.
It is impossible to leave this subject without adverting to the excellent provincial police now invariably established in the great cities and wide country districts, who, especially as regards the former, have an organisation and duties almost identical with those already detailed. The police forces of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the rest yield nothing in demeanour, devotion, and daring to their colleagues of the Metropolis. In the counties, where large areas often have to be covered, great responsibility must be devolved upon officers of inferior rank, and it is not abused. These sergeants or inspectors, with their half-dozen men, are so many links in a long-drawn chain. Much depends upon them, their energy and endurance. They, too, have to prevent crime by their constant vigilance on the high roads, and by keeping close watch on all suspicious persons. For the same reason special qualities are needed in the county chief constable and his deputy; the task of superintending their posts at wide distances apart, and controlling the movements of tramps and bad characters through their district, calls for the exercise of peculiar qualities, the power of command, of rapid transfer from place to place, of keen insight into character, of promptitude and decision—qualities that are most often found in military officers, who are, in fact, generally preferred for these appointments.
CHAPTER VIII.
MODERN POLICE (continued): PARIS.
The Spy System under the Second Empire—The Manufacture of Dossiers—M. Andrieux receives his own on being appointed Prefect—The Clerical Police of Paris—The Sergents de Ville—The Six Central Brigades—The Cabmen of Paris, and how they are kept in Order—Stories of Honest and of Dishonest Cabmen—Detectives and Spies—Newspaper Attacks upon the Police—Their General Character.
SOME account of the police arrangements in two or three other capitals, and also in India, may now be given by way of contrast and comparison. The police of Paris has already been dealt with in its early beginnings, and under the First Empire. After the Bourbon Restoration, and during the days of the revived monarchy, the least valuable feature of the French police had the chief prominence. Every effort was made, by means of the police, to check opposition to the reigning power, and suppress political independence. But it was at this period that the detection of crime was undertaken for the first time as a distinct branch of police business, and it will be seen in a later chapter how Vidocq did great things, although often by dishonest agents and unworthy means. In the Second Empire the secret police over-rode everything; Napoleon III. had been a conspirator in his time, and he had an army of private spies in addition to the police of the Château, and these spies watched the regular police at a cost of some fourteen millions of francs. At the fall of the Second Empire there were half a dozen different secret police services in Paris. There was the Emperor’s, already mentioned; the Empress had hers; M. Rouher, the Prime Minister, and M. Piétri, the Prefect, each had a private force, so had other great officials. Most of these agents were unknown to each other as such, and so extensive was the system of espionage that one-half of Paris was at that time said to be employed in watching the other half. This system produced the dossiers, the small portfolios or covers, one of which appertained to each individual, high or low,
