No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
The paper analyses the scheme whereby provincial chief constables, encouraged by the Home Office, could call in the help of Scotland Yard's experienced detectives to investigate serious cases, especially murder, that were considered to be beyond the capacity of the local force to solve on its own. While the scheme was on balance successful in that more than 50% of such call-outs between 1919 and 1928 resulted in convictions, it is suggested that its significance extended beyond the mere profit and loss accounting approach. For the arrangements cast a mirror on many of the conflicts and some of the developments in policing during this period. Thus they illuminated the tension between respect for local, even if inexperienced, police autonomy, on the one hand, and efficiency and expertise on the other; or, more broadly, between constitutional localism and central governmental direction of policing in England and Wales. But with the press campaigning for more efficient use of the scheme, its arrangements actually attested to the favourable prospects, in the late 1920s and 1930s, for inter-force cooperation in the form of national crime prevention schemes (such as that designed to intercept cross-country ‘motor bandits’). It was thus one of the unacknowledged elements in the forcing house for organisational change experienced by British policing before the war.
1. Hansard HC Deb, vol 184, col 1980, 10 June 1925, Colonel Harry Day to Godfrey Locker-Lampson, Under-Secretary of State, Home Office. The present author is grateful to the British Academy for financial assistance in meeting research expenses.
2. Ibid, vol 215, col 571, 22 March 1928, John S Potts to William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary.
3. For minor exceptions see below n 29.
4. Summerscale, K The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House (London: Bloomsbury, 2009)Google Scholar esp pp 142, 156, 177, 179–180, 202–203, 238.
5. Begg, P and Skinner, K The Scotland Yard Files: 150 Years of the CID, 1842–1992 (London: Headline, 1992) p 47 Google Scholar . Most of the murder cases cited below will have entries in popular encyclopaedias of murder such as Wilson, C and Pitman, P Encyclopaedia of Murder (London: Pan Books, 1984).Google Scholar More considered analysis can be found in individual volumes of the ‘Notable British Trials’ series and its competitors such as the series published by G Bles in the 1920s. For discussion of the former, see Farmer, L ‘“with all the impressiveness and substantial value of truth”: notable trials and criminal justice, 1750–1930’ (2007) 1 Law and Humanities 57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . This paper does not address the socio-historical analysis of murder such as in D'Cruze, S et.al Murder (Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2006),Google Scholar nor literary studies of Victorian and post-Victorian causes célèbres on which there is an extensive literature.
6. See Moss, A and Skinner, K The Scotland Yard Files: Milestones in Crime Detection (Kew, Richmond, Surrey: The National Archives, 2006) p 33 Google Scholar , referring to the despatch of a Scotland Yard detective to Eskdaleside in Yorkshire in 1842, in order to investigate the murder of a 61-year-old woman.
7. It is widely accepted that the Police Act of 1964 signified the commencement of a major weakening in local police autonomy in this respect vis-à-vis the Home Office, a development that has gathered speed in succeeding decades. See, for example, Uglow, S Policing Liberal Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar ch 7 and 8; Newburn, T and Reiner, R ‘Policing and the police’ in Maguire, M, Morgan, R and Reiner, R (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn, 2007)Google Scholar ch 27; Reiner, R ‘The organisation and accountability of the police’ in McConville, M and Wilson, G (eds) The Handbook of the Criminal Justice Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar ch 2.
8. For the institutional arrangements prior to 1964 see, for example, SirNewsam, F The Home Office (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954) pp 37–38 Google Scholar. For the post-1964 period Reiner has noted that while police accountability to central government had significantly expanded, ‘At local level Chief Constables have become less accountable...’ See Reiner, R The Politics of the Police (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2nd edn, 1992) p 297 Google Scholar.
9. See below n 94 for examples of such conflicts.
10. However, while resistance to central direction was assumed, local control of the county police was to be jointly exercised by the county councils and magistracy after 1888 on the ground that the Conservative government responsible for the Local Government Act 1888 had feared that the newly elected county councillors would prove to be a dangerously radical lot. See Keith-Lucas, B and Richards, Pg A History of Local Government in the Twentieth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978) p 12 Google Scholar.
