Curiosities of Civilization Part 24

The alarms from chimneys on fire have called the engines out no less than 1,982 times during the years the Brigade has been established, or on an average twice a week. Let us hope that, as we are setting about clearing the atmosphere by Act of Parliament, accidents of this kind will gradually cease. We may now watch with satisfaction many a tall shaft, as we steam down the river, that seems to stand idle in the air; the great rolling clouds of smoke that used to obscure the sky on the southern bank of the Thames are no longer seen, and the air is growing appreciably purer. It is evident that our manufacturers, where they have not become alive to the saving it would effect, have been coerced by the vigorous manner in which the Home Secretary has put the law in force against these black offenders; and we may hope that Dr. Arnott's smoke-consuming grate, or some modification of it, will ere long find its way into every house to complete the work.

THE POLICE AND THE THIEVES.

Most men who have arrived at that age when the last one or two b.u.t.tons of the waistcoat are allowed to be unloosened after dinner, can remember the time when the safety of life and property in the metropolis depended on the efforts of the parochial watchman, a species of animal after the model of the old hackney coachman, enc.u.mbered with the self same drab greatcoat, with countless capes, with the self same Belcher handkerchief, or comforter, speaking in the same husky voice, and just as sottish, stupid, and uncivil. At night--for it was not thought worth while to set a watch in the day-time--the authorities provided him with a watch-box in order that he might enjoy his snooze in comfort, and furnished him with a huge lantern in order that its rays might enable the thief to get out of his way in time. As if these aids to escape were not sufficient for the midnight marauder, the watchman was provided with a staff with which he thundered on the pavement as he walked, a noise which he alternated with crying the hour and the state of the weather in a loud singing voice, and which told of his whereabouts when he himself was far out of sight.

Up to the year 1828, and indeed for ten years later, in the city these men were the sole defence by night of the first metropolis in the world. The Charlies, as they were familiarly termed, had very little fight in them at any time; but it is well known that they "winked hard," when required to do so by people who could afford to pay them for it. It is not astonis.h.i.+ng that crimes under such a police flourished apace, or that robberies increased to an extent which alarmed all thoughtful people. Mr.

Colquhoun, a magistrate, whose work on the police, written at the beginning of the century, gave the first ideas of the reforms which have been since adopted; estimates that the annual value of the property stolen at the time at which he wrote, was at least 1,500,000_l._; and that the evil was gaining ground may be judged from the fact that the number of receivers of stolen goods had increased, between 1780 and 1800, from 300 to 3,000!

In addition to the nightly watch there was another cla.s.s of persons who, if more active, were calculated in a still greater degree to defeat justice, but in a totally opposite direction: we allude to those men who made their bread out of the blood of the criminal population. The Government of the country was mainly to blame for the sins committed by these loathsome creatures. Since the time of Jonathan Wild thief-catchers had been stimulated to make criminals by what was termed Parliamentary rewards, or sums of forty pounds given by the Home Office to persons affording such information as would lead to the conviction of felons. The object of the officers was to secure blood-money, not to suppress crime; and it was their deliberate practice to allow robberies to proceed, which they might have prevented, in order to obtain the reward. To use their own language, they were accustomed "to let the matter ripen" until the fee was secure, and the work was cut out for the hangman. These men must not be confounded with the Bow Street runners, or detective police, some of whom were able and perhaps honest men; but they chiefly occupied themselves with thief-catching in private preserves, where the pay was ample, and contributed little if anything to the suppression of general crime.

