Throughout his term of office Colonel Wilson, like his predecessor, was hampered by lack of men. The force at the date of his assumption of control numbered 1621 and cost annually Rs. 505,135. By 1892 there had been a trivial increase to 1634, while the annual cost had risen to Rs. 513,896. This lack of men was undoubtedly responsible for a decline in the prevention and detection of crime, as for example in 1888, when many cases of house-breaking were undetected, and in 1891, when a serious increase of crime against property was recorded in Mahim and other outlying areas. It also resulted in the force being so seriously overworked that the percentage of men admitted to hospital showed a constant tendency to increase. In his report of 1892 Colonel Wilson informed Government that the burden of duty sustained by the rank and file had become almost intolerable, that the men frequently became prematurely aged from overwork, and that many of the superior officers were ill from exposure and lack of rest. The Bombay Government endorsed the Commissioner’s complaints and admitted the urgent need of increasing the Force.[102] A reorganization of the Force, involving a considerable addition to its numbers, had in fact been under consideration for several years; but owing partly to financial stringency and partly to the delay inseparable from all official transactions, the much-needed relief was not granted until August, 1893,[103] by which date Colonel Wilson had left India and Mr. Vincent had taken his place. The former thus had little or no chance of securing any improvement in the criminal work of the divisional police, and on more than one occasion he found his force singularly inadequate to cope with special and emergent duties.
Like Sir Frank Souter, he also found the lack of police-stations and buildings a serious obstacle to efficient administration. Within a few months of assuming office he reported that the building at Byculla, in which he worked, was very inconvenient and too far distant from the business quarters of the City, and he urged the early construction of the proposed Head Police Office on Hornby road. He reiterated his demands in 1890, 1891, and 1892, stating that no real improvement could be effected until that office and additional quarters for the men were constructed. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, accommodation was provided for two European police officers in the Esplanade Police Court, which was occupied for the first time in 1889; while in the last year of his tenure of office, the divisional police secured some extra accommodation by the full use of the old Maharbaudi building, which had proved inconvenient to the public and was therefore vacated in 1893 by the Second Presidency Magistrate in favour of a Government building in Nesbit Lane, Mazagon.[104] In the latter building also accommodation was provided for two European police officers.
The capabilities of the detective police were tested by several serious crimes. The first, known as the Dadar Triple Murder, occurred in 1888 and aroused considerable public interest. Two Parsi women and a little boy, residing in Lady Jamshedji road, were brutally murdered by a Hindu servant, who was in due course traced, tried and executed. In 1890 the murder of a Hindu youth at Clerk Road was successfully detected, and this was followed in 1891 by the Khambekar Street poisoning case, in which a respectable and wealthy family of Memons were killed by a dissolute son of the house. The police investigation, which ended in the trial and conviction of the murderer, was greatly obstructed by the collateral relatives of the family, who made every effort to render the enquiry abortive and were actively assisted by the whole Memon community.
These crimes, however, were cast into the shade by the famous Rajabai Tower case, which caused great public agitation. On April 25th, 1891, two Parsi girls, Pherozebai and Bacchubai, aged respectively 16 and 20 years, were found lying at the foot of the Rajabai Clock Tower, in circumstances and under conditions which indicated that they had been thrown from above. When discovered, one of the girls was dead, and the other so seriously injured that she expired within a few minutes. Suspicion fell upon a Parsi named Manekji and certain other persons: but the latter were released shortly after arrest, as there was no evidence that they were in any way concerned in the death of the two girls. The Coroner’s jury, after nineteen sittings, gave a verdict that Bacchubai had thrown herself from the tower in consequence of an attempted outrage upon her by some person or persons unknown, and that Manekji was privy to the attempted outrage; and further that Pherozebai had been thrown from the tower by Manekji, in order to prevent her giving information of the attempt to outrage herself and her friend. Manekji was tried by the High Court on a charge of murder and was acquitted. Various rumours were afloat as to the identity of the chief actors in the crime, among those suspected being a young Muhammadan belonging to a leading Bombay family. No further clue was ever obtained, and to this day the true facts are shrouded in mystery.
The police dealt successfully with an important case of forgery, in which counterfeit stamps of the value of one rupee were very cleverly forged by a man who had previously served in the Trigonometrical Survey Department of the Government of India and was afterwards proved to have belonged to a gang of expert forgers in Poona. The collapse of a newly-built house prompted Superintendent Brewin to make a lengthy and careful inquiry into all the details of construction, which ended successfully in the prosecution and punishment of the two jerry-builders who erected it. House-collapses are not unknown in Bombay, particularly during the monsoon, when the weight of the wet tiles causes the posts of wooden-frame dwellings to give way; but so far as is known, the case quoted is the only instance on record of a builder being prosecuted and punished under the criminal law for causing loss of life by careless or defective construction. The Sirdar Abdul Ali was equally successful in unravelling an important case of illicit traffic in arms and ammunition carried on by a gang of Pathans with certain transfrontier outlaws—a matter in which the Government of India at that date (1888) took considerable interest.