11. Newsam, above n 8, p 36. To the same effect are the observations of the then permanent secretary at the Home Office. See SirAnderson, J ‘the police’ (1929) 7(2) Public Administration 192 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 192. For more modern comments, see Bradley, Aw and Ewing, Kd Constitutional and Administrative Law (London: Longman, 15th edn, 2010) p 449 Google Scholar, who observe that ‘The British system of policing was based on the principle of local police forces accountable to local communities. Indeed in 1962 a royal commission on the police had rejected proposals for the creation of a national police force under the control of central government’.
12. Jennings appears to go further when he states that local control ‘does not, however, deny the philosophical principle that the control of the police should be a function of the organised state and not of an organised section of it’. See Jennings, Wi Principles of Local Government Law (London: University of London Press Ltd, 2nd edn, 1939) p 193 Google Scholar.
13. Keith, Ab The Constitution of England from Victoria to George VI, Vol II (London: Macmillan, 1940) p 53 Google Scholar; Howard, P Criminal Justice in England (New York: Macmillan, 1931) pp 170–174 Google Scholar. The Home Secretary's powers vis-à-vis the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Commissioner of the City of London Police were more extensive.
14. For example, the denial of Exchequer grants to smaller forces to compel them to amalgamate under the terms of the Local Government Act 1888. See SirTroup, E ‘Police administration, local and national’ (1928) 1 Police Journal cited in Anderson,Google Scholar above n 11, pp 195–196.
15. ‘The one point that commands near-universal agreement is that a national police force is undesirable'. See Lustgarten, L The Governance of Police (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1986) p 177 Google Scholar . Philosophical issues in the debate are briefly discussed in ibid, pp 177–179.
16. However, the power of local communities generally to ensure that chief constables deferred to local wishes regarding law enforcement was more attenuated in practice than that of central government. For the latter at least possessed some financial control through its allocation of central funds. Indeed it could be claimed that central ‘control’ in respect of the police was more intrusive than in the case of other local executive bodies. See DE Regan ‘The police service: an extreme example of central control over local authority staff’ (Spring 1996) Public Law 13.
17. The developments presaged changes which would, from the 1960s, see a major reduction in the number of separate police forces, the use of national data bases such as the Police National Computer, the Home Office Large Major Enquiries System (HOLMES), and governmental bodies such as COBRA and various anti-terrorist police networks.
18. Critchley, Ta A History of Police in England and Wales (London: Constable, new edn, 1979) p 179 Google Scholar.
19. For questions regarding the manner in which the Northamptonshire police conducted the investigation, see Normanton, H Trial of Alfred Arthur Rouse (London: Edinburgh and Glasgow: William Hodge and Co. Ltd, 2nd edn, 1952) esp pp iii-xiii Google Scholar . Scotland Yard was never officially called into the case though two plain-clothes Metropolitan Police officers, on behalf of the Northamptonshire police, arrested Rouse as he disembarked from a coach arriving in London.
20. Critchley, above n 18, p 176.
21. Before 1939 Scotland Yard approval was needed to permit Metropolitan Police officers even to leave the district on official business, including where summonsed to give evidence at a provincial court in a case that had been committed by London magistrates for trial outside the Metropolitan Police district. For details see [National Archives] MEPO2/5598. For the position where Metropolitan Police officers were called to give evidence at provincial traffic prosecutions, see MEPO2/5762. Some of the rules and restrictions had died a natural death by 1939.
22. Wensley, Fp Forty Years of Scotland Yard: A Record of a Lifetime's Service in the Criminal Investigation Department (New York: Garden City Publishing Company Inc, 1931) pp 36–39 Google Scholar.
23. Critchley, above n 18, p 160.
24. Begg and Skinner, above n 5, pp 71–79; Ascoli, D The Queen's Peace: The Origins and Development of the Metropolitan Police, 1829–1979 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979) pp 144–147 Google Scholar; Dilnot, G The Trial of the Detectives (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1928).Google Scholar
25. Critchley, above n 18, pp 160–162.
26. Newsam, above n 8, p 41.
27. Memorandum to Secretary of State HO45/19921, 5 February 1906. For a briefer account, see also Tullett, T Murder Squad (London: Grafton Books, 1996) pp 9–10 Google Scholar.
