Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DETECTIVES.

English Detectives--Early Prejudices against them Lived Down--The late Mr. Williamson--Inspector Melville--Sir C. Howard Vincent--Dr. Anderson--Mr. Macnaughten--Mr. McWilliam and the Detectives of the City Police--A Country Detective's Experiences--Allan Pinkerton's first Essay in Detection--The Private Inquiry Agent and the Lengths to which he will go.

Although the old Bow Street runner either retired from business or set up what we should now call private inquiry offices, the new organisation did not include any members specially devoted to the detection of crime. The want of them caused much inconvenience, and after an existence of fifteen years the Metropolitan Police was strengthened by the employment of a few constables in plain clothes, charged with the particular duty of, so to speak, secretly safeguarding the public. The plan was first adopted by Sir James Graham, when Home Secretary, and only tentatively, for the old distrust and suspicion of secret spies and underhand police processes lingered. There was something unpleasant, people said, in the idea of a disguised police: personal freedom was in danger; and the system was therefore tried on a very small scale.[19] No more than a round dozen were appointed at first--three inspectors and nine sergeants, but very shortly six constables were added as "auxiliaries," and gradually the total became 108, though this was only a small proportion of the total 6,000 which then made up the whole force.

The real intention and use of the "plain clothes" police was that they should be ever on the alert, ever at the heels of wrong-doers, and ready to follow up clues or track down criminals unperceived. They quickly overcame the early prejudice against them, and began by their substantial services to win popular esteem. Charles Dickens may be said to have discovered the modern detective. His papers in Household Words were a revelation to the public, and the life portraits he drew of some of the most notable men employed in this comparatively new branch of criminal pursuit did much to turn suspicion into admiration.

A few words may fitly find place here concerning some of our later developments of this most useful and not always sufficiently appreciated class. I should be glad to do justice to the memory of one who spent a lifetime at Scotland Yard, and was long the very centre and heart of the detective department--the late Mr. Williamson. Starting as a private constable and ending as chief constable, he was, from first to last, one of the most loyal, intelligent, and indefatigable of the many valuable public servants who have deserved well of their fellow-citizens. Yet to the outside world he was probably little more than a name through all his long years of arduous and uncompromising service. Few but the initiated recognised the redoubtable detective in this quiet, unpretending, middle-aged man, who walked leisurely along Whitehall, balancing a hat that was a little large for him loosely on his head, and often with a sprig of a leaf or flower between his lips. He was by nature very reticent; no outsider could win from him any details of the many big things he had "put through." His talk, for choice, was about gardening, for which he had a perfect passion; and his blooms were famous in the neighbourhood where he spent his unofficial hours. Another favourite diversion with him, until increasing pressure of work denied him any leisure, was boating. He was very much at home on the Thames, a powerful sculler, and very fond of the exercise. He never missed till the very last a single Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, seeing it for choice from the police steam-launch--the very best way indeed of going to the race, but a pleasure reserved for the Home Secretary, the police officials, and a few of their most intimate friends. The police boat is the last to go down the course, and the first to follow the competing eights.

One or two especially trying circumstances helped to break Williamson down rather prematurely. He took very much to heart, as was natural, the misconduct of his comrade detectives in the notorious de Goncourt turf frauds. He was at that time practically the head of his branch, and some of the blame--but, of course, none of the disgrace--was visited upon him, as it was argued that his men had been allowed too free a hand. This may have been the case; but he had to deal with men of uncommon astuteness, who were the more unscrupulous because he trusted them so implicitly, with the trust of a loyal nature, true to those above him, and counting upon fidelity from his subordinates.

Mr. Williamson's active career was also chequered by the diabolical nature of the crimes which kept him most busily employed. Fenianism might have been found written on his heart, like Calais on Queen Mary's, and, closely interwoven with it, anarchism and nihilism in all their phases. He knew no peace when foreign potentates were the guests of our royalties; Scotland Yard was, in fact, held responsible for the safety of Czar and Emperor, and the police authorities depended chiefly on Williamson, with his consummate knowledge and long experience of exotic crime. It

was Williamson who was first on the scene when infernal machines had exploded, or might be expected to explode at any moment.

To him the officer who is nowadays our chief mainstay and defence against these outrages, Inspector Melville, owes much of his insight into the peculiar business of the "special section," as this important branch of criminal investigation is called. The latter not long ago disposed very ingeniously of a case which might have led to serious mischief. Fertility of resource with great promptitude in action are among Mr. Melville's strongest and most valuable traits. Well, on one occasion, during the visit to England of a foreign Sovereign, information was received that one of his subjects residing in this country, and by no means loyal to him, intended to do him an injury the first time he could get near him in public. It happened that at that moment the imperial visitor was on the point of joining in a great procession, which had either actually started, or would start in the course of an hour or so. The malcontent was employed as cellarman to a wine and spirit merchant or publican with large wine vaults. There was no time to lose, and Melville made the best of his way to the place, saw the proprietor, and inquired for a certain brand of champagne he wished to purchase. The master called his man and sent them down together into the cellars. The cellarman went first with a light; at the bottom of the staircase he unlocked the wine cellar and went in--still first.