The offence of gambling in various forms occupied the attention of the police to a greater degree than before, and the prevalence of rain-gambling led to a test prosecution in the magisterial courts. This form of wagering used to take place during the monsoon at Paidhoni, where a house would be rented at a high price for the four months of the rains by a group of Indian capitalists. There were two forms of Barsat ka satta or rain-gambling, known familiarly as Calcutta mori and Lakdi satta. In the former case wagers were laid as to whether the rain would percolate in a fixed time through a specially prepared box filled with sand, the bankers settling the rates or odds by the appearance and direction of the clouds. In the latter case, winnings or losses depended on whether the rainfall during a fixed period of time was sufficient to fill the gutter of a roof and overflow. The gambling took place usually between 6 a.m. and 12 noon, and again between 6 p.m. and midnight, the rates varying according to the appearance of the sky and the time left before the period open for the booking of bets expired. The practice, which was very popular, was responsible for so much loss that in 1888 two of the principal promoters of rain-gambling were prosecuted by the order of Government. The Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. Cooper, who tried the case, decided that rain-gambling was not an offence under the Gambling Act, as then existing, and his decision was upheld on appeal by the High Court. Consequently Colonel Wilson applied for the necessary amendment of the Bombay Gambling Act, and this was in due course effected by the Legislature. Since that date rain-gambling has been unknown in Bombay.
In 1890 and 1891 the police made continual raids on gambling-houses, and in 1893 were obliged to adopt special measures against a form of bagatelle, known as Eki beki, which had a wide vogue in the City. The Public Prosecutor himself visited one of the more notorious resorts in order to acquaint himself thoroughly with the system, which in consequence of continuous action by the police was for the time being practically stamped out of existence. Bombay, however, has always been addicted to gambling, whether it be in the form of the well-known teji-mundi contracts, the ank satta or opium-gambling, or the ordinary gambling with dice and cards: and notwithstanding that the police at intervals pay special attention to the vice and secure some improvement, the evil reappears and rapidly increases, directly vigilance is relaxed. The promoters of gambling are adepts in the art of misleading the authorities: they rarely use the same room on two successive occasions; they have elaborated a vocabulary of warning-calls; and they employ spies and watchmen to keep them posted in all the movements of the police. Some of the latter have probably at times accepted hush-money and presents to turn a blind eye on the gamblers’ movements: for otherwise it is difficult to understand why men, who are widely known to have been organizing gambling reunions for years, should have successfully evaded the law and in some cases have accumulated a considerable fortune in the process.
Two matters of a novel character engaged the attention of the divisional police during Colonel Wilson’s régime. The first was a series of balloon ascents, which drew immense crowds of spectators. The earliest ascents were performed in the opening months of 1889 from the grounds of old Government House, Parel, by a Mr. Spencer, who successfully descended with a parachute. He was followed in 1891 by Mr. and Mrs. Van Tassell, who, except on one occasion when the lady’s parachute did not open immediately, carried out their performances without a hitch. This form of public amusement, however, came to a sudden and unhappy conclusion on December 10th, 1891, when Lieutenant Mansfield, R. N., essayed an ascent. When he had reached a height of about 1000 feet, the balloon suddenly burst, and he fell headlong to earth and was killed in full view of a large crowd of spectators. Since that date and up to the outbreak of the War in 1914, the only aerial spectacle offered to the Bombay public was a much-advertised aeroplane flight from the Oval. This venture was a fiasco. The aeroplane would only rise a few feet from the ground, and at that elevation collided violently with the iron railing of the B. B. and C. I. railway and was wrecked.
The second event, which evoked much comment, was a strike by the employés of eleven cotton-spinning mills as a protest against a reduction in wages. So far as can be gathered from official records, this was the first strike of any magnitude that occurred in the industrial area, and seems to have been the earliest effort of the labour-population to test their powers of combination. The police had to be concentrated in the affected area, in order to guard mill-property and quell possible disorder: but the mill-workers at this date were quite unorganized and no disturbance occurred. The action of these mill-hands, however, carried the germ of the disorders which have since caused periodical damage to the industry and have interfered frequently with the normal duties of the police force.
It is convenient at this point to refer to the problem of European prostitution, which has repeatedly formed the subject of comment in more recent years. Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the foreign prostitute from eastern Europe was practically unknown in Bombay, and such immorality as existed was confined to women of Eurasian or Indian parentage. Once, however, the large European shipping-companies had established regular steamer-communication with India, and Port Said had become a port of call and an asylum for the riff-raff of Europe, the Jew procurer and “white-slave” trafficker gradually included India within the orbit of a trade, which was characterized by a fairly regular demand and by large and easily earned profits. The Foreigners Act III of 1864, under the provisions of which the Bombay Police arrange for the deportation of foreign pimps, as well as of prostitutes whose conduct demands their expulsion, was apparently not used frequently before the last decade of the nineteenth century, except against troublesome Pathans and Arabs, belonging respectively to the transfrontier region or to the territory of Indian Princes. But the immigration of foreign women must have begun tentatively during the régime of Sir Frank Souter and continued to expand under the auspices of the international procurer, until by the last years of the nineteenth century these unfortunates had secured a strong foothold in certain houses situated in Tardeo, Grant road and other streets of the Byculla ward.