With a cla.s.s of watchmen totally inoperative as a preventive police, with a cla.s.s of informers stimulated by unwise enactments to lure men into villany, and with a code savage almost beyond belief--as late as 1800 there were 160 capital crimes, and to break the dam of a fish-pond, or to cut down an apple-tree in a garden, were offences punishable with death; it is not to be wondered at that "the deadly never-green," as the gallows was called in the slang language of the day, bore fruit all the year round. Old Townsend, the Bow Street officer, who gave evidence before the committee which sat in 1816 to inquire into the police of the metropolis, said, "I remember in 1783, when Serjeant Adair was recorder, there were forty hung at two executions; the unfortunate people themselves laugh at it now, they call it a bagatelle." Among the more serious offences were the robberies committed by mounted highwaymen; and, in order to give an idea of their frequency, we again quote the racy evidence of Townsend:--"Formerly there were two, three, or four highwaymen--some on Hounslow Heath, some on Wimbledon Common, some on Finchley Common, some on the Romford Road. I have actually come to Bow Street in the morning, and while I have been leaning over the desk had three or four people come in and say, 'I was robbed by two highwaymen in such a place;' 'I was robbed by a single highwayman in such a place.' People travel safe now by means of the horse-patrol, which was planned by Sir Richard Ford." This horse-patrol, established in 1805, was the first innovation on the old system of watching; and it succeeded so admirably, that in a few years the highwaymen were entirely banished from the metropolitan counties, and the great roads in the neighbourhood of London, which were once as unsafe as those in the vicinity of Rome, became as orderly as Fleet Street. It does indeed seem strange that while the outskirts of the metropolis were thus provided with a new force which proved itself to be perfectly capable of clearing away the ruffians, no means should have been taken until 1829 to supersede the old parish constables who had flourished from the time of the Saxons, and appear to have been in full bloom in Elizabeth's reign, since Dogberry is a finished portrait of the race. No means existed by which the watchmen of different parishes could be made to co-operate against their common enemy, the thief. In the city they were under the direction of no less than thirty different authorities. There were the street-keepers, the patrol, the ward-constables, &c., all acting under separate masters; and so complete was the division that the constable of one ward would not interfere to prevent a robbery going on on the opposite side of the street, if it was out of his bounds.

Mr. J. Elliot, in his evidence, given in 1838, before the Committee on "The Metropolis Police Offices," mentions a glaring instance of the perfect paralysis of the executive which arose out of this absurd system.

"Two years ago," he said, "a neighbour of mine had his warehouse broken open, and a hundred pounds' worth of tea was taken away; a watchman at the top of the street saw a cart going away from the warehouse; but he said it was not in his ward, and therefore he did not interfere." The public indisposition to get rid of the old watchmen most certainly did not arise from any ignorance of their inefficiency; they had long, in fact, been bywords of feebleness and imbecility. To thrash a Charlie was a pet pastime of the young bloods of that day. The determined propensity to doze of these worthy functionaries was a standing topic for witticism. "A friend of mine," said Erskine, "was suffering from a continual wakefulness, and various methods were taken to send him to sleep, but in vain. At last his physicians resorted to an experiment which succeeded perfectly. They dressed him in a watchman's coat, put a lantern in his hand, and placed him in a sentry-box, and he was asleep in ten minutes."

It might be imagined that tokens like these indicated pretty clearly that a reform would have been hailed with delight. The result proved, however, that to abuse a thing and to amend it are widely different. Mr. Peel, who had been feeling his way to his grand experiment by the establishment of a Bow-street day patrol, obtained in 1828 the appointment of a committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the expediency of establis.h.i.+ng a uniform system of police in the metropolis; and the committee having reported to the House in favour of the scheme, it was immediately adopted.

This salutary change was not made without creating a deep sensation. That stalking-horse, "the liberty of the subject," which in truth meant the liberty of rogues to plunder, was immediately paraded before the public; and we have no doubt whatever that in the tavern debating-clubs of the day it was reported that with the fall of the Charlies "the sun of England's glory had set for ever." And indeed to Englishmen, jealous of their personal liberty, the establishment of this new force might at first have created some well-founded alarm. It was no longer a question of a few constables, but of a standing army of nearly six thousand men, drilled like soldiers, taught to act in ma.s.ses, and entirely independent of the control of the ratepayers. The very fact of the appointment, as one of the Commissioners, of Colonel Rowan, who had been employed in that quasi-military force the Irish constabulary, favoured the idea that the new police were to be a veritable _gendarmerie_. That such was the popular idea was clearly indicated by the numerous prints which appeared at the time of a fierce-looking "Peeler," armed with a belt full of pistols and a formidable sword.

