As they progress they are taken to the Black Museum at Scotland Yard, where they are given a practical demonstration of the kind of tools criminals use—from scientific and complicated oxygen and acetylene apparatus, used to break into safes, to the simple but efficacious walking-stick to which may be attached a bird-limed piece of wood for lifting coins off a shelf behind a shop or public-house counter.
So for eight weeks the candidate is taught the manner of work he will have to perform. He is given every opportunity to prove himself capable, but at any time he may be courteously told that he is not fitted for the work; 15 or 20 per cent. of the candidates are rejected for one reason or another before their term is over.
But, thorough as the training is, no constable is considered fully qualified when he is drafted from Peel House to a division. Tuition, both theoretical and practical, still goes on while he is a unit in the station. He goes out with an older man to see how things are done, to learn his "beat" or "patrol." There is a class-room at the big police stations where his education is carried on. For a period too, he must attend an L.C.C. evening school. And at last he becomes a unit ranked efficient in the critical and criticised blue-coated army of which he is a member.[3]
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Peel House during the war has been temporarily converted into a club for overseas soldiers.