Most of the crime in respect of property was, as usual, committed by Mhar and Mang robbers from the Deccan, by the Wagris or gipsy tribes, by professional thieves and beggars from Kathiawar, and by north-country Hindus and Pathans. Bombay has a large floating population of these wanderers, who visit the city for criminal purposes, and, having attained their object, travel to other parts of India, where all trace of them is frequently lost. Among cases of special importance were the prosecutions of two licensed dealers in arms and ammunition in 1899, a “golden gang” or swindling case in which a respectable Indian firm was cheated of Rs. 63,000, and which was successfully investigated by Inspector (afterwards Superintendent) Sloane, and the conviction for sedition of the editor of a vernacular newspaper, the Gurakhi, which, as an organ of the revolutionary party in Western India, had indulged in violent anti-British propaganda. The effect of plague and famine conditions upon the activities of the police was apparent in the returns of recovery of stolen property; and their normal duty of watch and ward suffered also to some extent from the imposition of such emergent tasks as the registration, accommodation, feeding and repatriation of a large number of war-refugees who arrived from the Transvaal in 1899. The restrictions upon the Haj traffic continued; but this did not absolve the police from the task of “shepherding” large numbers of returning pilgrims—the backwash of former pilgrimages—or of repatriating hundreds of poor and illiterate Moslems, who, knowing nothing of the stoppage of the traffic, arrived every year in Bombay in the hope of being allowed to embark for Jeddah.
The total strength of the police-force remained unaltered during Mr. Kennedy’s term of office. Including the constables attached to the Veterinary Department, the force numbered 2118. The annual cost, however, had increased in 1900 to Rs. 792,959, in consequence of extra allowances and contingencies. These charges were met partly from imperial, partly from provincial, and partly from municipal and other revenues. The municipal contribution was recovered under section 62 of Bombay Act III of 1888, and continued to be so till 1907, when under the provisions of Bombay Act III of that year the Government became responsible for the whole cost of the force. Besides the police-force proper, the Commissioner recruited and controlled a force of 1048 Ramoshis or night-watchmen, whose wages, as previously mentioned, were recovered from the individuals and firms employing their services. The Ramoshis as a class were not very satisfactory; and though nominally under the supervision of the police-officers of the division or section in which their post lay, there was really no one to see whether they kept awake at night and really did their duty. Had there been any proper and comprehensive beat-system for the divisional constabulary, such as there is in London, the existence of a Ramoshi force would have been quite unnecessary: but the total number of police-constables was never sufficient to admit of the introduction of such a system.
For administrative purposes, Bombay was composed in 1899 of the eleven police divisions mentioned below, which were sub-divided into sections or areas controlled by a “police-station”. The staff of a station comprised usually an European inspector and sub-inspector and a number of subordinate native officers (jemadar, havildar, naik) and constables.
| Division | Sections |
|---|---|
| A | Fort |
| B | Umarkhadi, Market, Mandvi |
| C | Bhuleshwar, Nal Bazar, Dhobi Talao |
| D | Girgaum, Khetwadi, Mahalakshmi and Walkeshwar |
| E | Byculla, Mazagon, Kamathipura |
| F | Dadar, Sewri, Matunga, Parel |
| G | Worli, Mahim |
| H and I | Harbour and Docks |
| K | Detective Branch |
| L | Reserve (Armed and unarmed) |
Housing-accommodation was provided for only about one-tenth of the force. The Head Police Office at Crawford Market, which Colonel Wilson had so often asked for, was completed and occupied in 1899, and lines for 120 men had been built on the western boundary of the parade-ground adjacent to the Gokuldas Tejpal hospital. Stabling for twenty horses of the mounted police was also built, the main body of the mounted police being accommodated in the old Government House Bodyguard lines at Byculla. With the exception of the 200 men or so, who occupied the old police-lines in Byculla and the newly-erected quarters in the compound of the Head Police Office, the whole force was living in hired rooms of an undesirable and insanitary type in various parts of the city. The monthly house-allowance paid to constables barely sufficed to pay the rents of their squalid rooms, while in the case of the European officers it was quite insufficient to secure proper accommodation. The difficulty was acute in the A. division (Fort and Colaba), where suitable residential accommodation was extremely limited and fetched a high rent. To anyone, like the author of this book, who has seen the very unsuitable quarters in which most of the European and Indian police were obliged to reside at the beginning of the present century, it will always be a matter of surprise that the force accomplished as much as it did and that the death-roll among both Europeans and Indians was not far heavier. Even the comparatively modern buildings at Bazar Gate and Paidhoni left much to be desired in the way of reasonable space and ordinary comfort. The occupants of the Paidhoni station, which mounts guard over a crowded lower-class neighbourhood, possessed the additional disadvantage of an atmosphere heavy with the smells and miasmata of an Eastern city. It says much for the dura ilia of the British soldiers recruited for the Bombay police force that so many of them were able to live and carry on their work in these conditions without a permanent loss of health.