Those accustomed only to the slow pace of the const.i.tutional watchman, as he waddled out to his post, beholding with astonishment the sergeant's party as it marched along the kerb in close file, and keeping quick military step, believed that so powerful a force, concentrated under a single head, might be turned to political purposes. The constables never appeared in the streets without being followed by crowds hooting at them, and calling them by the obnoxious names of "Peelers," "Raw Lobsters,"

"Crushers," "Bobbies," &c. At last, in 1833, an actual collision took place between them and the great unwashed in Coldbath Fields. A meeting of Chartists was appointed to be held there, from which serious consequences were expected to arise. Directions were given to disperse it; but whilst in the performance of their duty three of the police were stabbed, and one of them mortally. It might have been thought that the very fact of a mob coming thus armed, with the express purpose of resisting a const.i.tuted authority, would have excited the indignation of the more respectable cla.s.ses of the citizens. The contrary was the effect. A coroner's jury brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide--a pretty significant sign of the feeling towards the new force of the cla.s.s from which the jury was selected. Such was the ferment that a commission was held to inquire into the conduct of the police, and they were exonerated from the charge of having, as a body, acted with greater violence than was necessary. From that period, with the exception of the investigation during the Beer Bill commotion into the charge of having dispersed a gathering in Hyde Park with undue severity--a charge which was not at all substantiated--their conduct has been so exemplary as completely to have removed the original dislike. Experience has served to teach the men the virtue of moderation and patience; and they are now looked upon as a const.i.tutional force, simply because we have got accustomed to them.

At the present time the Metropolitan Police Force consists of--a Chief Commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne; 2 a.s.sistant-Commissioners, Captain Labalmondiere and Captain Harris; 18 Superintendents, 133 Inspectors, 625 Sergeants, and 4,954 Constables; making a total of all ranks of 5,734. The machinery by which this comparatively small force is enabled to watch by night and day every alley, street, and square of this vast metropolis, nay, tries every accessible door and window of its 400,000 houses, patrols 90 square miles of country, exercises a surveillance over the 8,000 reputed thieves who prey upon its inhabitants, and keeps in awe the 40,000 or 50,000 people who form "the uneasy cla.s.ses" of the metropolis, is not very complicated. The metropolitan police district extends from Charing Cross 15 miles in every direction, and includes the whole of Middles.e.x and large portions of Surrey, Hertfords.h.i.+re, Ess.e.x, Kent, Buckinghams.h.i.+re, and Berks.h.i.+re, for which seven counties the Commissioners are magistrates and the police are sworn constables. The river Thames is also under its jurisdiction from Chelsea to Barking Creek, including all its wharves, docks, landing-places, and dockyards. The entire district has a circ.u.mference of 90 miles, and extends over an area of 700 square miles, 100 of which, forming what is called the interior area, is covered with our great Babel of brick and mortar. This wide extent of ground is mapped out into 18 divisions, each of which is watched by a detachment of men, varying in number according to the extent of the area, the exposed nature of the property, or the density of the population:--

_Letters of_ _Local Names of_ _Strength of each_ _Divisions._ _Divisions._ _Division._

A Whitehall 380 B Westminster 324 C St. James's 265 D St. Mary-le-bone 371 E Holborn 175 F Covent Garden 165 G Finsbury 317 H Whitechapel 233 K Stepney 482 L Lambeth 208 M Southwark 350 N Islington 513 P Camberwell 408 R Greenwich 454 S Hampstead 410 T Kensington 288 V Wandsworth 381 Thames Police 103

This it will be seen that policeman X, who figures so often in the pages of "Punch," is a myth of our facetious contemporary.

Each division is separated into subdivisions, the subdivisions into sections, and, last of all the sections into beats. Of the main divisions, A, although one of the smallest in area, is by far the most important; it is the seat of the central authority located at Scotland Yard. Its police are much finer men (taller on the average than the Guards), and their duties are more responsible than those of any other division. They attend upon the Sovereign, the Parliament, the theatres, the parks, and all other places of public resort, such as Epsom and Ascot races, the flower shows, Crystal Palace, &c. The A division is, in fact, to the general body of Metropolitan Police what the Guards are to the army. To enable it to perform these extra duties, it has a reserve force of 250 men, drafted off on ordinary occasions in companies of fifty each to the B, C, D, G, and M divisions; upon this reserve force it draws when necessary.