28. For the suspected murder of Mary Sophia Money in 1905, whose mutilated body was found in the mile-long Merstham Tunnel near Redhill on the Brighton & South Coast Railway line, see Adam, Hl ‘The Merstham Tunnel mystery’ in Goodman, J (ed) The Railway Murders (London: Sphere Books, 1986) pp 59 68 Google Scholar; Gray, A Crime on the Line (Penryn: Cornwall: Atlantic Publishers, 2000) p 18 Google Scholar.
29. The DPP could invite the police to investigate a possible criminal offence but could not order such an investigation. See Rozenberg, J The Case for the Crown: The Inside Story of the Director of Public Prosecutions (Wellingborough: Equation, 1987) p 15 Google Scholar . As a former DPP, Sir Theobald Mathew, expressed it, the director ‘can direct nobody...’ Cited in Skelhorn, N Public Prosecutor: The Memoirs of Sir Norman Skelhorn (London: Harrap, 1981) p 63 Google Scholar.
30. HO45/19921, above n 27. At a later stage it was laid down that Home Office approval would be required whenever local forces requested the ‘loan’ of Scotland Yard detectives. See ibid, Treasury to Home Office, 29 March 1906, where the financial arrangements were settled.
31. MPC to Under-Secretary of State [Sir Edward Troup] Home Office HO45/19921, 14 February 1906.
32. Henry had unaccountably pointed to the arrangement whereby the Post Office called in the Met to assist in investigating crimes committed by GPO staff, such as the stealing of letters and parcels in transit. But in fact such deployed Scotland Yard detectives came under the authority of the GPO for such purposes and were attached to the latter's Confidential Enquiry Branch for the duration. For a survey of the types of offences dealt with by the branch see Kay, Fg Royal Mail: The Story of the Posts in England from the Time of Edward IV to the Present Day (London: Rockliff Publishing, 1951)Google Scholar ch 15. See also MEPO4/261 Detective Officers Appointed to the General Post Office, 1829–1938.
33. Provincial forces were to be relieved of the costs incurred in calling in the Met on the assumption that the call was justified (the Home Office to decide in cases of dispute). Scotland Yard's were to be covered by a Police Vote and not from Metropolitan Police funds. See Treasury to Home Office HO45/19921, 29 March 1906. Future Metropolitan Police Commissioners nonetheless complained of the financial cost of responding to provincial chief constables' requests for help (below).
34. Ibid, CE Troup, to Chief Constables, 20 April 1906. See also SirTroup, E The Home Office (London and New York: Putnam's Sons Ltd, 1925) p 108 Google Scholar.
35. For the early days of the squad, whose duties were mainly connected with crimes committed within the Metropolitan Police district, see Tullett, above n 27, pp 14–15. Detective-Inspector Dew (see below) did, of course, travel to Canada to arrest Dr Crippen in 1910. See Connell, N Walter Dew: The Man Who Caught Crippen (Stroud, Glos: Sutton Publishing, 2006).Google Scholar
36. The Times 26, 27, 28 and 29 August 1908. The crime remained unsolved but see n 39 below.
37. The Times 27 June 1934. The officers involved were from the Brighton, Hove and Scotland Yard forces. For the Brighton Trunk Murder no 2, see later.
38. HO45/19921, Murder of Edwin Haskell, May 4, 1909; Bresler, F Lord Goddard: A Biography of Rayner Goddard, Lord Chief Justice of England (London: Harrap, 1977) pp 30 47 Google Scholar . A brief description of the case is in Tullett, above n 27, pp 15–16. The victim's mother was tried twice for the murder but was acquitted on the second occasion.
39. HO45/19921, minute dated 7 May 1909. As to the two cases where the Met refused to act, one was described as the ‘Sunderland murder’, presumably referring to the murder of a moneylender, Hermann Cohen. See The Times 10 and 12 March 1909. The case was never solved but the killer may have been John Alexander Dickman, later convicted and executed for the murder of a colliery wages clerk, John Nisbet, aboard a local train travelling from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in March 1910. Dickman was also suspected of the Luard murder in 1908 (above). The present writer cannot identify the second case.