The reiterated complaints of successive Commissioners had impressed upon the Bombay Government the need for the proper housing of the force. But their wishes were dependent upon the state of the provincial exchequer, which after several years of plague and a series of disastrous famines was quite unable to provide money for police-accommodation schemes. A solution of the difficulty was, however, secured by the passing of Act IV of 1898 (City Improvement Trust Act), under the provisions of which the newly-constituted Trust could be called upon by the Government to build quarters and barracks for the police in various parts of the Island. By 1901 the Government had already formulated their first demands, and the engineers of the Trust were preparing plans and schemes for police stations, quarters and lines, in Colaba, Princess Street (a new street-scheme of the Trust), Nagpada and Agripada and in other crowded localities. These buildings took many years to complete, and some of them in the northern suburbs had not been commenced in 1916. But the first step towards a comprehensive solution of the grave problem of police-accommodation was taken during Mr. Kennedy’s régime, when the City Improvement Trust assumed the task which the Government with the best will in the world, found themselves quite unable to fulfil.
Though his period of office was not long, Mr. Kennedy left his mark upon the police administration, and there are persons still alive who remember the energy and activity with which he tackled some of the evils of urban life. He was a sworn foe of gambling in any form, and had barely gripped the reins of office ere he commenced an offensive against the bagatelle-players, the cardsharpers and the dice-gamblers of the lower quarters. The divisional police learned to their cost that it did not pay to wink at gaming, and that the Commissioner, working through private agents of his own, possessed an uncomfortably accurate knowledge of what was going on in various quarters of the city. The performances of one of his chief informers are still within the recollection of the oldest members of the force and of some of the superannuated gamblers of the old B. and C. divisions. The immediate result of Mr. Kennedy’s action was a large increase of cases under the Gambling Act, sixty prosecutions being launched in the year 1900 alone. The effect of these prosecutions, however, was minimised by the Magistrates’ practice of imposing merely a fine on conviction. Such fines acted as very little deterrent to men who dealt week by week with comparatively large sums of money. In the case of the most inveterate gamblers a short term of imprisonment would probably have had a more salutary effect.
Another problem, which occupied Mr. Kennedy’s attention, was that of the beggars who infest Bombay. They comprised not only the thousands of able-bodied religious mendicants, who form an integral feature of Hinduism and are largely protected from official action by the religious atmosphere surrounding them, but also the still larger class of professional beggars of every sect, who descend on the city like locusts from the rural districts and do not hesitate, as opportunity occurs, to commit crime. In 1899 Mr. Kennedy raised the question of the best method of dealing with the latter class, and pointed out that daily prosecution, followed by the imposition of a small fine, failed entirely to effect any amelioration of the evil. He therefore decided on more drastic measures. In 1900 he deported 9,000 beggars to the territories of Indian Princes and 10,000 to various districts in British India. This wholesale expulsion caused a temporary improvement in the condition of the streets. But such deportations, to be really effective, must be carried on ruthlessly year by year; and methods would have to be adopted to penalise beggars of an undesirable type, who dared to return after deportation. Mr. Kennedy’s action was not pursued by his successors, and the beggar-nuisance consequently continued unabated. In 1920 it had become so intolerable that a special committee of Government and Municipal representatives was appointed to study the problem in all its bearings and devise measures for its solution.