The other divisions are pretty much alike in the nature of their duties, which are simply those of watching. Certain modifications, however, arise from the character of their districts; thus a constable on duty at Whitechapel, if suddenly removed to Westminster or Mary-le-bone, would find himself considerably at fault, inasmuch as a familiarity with fights in courts, disputes with tramps, and the coa.r.s.e language of low lodging-houses, is not a good school for the amenities required among a more fas.h.i.+onable population. In all the divisions exactly the same organization is maintained, and the same amount of arduous work is performed. Two-thirds of the entire force is on duty from nine or ten in the evening till five or six in the morning. Not long since the night-police were condemned to patrol the streets for nine hours, without sitting down, or even leaning their weary limbs against any support. This severe labour was found incompatible with the maintenance of due vigilance towards the end of the watch; the men are, therefore, now kept on duty only eight hours. Day work is divided into reliefs, and extends from six a.m. to nine p.m. Notwithstanding its greater severity, there are men who prefer the stolid unimpeded walk in the night, in which they go through their work like machines, to the more bustling and exciting day-patrol.

The sergeants or inspectors make the round of the districts to see that the constables are duly parading their beats.

If a door or window is discovered in an unsafe condition, its insecurity is immediately made known to the inmates; and if the constable fails to detect the circ.u.mstance during his tour, and it is afterwards observed by his sergeant or the succeeding constable, he is reported, and fined for his neglect. Continued inattention is visited by dismissal. Offences of every kind are severely punished, as appears from the fact that, between the years 1850 and 1856, 1,276 policemen were turned out of the force. Of these, sixty-eight were criminally convicted. Thus the men are kept up to their work, and collusions with thieves are rendered exceedingly difficult. Every morning a sheet of "Occurrences" is forwarded to the Chief Commissioner at Scotland Yard, which contains the full particulars of all matters worthy of notice which have taken place during the night throughout the metropolis, and a record of all property lost or stolen, from a gold pin to a chest of plate, is kept at the same central establishment.

In case any affair of unusual importance occurs, a murder or a great robbery, the intelligence is conveyed by the constable who first becomes cognizant of it, to the central station of his division; from this point the news is radiated by policemen carrying what are termed route-papers, or papers of particulars of the offence, on the backs of which are marked the hour at which they were received at the different divisions through which they pa.s.sed. In this manner information can be circulated in two hours to all the stations, excepting those belonging to the exterior or suburban districts. In these reports are given the names of the constables who were on the beats in which the offence took place, the sergeants in charge of the sections, and the names of the constables whose particular business it was to trace the offenders as far as possible. We understand, however, that the electric telegraph is now shooting its nerve-like threads to all the divisional stations in the metropolis, and, when the new agent is brought to bear, the communication will be almost instantaneous. Thus, in case of robbery, every constable will be made acquainted with the particulars without a moment's delay, and the police-net will be thrown at one cast over the entire metropolis. Thieves will no longer be able to get away with their plunder, ere a hue and cry has been raised after the property. Had the telegraph been in existence, in all probability Her Majesty's plate-chest would have been intercepted before it reached the field where it was ransacked in Sh.o.r.editch. In cases of riot of a formidable nature, the telegraph will be able to concentrate 5,000 men in a couple of hours upon any spot within five miles of Charing Cross.

Towards the outskirts of the metropolis, in the exterior or suburban districts, the widely-scattered constables chiefly perform the duties of a rural police. The great distances they have to traverse necessitates the use of horses; here, accordingly, we find the mounted police, the successors of the old horse-patrol established in 1805. The strength of this force, men and officers included, is only 120; they are furnished with powerful nags, and are armed with swords and pistols. Indeed the foot-police, whose beats lie in unfrequented rural districts, are allowed side-arms--a precaution which the fate of the policeman, who was brutally murdered in a field at Dagenham, in Ess.e.x, some years since, proved to be by no means unnecessary.

