In no country is it so essential that the body, in the case of a supposed crime, should be not only produced, but identified, as in India. An Englishman who was ascending the Hooghly nearly suffered the extreme penalty of the law through ignorance of this axiom. He had left his ship at Diamond harbour and hired a native boat to take him on to Calcutta. The boatmen greatly exasperated him by their laziness, and he applied his stick to them so vigorously that three jumped overboard. Their comrades declared that they were drowned, and burst into loud lamentations. On reaching shore they charged him with murder. He was arrested forthwith, and committed to gaol. Ere long he was duly arraigned, and on the oath of the boatmen who had been eye-witnesses of his offence he was convicted without the slightest hesitation. While he lay in gaol, however, under sentence of death, he was visited by a native, who promised him that on the payment of a substantial sum the drowned boatmen should be brought to life. The money was gladly paid, and next day the charge of murder entirely broke down by the reappearance of the missing men. It seemed that they were expert divers, and having gone at once to the bottom they rose again at a considerable distance from the boat, and swam ashore. Their comrades were fully aware of the fact, and the conspiracy was formed so that the English stranger, when in peril of his life, might be induced to pay a large ransom to escape. It is clear from such cases as these that the police of India have to be always on their guard against being led into traps.
Another trick which the police have to guard against is the simulation of death by suicide. This is a very ancient imposture. Captain Bacon, in his “First Impressions in Hindustan,” describes how he saw a corpse bearing three wounds on the chest and many marks of violence brought to a magistrate’s house, with the idea of fixing an accusation of murder on a certain man. The magistrate, having his doubts, was about to examine the body, when he was implored by those who carried it not to pollute it by touch before the rites of sepulture had been performed. He did no more, therefore, than thrust the sharp end of his billiard cue once or twice into the side with such force that the point of the cue penetrated between the ribs. Upon this the muscles of the supposed corpse quivered, and there was a barely perceptible movement of the head. The natives around were now told that life could not be yet extinct, but they persisted in declaring that the man had been dead since cock-crow. Whereupon, a kettle of hot water was produced and a small stream poured upon the foot of the corpse, which there and then jumped up from the litter and ran away at full speed! The same test was applied by a young officer when the body of a native, who was supposed to have been murdered by sepoys, was brought to his tent. There was no more evidence than the existence of the corpse, but the officer was at breakfast, and had the kettle handy. At the first touch of the scalding fluid “the murdered remains” started up and scampered away. Boiling water, by the way, is no doubt a generally satisfactory test of whether life is actually extinct. But there is a better, as practised by a French doctor in a Lyons hospital. He applied the flame of a candle for some seconds to one digit of the hand or foot. A vesicle formed, as it will invariably; if this vesicle contains serous fluid, there is life; if vapour only, death has certainly supervened.
On the whole, the modern Indian police system may be said to operate well. The police have numerous duties over and above those of the prevention and detection of crime. A Government so paternal as that of India finds the machinery of the police exceedingly useful in keeping in touch with the great masses of the population. The constable is the agent through whom the Government issues its orders or conveys its wishes. If the people are wanted in any large numbers, such as for the identification of bodies found, and if foul play is suspected, it is the police who beat the drum and call them in. When supplies are needed, such as carts, camels, bullocks, or forage, for any military expedition, it is the police who work upon the men of the villages and gather in what is required. When a high functionary had discovered a cure for snake bites, it was the police who were entrusted with its distribution through the districts most troubled with poisonous reptiles. The particular panacea was liquid ammonia, which had to be applied at once and in a particular way. It was not only necessary, therefore, to issue supplies of the useful drug, but all the headmen of villages had to be taught how to use it; this was the duty of the police. Again, when the Government once seriously attempted to exterminate snakes, and offered a reward for every dead reptile brought in, the machinery of the police was at once set in motion to encourage natives to hunt up and kill the snakes, and afterwards to distribute the rewards. When the plague of locusts overran the length and breadth of the land, the police were sent out to organise beaters and instruct the villagers how to destroy the terrible pest. Another plague, that of rats, the jerboa rat, which travels like a kangaroo by leaps and bounds and eats up everything it meets, was to be grappled with by the police, and though they do not seem to have been very effective in destroying the pest, it became their business to pay out the rewards for all the vermin killed. An interesting detail in Government methods may be mentioned in this connection. The rats, when destroyed, were buried or burnt, but the tails were first cut off and tied up into neat little bundles like radishes, which were produced as vouchers for the numbers destroyed. A police official records that the travelling police superintendents were called upon to make entries in their diaries such as: “Visited Bangalpore, counted 10,000 rats’ tails, paid the reward, burnt the tails.”
The police have also rendered very valuable services during famines, when their labours increase ten-and twenty-fold. Not only does crime multiply in these dread seasons, but the force is actively employed in helping to establish relief camps, in hunting up and bringing in the starving population, in passing on supplies of grain from the railway stations to the out-districts, and so forth.
Yet with all this the Indian native policeman is but indifferently paid, much less than a soldier or other subordinate members of the public departments. Ordinary labour even is better paid. The horsekeeper, the gardener, the cowman is better off, even the coolie despises the pittance of the policeman, who has no advantages but those of a remote pension and the respect he inspires as a man clothed with a little authority.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DETECTIVE, AND WHAT HE HAS DONE.
The Detective in Fiction and in Fact—Early Detection—Case of Lady Ivy—Thomas Chandler—Mackoull, and how he was run down by a Scots Solicitor—Vidocq: his Early Life, Police Services, and End—French Detectives generally—Amicable Relations between French and English Detectives.
THE detective, both professional and amateur, since Edgar Allan Poe invented Dupin, has been a prominent personage in fiction and on the stage. He has been made the central figure of innumerable novels and plays, the hero, the pivot on which the plot turns. Readers ever find him a favourite, whether he is called Hawkshaw or Captain Redwood, Grice or Stanhope, Van Vernet or Père Tabaret, Sherlock Holmes or Monsieur Lecocq. But imagination, however fertile, cannot outdo the reality, and it is with the detective in the flesh that I propose to deal. I propose to take him in the different stages of his evolution—from the thief reformed and become a thief-taker, down to the present honourable officer, the guardian of our lives and property, the law’s chief weapon and principal vindicator.