"What wine is that over yonder?" asked Melville carelessly, and the man crossed over to the far end of the vault to look before he answered. This was all the astute officer wanted. Instantly seizing the opportunity, he stepped back out of the cellar, closed the door promptly and locked it. The irreconcilable cellarman was a prisoner, and was left there perfectly safe from any temptation to carry out the fell purpose of which he was suspected. After the procession was over he was set free.

Most of the prominent detectives of to-day learnt their work under Williamson--Butcher, the chief inspector, who is as fond of flowers as was his master, and may be known by the fine rose in his buttonhole; Littlechild, who earned his first reputation in unravelling and exposing long-firm and assurance office frauds; Neald, the curator of the Black Museum, a sturdy, self-reliant, solid detective officer, who, among other great cases, worked to a successful issue the "Orrock" murder, in which the syllable "rock" scratched upon a chisel led ultimately to detection.

The exposure of the detectives' misdeeds in 1876 brought a superior official to Scotland Yard, and the first head of the newly named Criminal Investigation Department was Colonel Howard Vincent. His appointment was a surprise to many, and his fitness for the post was not immediately apparent. He was young, comparatively speaking, unknown, inexperienced in police matters, with no previous record but a brief military service, followed by a call to the Bar. But he was energetic, painstaking, a man of order, with some power of organisation; above all, a gentleman of high character and integrity. His reign at Scotland Yard may not have been marked by any phenomenal feats in detection; in the pursuit of criminals he was dependent upon his able subordinates, and it was his rule to summon the most experienced of them to advise him in all serious cases. In the more subtle processes of analysis and deduction, of working from effect to cause, from vague, almost impalpable indications to strong presumption of guilt, Howard Vincent did not shine; nor did he always, perhaps, fully realise the value of reticence in detective operations; but he did good work at Scotland Yard by raising the general tone and systematising the service.

SIR HOWARD VINCENT, M.P.]

Dr. Anderson, who was chief of the Investigation Department until 1901, when he resigned, was an ideal detective officer, with a natural bias for the work, and endowed with gifts peculiarly useful in it. He is a man of the quickest apprehension, with the power of close, rapid reasoning from facts, suggestions, or even impressions. He could seize on the essential point almost by intuition, and was marvellously ready in finding the real clue or indicating the right trail. With all this he was the most discreet, the most silent and reserved of public functionaries. Someone said he was a mystery even to himself. This, to him, inestimable quality of reticence is not unaided by a slight, but perhaps convenient, deafness. If he is asked an embarrassing question, he quickly puts up his hand and says the inquiry has been addressed to his deaf ear. But I shrewdly suspect that he hears all that he wishes to hear; little goes on around him that is not noted and understood; without seeming to pay much attention, he is always listening and drawing his own conclusions.

DR. ANDERSON.]

The chief of the Investigation Department has, of course, to be in close touch with all his subordinates; from his desk he can communicate with every branch of his department. The speaking tubes hang just behind his chair. A little farther off is the office telephone, which brings him into converse with Sir Edward Bradford, the Chief Commissioner, or with colleagues and subordinates in more distant parts of the "house." He is, and must be, an indefatigable worker, since the labours of his department are unceasing, and often of the most anxious, even disappointing, character.

Dr. Anderson's successor is Colonel Henry, for many years Inspector-General of Police in Bengal, and more recently employed on special police duty at Johannesburg. He has been chosen for the post not alone because of his long police experience, but also because he is an expert in matters of identification, especially in regard to the "finger-prints" system and the Bertillon system of anthropometry. Mr. Macnaughten, the Chief Constable, or second in command of the Investigation Department, is essentially a man of action. A man of presence is Mr. Macnaughten--tall, well-built, with a military air, although his antecedents are rather those of the public school, of Indian planter life, than of the army. His room, like his chief's, is hung with speaking tubes, his table is deep with reports and papers, but the walls are bright with photographs of officials, personal friends, and of notorious criminals which Mr. Macnaughten keeps by him as a matter of business. Some other and more gruesome pictures are always under lock and key; photographs, for instance, of the victims of Jack the Ripper, and of other brutal murders, taken immediately after discovery, and reproducing with dreadful fidelity the remains of bodies that have been mutilated almost out of human semblance. It is Mr. Macnaughten's duty, no less than his earnest desire, to be first on the scene of any such sinister catastrophe. He is therefore more intimately acquainted, perhaps, with the details of the most recent celebrated crimes than anyone else at New Scotland Yard.