In the middle of the metropolitan police district is the City police, under the management of the corporation. The area of this peculiar, to borrow an ecclesiastical term, is only one square mile and a quarter; but forming as it does the very centre of business, it is by far the richest part of London, for, while it contains only one-twentieth portion of its inhabitants, it possesses a fourteenth part of its wealth. This small s.p.a.ce is, in fact, the great heart not only of the metropolis, but of the commercial world. Through its princ.i.p.al thoroughfares a vaster flood of traffic is poured for several hours than is to be found in any other streets in the world. In the year 1850 it was ascertained that no less than 67,510 foot-pa.s.sengers, and 13,796 vehicles, containing no fewer than 52,092 persons, pa.s.sed Bow Church, Cheapside, in one day. By another channel of communication, Aldgate, near the Minories, 58,430 foot-pa.s.sengers, and 9,332 vehicles, containing 20,804 persons, pa.s.sed in the same time; and it is estimated that altogether no less than 400,000 persons are poured into this one square mile and a quarter in the course of the twelve hours. The congregation in so confined a s.p.a.ce of so vast a number of people, many of whom are forced to carry about with them considerable sums of money, must prove a great source of attraction to thieves of all kinds, and demands the constant vigilance of a comparatively large body of police. It was not until ten years after the successful experiment of the metropolitan police, however, that the corporation of London, wedded to its old system of ward-beadles, street-keepers, and imbecile constables, could be brought to adopt the new system; but it must be admitted that the present force, consisting of 1 superintendent, 13 inspectors, 12 station-sergeants, 47 sergeants, and 492 policemen, making a total of 565, do the duty well; and the City, with all its stored wealth, is now as safe as the rest of the metropolis. At all the banks plain-clothes men are constantly in attendance to keep out the swell-mob, who buzz about such places as wasps do about a peach wall; and in the great thoroughfares, such as Cheapside, six or seven policemen are always to be found.

The peculiarities of the City, which produce its characteristic robberies, are the number of its uninhabited warehouses, the perfect labyrinth of lanes which traverse and intersect its streets in all directions, and the vast number of carts and vans always standing full of valuable goods at the warehouse doors. The greatest precautions are taken to mark the fastenings on the warehouse doors, so as to betray any attempt to force them; and these devices are generally successful. The reticulation of lanes will always prove a trouble to the police and a security to pickpockets. Not many years ago a bank clerk was attacked at mid-day in one of these pa.s.sages in the very heart of the City, but luckily he retained hold of his case, which held most valuable property, and it is now the custom to chain these bill-cases to the person, just as they used to chain books in the olden time to the library shelves. It is also customary for bank clerks to tear the corners off all Bank of England notes, so as to render them unnegotiable, unless to persons who can produce the corresponding piece,--a contrivance which, no doubt, put a stop to audacious attacks upon these money-carriers in the middle of the day. The most common robberies are those from vehicles loading and discharging valuable silk and other goods at the warehouse doors. For the protection of such goods a small dog is the best policeman; and carts are rarely seen in the City without one of these nimble guardians. The old restriction which prevented the metropolitan police from entering the City, and the City force from entering the metropolitan districts, is now abandoned. Nevertheless, the fact of their being under a distinct jurisdiction prevents that unity of action which ought to prevail. Not long since, a City policeman patrolling one of the streets which extended into the metropolitan department, was informed by a pa.s.ser-by that they were killing a constable at the top of the street, to which the policeman replied that it was out of his beat and he could not interfere! When next the Sibyl presents her leaves to the city corporation, in all probability the present isolated system of police will not be found inscribed on any one of them.

Scotland Yard, as we have said, is the brain or central ganglion which directs the system of metropolitan police. Here the commissioners sit daily, and are ready to receive the complaints or other communications of the public. Its rooms are full of clerks, but all in the uniform of the police; in one office may be seen the constables wielding the pen instead of the truncheon, preparing daily returns and reports; in another, reading the morning and country papers, to learn what is doing that may require their presence, and to know what thieves have turned up in the police courts; in a third room an inspector is reading to the clerks from the different divisions any particulars it may be advisable to communicate to the entire force; in a fourth we see the secret chamber of the detective police--those human moles who work without casting up the earth lest their course should be discovered. In an office apart from the rest are the foreign detectives, who watch over _mauvais sujets_ from abroad. The entire floating foreign population in the metropolis is well known to the police, and no plots against allied governments could well be hatched in London without their cognizance. All articles lost in public conveyances are here taken charge of. The "Lost Property Office" contains piles of umbrellas, parasols, and walking-sticks, together with a curious a.s.semblage of articles of jewellery and wearing apparel, brought by honest cabmen. On one occasion a parcel with cash to the amount of 1,600_l._ was deposited; and on another a thousand-pound note. Valuable property is always claimed immediately; but sticks, parasols, and umbrellas acc.u.mulate in a manner which proves that their loss is due to the carelessness of their owners and not to the loose morality of others. The offices for the inspectors of dangerous structures and for licensing common lodging-houses and the drivers and conductors of public conveyances, all of which departments are managed by the police, are close at hand.