40. Troup to Chief Constables HO45/19921, 2 July 1909. By this time Troup was the Home Office permanent secretary.
41. Critchley, above n 18, p 191.
42. See, for example, Tullett, above n 27, pp 47–55. There are numerous accounts of the case. See, for example, Watson, Er ‘George Joseph Smith (1915)’ in Hodge, H (ed) Famous Trials 2 (London: Penguin, reprint (nd, c 1994)Google Scholar of 1948 edn (originally appearing in 1922 in the Notable British Trials series published by William Hodge & Co)); also in Mortimer, J (ed) Famous Trials (London: Penguin, 1984).Google Scholar
43. Technically he was tried only for the murder by drowning of Bessie Mundy in Herne Bay in 1912, although prosecution evidence of ‘system’, in respect of other drownings, was admitted. While some sources believe that the single indictment was a requirement of English law, the present writer cannot identify the legal authority for this proposition. The DPP's reason for trying Smith on only one murder indictment was probably tactical in that the Crown would not be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt the murders of Margaret Lofty and Alice Burnham but could introduce evidence of ‘system’ in respect of their deaths in order to challenge Smith's claim of accident in all the cases. The prosecutor, Archibald Bodkin, who became DPP in 1920, ‘had spent many hours discussing tactics with his friend [Travers, later Mr Justice] Humphreys and, when he rose in a court crowded with expensively dressed people his plan was settled.’ See Jackson, R Case for the Prosecution: A Biography of Sir Archibald Bodkin (London: Arthur Barker Ltd, 1962) p 150 Google Scholar . The most recent account of the case repeats the claim that a person could be tried only for a single murder at a time. See Robins, J The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath (London: John Murray, 2010) p 143 Google Scholar.
44. Like the Blackpool family, Alice Burnham's father had read the account of Margaret Lofty's death. He contacted his solicitor who then telephoned the Buckinghamshire police. The latter in turn contacted Scotland Yard.
45. Macready to Home Office HO45/19921, 28 June 1919. The earlier correspondence between the Met and the local force regarding the expenses issue is in MEPO3/262B, Murder of Nellie Florence Ruby Rault... 1919.
46. The Times 14, 22 and 31 May 1919.
47. See above n 45. The Metropolitan Police file contains numerous letters, some to the Bedfordshire police and some to Scotland Yard, naming the alleged killer or suggesting where the solution lay. No doubt other police files on unsolved cases contained similar anonymous or signed accusations.
48. The Times 28 January, 19 March and 19 June 1919.
49. Minute by Simpson HO45/19921, 7 July 1919.
50. Troup, above n 14, p 107.
51. Emsley, C The Great British Bobby: A History of British Policing from the 18th Century to the Present (London: Quercus, 2010) p 233 Google Scholar.
52. Both cases involved Marshall Hall. See Marjoribanks, E Famous Trials of Marshall Hall (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1951)Google Scholar ch XI. The Holt case raised important issues regarding the lacuna between sanity and insanity, contributing to the decision to establish the Atkin committee inquiry on insanity and crime in 1922.
53. There were also financial pressures on the Met. Scotland Yard thus sought to claim a detachment allowance for its detectives investigating the murder of a widow, Sarah Seabrook, in Redbourn, Hertfordshire in 1921. It was sharply informed that such allowances were only designed for cases where policemen had been lent to another force that had been unable to maintain order in its districts. See Troup to MPC HO45/19921, 5 May 1921. For the conviction of a 14-year-old boy, Donald Litton, for the widow's murder, see The Times 29 January, 4, 7 and 18 February and 23 June 1921. See also Heslop, P Hertfordshire Casebook (Dunstable: The Book Castle, 2007)Google Scholar where the victim is named as Jessie Freeman.
54. Simpson to Chief Constables HO45/19921, 24 July 1919. There was a fine balance to be struck between discouraging provincial chief constables from making frivolous calls to Scotland Yard and deterring them from making the wise decision to call in the Met. In the case of disagreement the Home Secretary would decide who bore the cost. For later discussion by 1939 when the bureaucratic rules were eased see MEPO2/5003.
55. Horwood to Home Office HO45/19921, 23 July 1920.
56. The Times 17 April, 6, 16, 17, 18 and 26 June, 1–6 and 8–10 November 1920. There are numerous accounts of the case, including a Notable British Trials volume; Marjoribanks, above n 52, pp 342–353; Browne, Dg and Tullett, Ev Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases (London: Companion Book Club, 1952) pp 143, 145–146, 149 Google Scholar.
