Scotland Yard Part 9

With these men a complex game of chess has to be played, varying according to the ever-changing conditions of the West End, where one day may see a Suffragette window-smas.h.i.+ng campaign, and the next a royal procession, and the following a riot in a park. To deal with these occasions a number of depots are available--private houses, garages, and other places where bodies of police may remain out of sight, but instantly available.

There have been many fantastic stories told, to which the public lend a sometimes too ready ear, of what occurs in police stations. Always one can find some person to a.s.sert positively that the police as a body are bribed by bookmakers or prost.i.tutes--that, in fact, there exists a practical blackmail. These things were investigated and disproved at a Royal Commission some years ago. They are pure silliness.

Take the case of the police station with which I am dealing, situated where it might be supposed there were ample chances of such a thing.

Such a suspicion involves a gigantic conspiracy among more than 300 men. And by the Metropolitan Police system every man promoted is transferred to another division, so that the rank and file would have to induce a continually changing series of strangers to connive at their malpractices. It is on the face of it absurd.

I recall a little story which shows how keen an eye the public has for the probity of the police. A famous detective had occasion to question a veteran constable, and took him into a tea-shop to do so. At the close of the conversation he handed the officer a half-crown. A day or two later a highly respectable country vicar wrote to Scotland Yard. He had been having a cup of tea at a certain tea-shop. There he had seen a constable, Mr. So-and-So, in talk with a suspicious character, and had seen money pa.s.s. Of course, there was an investigation, and it was a long time before the "suspicious character"--who is one of the best-dressed men at Scotland Yard--heard the last of it.

Let us see the method of "taking a charge." Prisoners, as they are brought in, are placed in one of a couple of large rooms, with a low part.i.tion, near the corridor, over which it is impossible for anyone to see them. There they are kept for a while until the inspector is ready to take the charge. Presently they are ushered into the charge-room, a big apartment with a tall desk in the centre, and a substantial steel structure a few paces away--the dock. But the dock is not used nowadays except when a person is violent.

The first charge is that of begging, the accused being a boy who looks 17, but says he is 13. The policeman who arrested him stands by his side, and a reserve man stands at attention a little distance away. The boy is quite at ease. There is little of the terror of the law here. He admits that he was begging, his father is on strike, and he hadn't done well at selling papers.

"Don't be frightened, my lad," says the inspector kindly. "What's your name? Where do you live?"

The boy hesitates, but at last gives an address.

"He gave me a different address, Sir," says the constable, and the boy hurriedly protests that he has told the truth now.

"H'm," comments the inspector calmly. "Look here, sonny, you don't want to stay here all night. You'll have to, you know, if we can't find your father. Tell us the truth."

The facts elicited, the boy is searched, the main contents of his pocket are a handful of coppers and a cigarette end.

The inspector picks up the latter. "Do you know it's against the law for a boy of 13 to have cigarettes? All right. Put him in the detention-room until his father comes. You'll be charged with begging, my boy."

In an hour the youth is free, his father having entered into recognisances for his due appearance at the police court.

It should be explained that no person is detained at the police station, except on a serious charge, who can prove his ident.i.ty. Often no further inquiry is necessary than reference to a directory.

The detention-room, too, which is attached to every police station is intended to spare a respectable person the ignominy of the cells. It is a comfortably furnished room, with tables and chairs, and sometimes with a few papers and magazines.

The charges begin to multiply towards midnight. There are several beggars, one of whom is a dirty, round-shouldered old ragam.u.f.fin with a long, matted beard. He cringes in front of the inspector's desk, and suddenly his hand flickers upwards with a deft movement. The next instant he is looking as innocent as though b.u.t.ter would not melt in his mouth.

There is a sharp "Put that down" from the reserve man, and it is discovered that a cigarette end taken from the boy has found its way to his pocket. He curses the keen-eyed officer as he is led away to the cells.

Then there are the "drunks," some quiet, some riotous, some still in a torpor, others defiantly a.s.serting that they are perfectly sober. Some of these latter are seen by the police-divisional-surgeon, who by now is in the station. The Inspector sifts each case thoroughly, making sure that there is a _prima facie_ case before allowing the charge to proceed. It is at his discretion to grant or refuse bail.

It is after one o'clock. A girl is brought in by a constable, pale and sullen, and with dark eyes a little apprehensive, a little triumphant.

The officer handles a man's jacket carefully. The whole of one sleeve and one side of the coat is wringing wet--but it is with blood, not with water. It is a more serious case this--one of attempted murder, which later developed into one of murder. There was an altercation with a man, a lover who had abandoned her, and she stabbed him with a pocket knife, and waited without attempting to escape. An unsavoury, sordid drama, but it is treated in the same cool, business-like way as the other trivial charges.

"I only meant to hurt him," says the girl, and she is led away by the matron. I may as well finish the story here. The man she had stabbed died in hospital, and she was charged with murder. Eventually she was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment.

In the intervals of taking charges, there are other things to be done.

There is a woman half hysterical because her daughter is missing. A couple of people walk in to hand over a gold match box and a purse found in the streets. These things have to be entered in official doc.u.ments for prompt communication to headquarters.

The tape machine rattles out a report of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey, and fresh orders relative to the pa.s.sage of cattle through London. This will have to be made known to the reliefs when they go out.

A constable hurries in with the report that a window in a certain big business firm's premises is open. A man has been left to guard it.