In the drilling-ground of the force--an open s.p.a.ce surrounded by a h.o.a.rding close to the State Paper Office--there are generally from thirty to forty men in course of training, to fill up the gaps caused by dismissals, resignations, &c. On the occasion of our visit the yard was occupied by two bodies--the raw material, in the shape of some twenty individuals dressed in every variety of costume; and another batch of the finished article, b.u.t.toned up in blue and resplendent with plated b.u.t.tons.

The eye had only to run along the "gammut of men," if we may so term the fresh recruits drawn up before us, in order to see from how many ranks of society the police brigade is reinforced; smock-frocks, shooting-coats, frock-coats, tail-coats, some seedy and worn, some still good and fresh, denoted the condition in life of their owners, and the necessities to which some of them were reduced. Young men flushed with hope come from the provinces to push their fortunes, after a brief struggle find themselves stranded, and accept this, the most readily-obtained respectable service.

As every policeman must be able to read and write, have a good character, and be of sound body and mind, the mere overflowings of the labour-market are excluded from the force; moreover, persons can always leave the service by giving a month's notice. For these reasons a much more intelligent cla.s.s of men recruit the police than the army, and it is singular to note how this intelligence tells. The drill of constables and soldiers is nearly alike, yet the former learn all their movements in a fortnight, whilst the latter require at least two months. Intelligence of a certain kind, however, may be carried too far; your sharp Londoner makes a very bad policeman; he is too volatile and conceited to submit himself to discipline, and is oftener rejected than the persons from other parts, with whom eight-tenths of the force are recruited. The best constables come from the provincial cities and towns. They are both quicker and more "plucky" than the mere countryman fresh from the village--a singular fact, which proves that manly vigour, both physical and mental, is to be found in populations neither too aggregated nor entirely isolated.

The policemen, perfect in their material drill, next undergo a mental one.

Drawn up in line, a sergeant or inspector questions them as to their duties. "Supposing you see two men fighting, what would you do?" or, "If you were to discover a house on fire, how would you act?" Sometimes the constable addressed answers the question, but more generally his interrogator does it for him. When drilled and catechized to the full pitch, he doffs his plain clothes for a uniform, and comes out in the full bloom of a policeman. But he is still a neophyte, and before he is intrusted with a beat he attends at a police-court in order to watch the manner in which trained constables comport themselves in the witness-box.

Having learned to give evidence clearly and briefly, to listen to ludicrous scenes without smiling, and to bear bad language with imperturbable patience, he is marched off to the division in which he has elected to serve (the policeman is always if possible allowed this privilege), and with his armlet on his wrist, his staff in one pocket, and his rattle in the other, he patrols his beat.