57. The Times 31 May 1920. She was the 26-year-old daughter of a Sunderland sea captain. In May 1920 the Swansea police circulated her description throughout the country, describing her as the ‘bigamous wife of George Shotton’. While no trace of her was found at the time, Shotton was convicted at the end of July 1920 of bigamously marrying her and was sentenced to 18 months with hard labour. See The Times 4, 6 and 28 July 1920. His wife divorced him in 1923. See J77/1989/2335. For the subsequent discovery in 1961 of Mamie's skeleton in an abandoned Welsh lead mine and where forensic examination revealed that she had suffered severe violence, see The Times 15 December 1961; MEPO2/8778. An inquest jury later named Shotton as her murderer, but he had died in 1958, aged 78.
58. Sir Ernley Blackwell to Horwood HO45/19921, 5 October 1920. Blackwell was assistant under-secretary (legal) at the Home Office.
59. It was stated in evidence to the Desborough committee. See Critchley, above n 18, p 191.
60. Troup to Home Secretary HO45/19921, 31 January 1922.
61. Cf ibid, for suggestion to issue a regulation requiring provincial forces to send a telegram to the Home Office within 24 hours in any cases of murder where the local force lacked trained detective manpower and where the murderer was unknown. The chief constable would then have to state whether he wished to call upon the assistance of the Met. Nothing came of it.
62. Presumably he meant the Bournemouth police, formed in 1856, and which amalgamated with the Dorset, not Hampshire, police in 1967.
63. The case concerned the murder of a 31-year-old woman from London, Irene Wilkins, killed by a Bournemouth chauffeur, Thomas Allaway, just before Christmas 1921. She had placed an advertisement in the Morning Post, seeking a post as a school cook. Copies of mis-spelt telegrams that he had sent to her and to other women were eventually published in the press, leading to his arrest four months after Wilkins' murder and to his execution after trial and conviction. See, for example, Jackson, S Mr Justice Avory (London: Gollancz, 1935) pp 261–275 Google Scholar; Lang, G Mr Justice Avory (London: Herbert Jenkins Ltd, 1935) pp 159–169 Google Scholar; O'Donnell, B The Trials of Mr Justice Avory (London: Rich & Cowan, 1935) pp 168–178 Google Scholar.
64. As we saw above, this was not strictly true insofar as the Police Vote covered the Met Police's deployment at the (justifiable) behest of the provincial force. The likelihood is that the Police Vote was being stretched to breaking point as a result of the Geddes axe (below). Plus ca change. See Guardian 14 September 2010 on cuts to the policing budget imposed by the Coalition government from 2010.
65. For the Geddes ‘axe’, see Clarke, P Hope and Glory: Britain, 1900–2000 (London: Penguin, 2nd edn, 2004) pp 108–109 Google Scholar; Taylor, A J P English History, 1914–1945 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970) pp 240–241 Google Scholar.
66. Horwood to Home Office HO45/19921, 10 February 1922.
67. Ascoli, above n 24, p 209.
68. Home Office to MPC HO45/19921, 5 April 1923. Scotland Yard's intervention appears to have borne fruit and to have identified George Smithson (William Weatherell), ‘Raffles in Real Life’, as the burglar (along with George Ingram, known as ‘The Doctor’). Newspapers reported their remand in custody by Clerkenwell magistrates pending trial for burglary from Middleton Park and from other country residences. Three others faced trial for receiving. See The Times 23 June 1923. For Smithson see HO144/11473; R Ireland Criminology, Class and Cricket: Raffles and Real Life (unpublished, April 2010); ‘Gentleman George’[George Smithson] Raffles in Real Life (London: Hutchinson, c 1930) pp 159–171 Google Scholar; Murphy, R Smash and Grab: Gangsters in the London Underworld (London: Faber and Faber, 1993) pp 39–41 Google Scholar. The former CID chief at Scotland Yard, Fred Wensley, referred to the two burglars as Grey and Green. See Wensley, above n 22, pp 188–193. The present author is grateful to Richard Ireland for sight of Smithson's autobiography.
69. Hansard HC Deb, vol 125, col 696–697, 17 February 1920, NG Doyle to E Shortt, Home Secretary. One Labour MP, a retired Royal Navy commander and son of a baronet, even suggested that the crime wave might be checked if detectives were to spend less of their time undertaking covert surveillance of trade unionists. See ibid, col 697. It is known that the Special Branch had been coordinating intelligence reports on organised labour since 1919. See Morgan, J Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales, 1900–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) p 93 Google Scholar.