The inspector is a little impatient. "They're always leaving windows open," he says, and gives a few instructions. Half a dozen men are sent out to surround the place, while a search is made for possible burglars.

Of course, there are none. The window has been left open by a careless clerk, which was what the police knew all along, but they could take no risks.

Several of the cells are occupied now. There are about a dozen of them all told. You pa.s.s through a locked door from the charge-room into a wide, stone-flagged corridor, lined on each side with ma.s.sive doors.

Swing back one of these doors, and you will enter a high pitched room with a barred window at the farther end, and a broad plank running down one side, the full length of the cell. This serves either as a seat or a bed. Washable mattresses and pillows are served out at night-time, and I can imagine that, if lonely, the cells are not uncomfortable. The doors lock automatically as they are swung to. There is an electric bell in each cell which communicates directly with the inspector's room. Thus the senior officers are made responsible for sending to answer a prisoner's ring.

Besides these cells there are a couple of large apartments--technically also cells--where a large number of prisoners may be kept together. They are often useful when suffrage demonstrators are on the warpath, or when, say, a gambling raid has taken place. These, like the other cells, have what their most frequent occupants call "Judas holes"--a small trapdoor which can be let down from outside to see that all is well within.

The matron's room also opens into the corridor--a pleasant little chamber where often women prisoners who cannot be allowed bail, but whom it is felt should not be placed in a cell, are allowed to sit.

I have said that all the prisoners are searched. This is done thoroughly with a twofold object--to ensure that no prisoner has means of doing himself bodily harm, and to discover whether he carries on him anything bearing on the charge, as, for instance, in a case of picking pockets.

Everything discovered has to be entered with particularity; but although such things as matches or a knife might be taken from a man, he would usually be left with his own personal property, watch, keys, pocket-book, money, and similar things.

Every person having business at a police station is treated with courtesy, whether prisoner or prosecutor. That is one of the rigid rules of the service which is rarely neglected. Even the man on duty at the door is not allowed to ask a caller his business without permission.

That is for a senior officer.

I was much struck by the fair and impartial manner in which the inspector elicited the facts of a case before accepting a charge. Always polite, with no leaning to one side or the other, he endeavoured by careful questioning to elicit whether an arrest had been made on reasonable grounds. There was no bullying, no taking it for granted, except in an obvious case of drunkenness, that a charge was proved.

I have, perhaps, not made clear the distinction between reserve men at a station and reserve men in a division. The latter do ordinary duties, and are the first called upon in the event of emergencies anywhere in London. They receive a small sum in addition to their ordinary pay. The former are men who, instead of doing eight hours' duty in the street, do it at the station itself, and are available for any sudden contingency that may present itself within the subdivision.

The personnel of the London police is, as I have indicated, selected and tested under the most rigorous conditions. No less relentless in the search for efficiency are the promotion conditions. The Commissioner is an absolute autocrat so far as promotion is concerned, though, in practice, he usually acts upon the recommendation of the superintendents.

A constable, before he is promoted, must serve at least five years--in practice, the average is eight years--and must then pa.s.s two examinations. One of these is set by the Civil Service Commissioners to test his education, the other is an examination in police duty before a board of high officials. Should he be approved then for promotion he is immediately transferred to another division. These examinations are carried out at every step in promotion. In the words of a keen American observer:

"That such a system is successful in bringing to the front the best men available, that it is carried through without favouritism or political considerations, that, in its fairness and justice, it has the confidence of the uniformed force is a splendid commentary not only on the integrity of the Commissioner and his administrative a.s.sistants but on the stability and sound traditions of the entire department."

CHAPTER XI.

THE RIDDLE DEPARTMENT.

The perpetual solving of riddles is one of the commonplace duties of Scotland Yard, not only in the C.I.D., but in every branch of the business. Luck may, and sometimes does, help a detective to solve a mystery; but luck never helps to quell a riot or maintain order on the King's highway in times of stress.

It is for such matters as these that they keep a Riddle Department at headquarters. They call it the Executive Department, but no matter--as Mark Twain would say. It is there to supply the answers to the conundrums that are always cropping up in police work.

Everyone in the Metropolitan Police who wants to know anything goes to the Executive Department. And it does a heavy work by the sheer light of common-sense and a meticulous organisation which is ready for anything, for many of its riddles are simply variations of the great one:

"Here are twenty thousand men who must eat and sleep and guard seven hundred square miles and seven millions of people; how can we concentrate a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand swiftly into a particular district to meet an emergency without leaving other places unguarded?"

An unthankful task. I can imagine that at times subdued but bitter revilings are heaped upon the head of the department.

You cannot take men from the comparatively pleasant surroundings of the West End and dump them into Dockland, for instance, without evoking grumbles. Naturally, every division which is drawn upon thinks it ought to have been some other division. But discipline and tact do great things.

Rarely is there any cause for complaint, although the known fact that the force is undermanned naturally entails hards.h.i.+ps on individuals at times.

Now let me introduce you to the Riddle Department at work. In the telegraph-room of Scotland Yard one of a cl.u.s.ter of tape machines breaks into hysterical chatter, and a constable springs to read the message of the unreeling coil of paper. It is a message from the East End. A riot has occurred which the local superintendent fears may become greater than the force at his disposal will be able to cope with.

The constable dashes into an adjacent room with the message, and the superintendent of the department takes in its import at a glance.