Two especial injunctions are given to him--never to show his staff except to protect himself, and never to spring his rattle at night except in a case of great urgency. The care taken to hide his offensive weapon is one of the best points of our police arrangements. The officers sent over here to gain information, prior to the introduction of the English police system in Paris, were astonished at this forbearance: the Frenchmen could not understand why a man should carry a deadly weapon, unless to make a demonstration with it! In this little incident we see the essential difference between the French and English character. In six months' time it is expected that the young hand will prove a steady officer; that a wild young fellow, who perhaps only a few months before knew no restraint, should become a machine, moving, thinking, and speaking only as his instruction-book directs; and so wonderful are the powers of organization that such an officer he generally becomes. We all know him, for we see him day by day as we promenade the streets. Stiff, calm, and inexorable, he seems to take no interest in any mortal thing; to have neither hopes nor fears. Amid the bustle of Piccadilly or the roar of Oxford Street, P. C. X 59 stalks along, an _inst.i.tution_ rather than a man. We seem to have no more hold of his personality than we could possibly get of his coat, b.u.t.toned up to the throttling-point. Go, however, to the section-house, an establishment generally attached to the chief station of each division, in which the unmarried policemen are lodged, and enter the common hall or reading-room, and you no longer see policemen, but men; they have cast off their tight coats, as certain other unboiled lobsters, at fixed intervals, cast off their sh.e.l.ls. They are absolutely laughing with each other! Some are writing, some are reading the morning papers, a group are grinning at the caricature of P. C. X 202 in "Punch;" some are deep in the horrors of a romance, extended at full length along a bench, with their trowsers tucked up; all are at their ease, taking rational amus.e.m.e.nt. In the common room of every section-house there is a library.[47] That in King Street, Westminster, contains 1,200 volumes, a well-selected medley of subjects, grave and gay. Some of the volumes, indeed, surprised us, as they seemed to indicate an erudite taste which we did not give police constables credit for possessing. We give a few of their t.i.tles as they came under our notice:--

Taylor's Holy Living.

The Annals of the English Bible.

Macaulay's Essays.

Alison's Europe.

Paley's Works.

Byron's Works.

The Waverley Novels.

James's Naval History.

Lane's Modern Egyptians.

Life of Mohammud, by Mohun Lal.

Tom Cringle's Log.

Bishop Heber's Journal.

Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's Works.

Colonial and Home Library.

What do you think of the list, good reader? Policemen reading Paley! Can we wonder that they are so very blue? But we must not misrepresent the force. If volumes such as these are thumbed sufficiently to show that some Scotch sergeant has a taste for theological reading and "fee-lo-so-phy,"

the prevalent inquiry is after good English literature; and, although the "Wandering Jew" and the "Mysteries of Paris" are in the library, we are told that the men do not like, and apparently do not understand, French romances. The library is only open on Thursdays, and then but for two hours. For this there is a philosophical reason. "What we can always see,"

said the superintendent who kindly showed us over the Section, "we never see: it is only strangers that know all the sights of the metropolis." On the same principle, the issue of books is limited in the manner we have stated, and we are told that the plan answers admirably. The dormitories at King-street accommodate about ninety persons, the great portion of whom, having done night-duty, we saw fast asleep, on a fine tempting afternoon. It takes full three months for the men to acquire the habit of sleeping in the day; but, once acquired, they never lose it afterwards, although they return at stated intervals to day-duty again. They find their own breakfasts and suppers, but they mess together at dinner. They take it in turns to cater for the week; and the emulation thus created proves to the advantage of the mess, as we hear that early peas, and other delicacies of the season, find their way to the policemen's table.[48] It would be an immense boon to the Benedicts of the force if accommodation could also be found for them in the section-houses. In these days of model lodging-houses such an injustice to family men should scarcely be allowed to exist.

One of the strongest reasons which weighed with Mr. Peel in proposing the establishment of the new police in 1829 was the expediency of inst.i.tuting a force powerful enough to cope with mobs, and to repress those incipient commotions which, if too roughly dealt with by the military, are apt to leave an abiding sense of irritation in the public mind. The ma.s.sacre of "Peterloo," as it was vulgarly called, without doubt proved to the reflective mind of Peel that civil disturbances could no longer be dealt with by the sharp edge of the sword, and that a knock-down blow of a truncheon was far more congenial to the English skull than the sabre of the yeoman or the bullet of the "sodger." That view was undoubtedly correct. The new police have not, it is true, come in contact with excited mobs on more than three occasions,--the affair of Coldbath Fields, in the year 1833, the Chartist gathering in 1848, and the skirmish in the Park, of July, 1855. On each of these occasions the crowd was immediately dispersed, and whatever irritation might have existed at the time, it quickly died away. There seems to be no fear that a London mob will ever prove a serious thing in the face of our present corps of policemen. A repet.i.tion of the Lord George Gordon riots would be an impossibility.