70. N Darbyshire and B Hilliard The Flying Squad (London: Headline, 1994) pp 15–22. Britain was not alone in perceiving the presence of a crime wave. Crime waves were reported in the British press as occurring in France and the United States. See The Times 13 April 1920 (France); ibid, 17 December 1920; 17 April 1922 (United States).
71. The Times 21 January 1920; cf reference to an ‘epidemic’ of post office raids in ‘Justice of the Peace’ 24 January 1920, p 40.
72. A considerable increase in the number of beggars and of those pretending to be beggars was anticipated. See The Times 31 January 1920.
73. The Times 28 April 1921. He advocated that property owners take out insurance policies to cover the risks of riot and civil commotion.
74. This seemed to be a pervasive complaint. One correspondent complained that at a Saturday cinema showing at which there were many children the film depicted six murders and a ‘particularly ghastly suicide’. See ibid, 7 November 1925. See generally, Springhall, J Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta Rap, 1830–1996 (London: Macmillan, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ch 4.
75. The Times 22 January 1920.
76. See Daily Mirror 30 September 1921, 9 March, 5 June and 23 July 1923 for similar references to crime waves.
77. The Times 4 July 1921.
78. See the comparison described at length in The Times 4 July 1921. Indeed the American author of the newspaper item, Winthrop D. Lane, rejected the proposition that the United States was itself experiencing a ‘crime wave’.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid, 21 January 1920; Daily Mirror 22, 24, 28 and 29 January 1920. Much literature has focused on the rise of ‘gangland’ after the First World War. See, for example, Morton, J Gangland: London's Underworld (London: Warner Books, 1993)Google Scholar ch 1; Campbell, D The Underworld (London: BBC Books, 1994)Google Scholar ch 1. The Metropolitan Police Flying Squad was established at the end of the First World War to combat the anticipated wave of post-war crime as the troops returned home. See Darbyshire and Hilliard, above n 70, ch 2–3.
81. Hansard HC Deb, vol 151, col 1487, 9 March 1922.
82. Cmd 1787, 1922.
83. For these figures see Sir E Ruggles-Brise The Movement of Crime in England and Wales Since the London Congress, 1872[of the International Prison Commission] PCOM7/60, 10 July 1925. Ruggles-Brise added that the annual number of those actually tried for murder varied between 58 and 68. One writer has argued that the homicide figures for the nineteenth century are under-stated. See Taylor, H ‘the politics of the rising crime statistics of England and Wales’ (1998) 1(2) Crime, Histoire et Societies/Crime, History and Societies 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The author adds that the statistics of murder between 1880 and 1966 maintained a cumulative average of 150 per annum, with a maximum variation of 20 per cent on either side of the average. It is also the case that between 1923 and 1938 the annual average of persons committed for trial for murder was at its lowest figure for more than a hundred years. The figures were 56.5 per annum in 1931–1938, 70.7 in 1908–1913 and 72.4 in 1946–1956. See Stevenson, J British Society, 1914–1945 (London: Penguin, 1984) p 372 Google Scholar.
84. Internal Home Office figures showed that of the 19 in which no arrests had been made, only four fell within the Metropolitan Police district, all of them in 1920–1921. See Supposed Murders in 1912–1913 and 1920 & 1921 HO45/19921 nd, c 1922.
85. ‘Crime riddles: [murder]mysteries which remain unsolved’News of the World 30 December 1923.
86. ‘Unsolved crimes: nine murderers in 3 years not tracked’Daily Mail 7 March 1924.
87. The newspaper's list of cases includes a number of celebrated cases discussed above, such as the Merstham Tunnel murder, the Nellie Rault case, and the murder of Mrs Luard. Other celebrated cases include the acquittal of Robert Wood for the ‘Camden Town’ murder of Emily Dimmock in 1907, the ‘Green Bicycle’ case involving the acquittal of Ronald Light at Leicester in 1920, and two other train murders, that of the seven-year-old Willie Starchfield whose father was acquitted of his murder in 1914 and the murder of Nurse Florence Nightingale Shore on a Victoria to Lewes train in 1920.