Those who shudder at the idea of an outbreak in the metropolis, containing two millions and a half of people and at least fifty thousand of the "dangerous cla.s.ses," forget that the capital is so wide that its different sections are totally unknown to each other. A mob in London is wholly without cohesion, and the individuals composing it have but few feelings, thoughts, or pursuits in common. They would immediately break up before the determined attack of a band of well-trained men who know and have confidence in each other. The genuine Londoner, moreover, is no fighter; he will "slang" and "chaff" wittily with his tongue, but he will not come to blows. Those who have any experience in the _gamins_ of the great towns in England must have observed the vast difference between the want of pugnacity in the c.o.c.kney-bred boy, and the love of fisticuffs among the youths of Bristol, Birmingham, or Manchester, which are the nurseries of prize-fighters. The great town has sharpened the brain of the Londoner, but unstrung his sinews and cowed his courage, and he is a pigmy in the hands of the vigorous provincials. The middle cla.s.ses are an exception, and we doubt not that the same spirit which marched with the trained-bands from London to Gloucester, in the civil war, is still to be found among them.

We believe that the only quarter in which any formidable riot could take place would be eastward, in the neighbourhood of the Docks, where there are at least twelve thousand sailors in the river or on sh.o.r.e, ready for a spree, fearless and powerful, and acting with an undoubted _esprit de corps_. These, if a.s.sociated with the seven or eight thousand dock-labourers and lightermen, would certainly produce a force difficult to cope with. For such emergencies the police are provided with side-arms, but we fear they are not well trained to their use, and it would take at least fourteen days to perfect them. If in any civil disturbance, however, it should come to cold steel, we think that the soldiers would prove far more effective, and their interference would be less galling than that of the police armed with murderous weapons. Prevention is the true duty of the civil force. One of the simplest methods for breaking up a crowd, in order that it may have no unity of action, is to march sections of constables, in double files of say fifty each; these sections moving a few yards apart speedily cleave by their weight the densest mob in twain. When once this division is made, the order is given to face right and left and march; by this means the ma.s.s is riven into a dozen helpless portions. If the mounted police can be brought into action, it is customary to march them in every direction through the crowd. Those who were in Hyde Park on the evening of the great Sunday gathering in July 1855, witnessed how effectually this singular manoeuvre was executed under the orders of Captain Labalmondiere. The hors.e.m.e.n, circulating among the immense crowd, entirely disintegrated the ma.s.s, and rendered it helpless for a common movement, and this without any altercation; for what use could there be in arguing with horses' heels? A policeman's staff thrust in your chest, accompanied by a peremptory order to stand back, would probably "rile" the best of us; but what is to be said against the push of a horse's flank or the descent of a heavy hoof? Everybody is glad to get as quickly as possible out of the way, and thus the whole company break as it were of their own accord.

Let us now revert to the Detective Police. When the Metropolitan force was established in 1829, the old Bow-street officers, not caring to work with the new system, retired from public life, and set up a private practice in hunting out offenders, in which occupation some of them continue to this day. For fifteen years there was no establishment of detectives connected with the police; but the inconvenience of not possessing so necessary a wheel in the constabulary machinery induced Sir James Graham, who had, perhaps, a leaning towards this branch of the profession, to revive the fraternity. The force consists of three inspectors, nine sergeants, and a body of police termed "plain-clothes men," whose services can be had at any moment. There are about six policemen in each division, who take upon themselves the duty of detectives when wanted, which affords a total number of 108 auxiliaries, upon whom the inspectors and sergeants can rely to carry out their orders with silence and address. In all great gatherings, these men are distributed among the crowd, dressed according to the character of the a.s.sembly. Thus, at an agricultural meeting, smock-frocks are worn, or the dress of a small farmer; at a review, the habiliments of a decent mechanic in his Sunday best. In this respect they follow the principle of Nature, who protects her creatures from observation by giving them coats of a colour somewhat similar to that of the soil they inhabit,--to the arctic fox, a fur white as the surrounding snow; and to the hare, a coat scarcely distinguishable from the brown heath in which she makes her form. It is the general rule to station these plain-clothes men as near as possible to the policemen of their own division, in order that they may be a.s.sisted in capturing prisoners.