88. There are not only countless bulky encyclopaedias of murder but also numerous encyclopaedias of unsolved murders in England and Wales. For a selection see Morton, J The Who's Who of Unsolved Murders (London: Kyle Cathie Ltd, 1995)Google Scholar ; Wilson, K Unsolved Crimes (London: Robinson, 2002)Google Scholar; Canning, J (ed) Unsolved Murders and Mysteries (London: Warner Books, 1992)Google Scholar; Castleden, R Great Unsolved Crimes (London: Futura, 2007).Google Scholar They are of variable quality and coverage.
89. For these developments see Critchley, above n 18, pp 183, 195, 219.
90. See Minutes of meeting of chief constables' committee, Home Office HO358/2, 28 June 1922, item 17.
91. Goodman, J The Burning of Evelyn Foster (London: Headline, 1988) p 53 Google Scholar. After a coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of wilful murder, the press, public and even Scotland Yard itself waited in vain for Chief Constable Fullarton James to call in the Met. No arrests were made but it has been suggested that the killer was Ernest Brown, hanged in February 1934 for the separate murder of his employer. See ibid, pp 139–145; Leech, Tj A Date With the Hangman (London: True Crime Library, 1992) pp 27–35 Google Scholar.
92. For details of Bodkin's alleged subterfuge when the chief constable of Surrey refused to call in the Met, and which put his (Bodkin's) assistant, GR Paling, in the awkward position of apparently acting as a detective over the head of the Surrey police, see Jackson, above n 43, p 195. The present writer could find no confirmation of Jackson's, claim in the Vaquier files in the National Archives, though they suggest another ‘confidential’ inquiry by Bodkin in the case without the knowledge of the local police, just days before Vaquier's execution. See Savage to Superintendent MEPO3/1604, 6 August 1924. There are numerous accounts of the case. See, for example, Wild, R and Curtis-Bennett, D ‘Curtis’: The Life of Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, KC (London: Cassell, 1937) pp 185–194 Google Scholar; SirHastings, P The Autobiography of Sir Patrick Hastings (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1948) pp 159–175 Google Scholar.
93. The Times 18 September 1926. Emsley notes that the Police Review had responded to the incident by stating that ‘the powers of County Chief Constables be limited in like manner to those possessed by Borough Chiefs. This is not the age for autocrats’. See Police Review 1 April 1926, cited in Emsley, above n 51, p 140n.
94. Local police bodies could obviously pass votes of no confidence on their chief constables, calling upon them to resign, or they could seek to have them suspended or removed. Borough police bodies, but not county bodies, had the power to dismiss chief constables. For conflicts between provincial chief constables and their local committees during the General Strike see, for example, Morgan, above n 69, pp 132–133. For conflict in Oxford over police handling of political riots in 1936, see Keith-Lucas and Richards, above n 10, p 26. For the controversial and strained relationship between Captain Athelstan Popkess, chief constable of Nottingham, and his local watch committee between 1930 and 1960, see HO45/24711; Royal Military Police Journal, Second Quarter, 1967, p 3; Keith-Lucas and Richards, above n 10, p 27. Constitutional and administrative lawyers will be familiar with the saga of William Ridge, chief constable of Brighton, dismissed by his watch committee following two acquittals on charges of conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice and of corruption, respectively. The House of Lords declared the dismissal ultra vires. See Ridge v Baldwin[1964] AC 40 (HL). For the details of the first criminal prosecution in the case see Furneaux, R Famous Criminal Cases V (London: Allan Wingate, 1958) pp 161–207 Google Scholar. In November 2010 it was announced that the chief constable of North Yorkshire would face a disciplinary charge of gross misconduct. See Guardian 26 November 2010. The Police Reform and Social Responsibilities Bill published on 1 December 2010 proposes directly elected police ‘commissioners’ possessing powers of dismissal over chief constables. Whether the reform will increase local police accountability to their communities without compromising the political independence of the police is a moot point. For sceptical views on the part of retired senior police officers see correspondence in The Times 3 December 2010.
95. Commons Debates, 10 April 1924 (Dr Spero).
96. Indeed it was only under Defence Regulation 39 during the Second World War that the Home Secretary acquired powers to give specific or general directions to chief constables. The institution of the regional commissioner scheme enhanced regional police organisation. See Critchley, above n 18, pp 228–229; Keith-Lucas and Richards, above n 10, p 46.
97. After all, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner himself was accountable directly to the Home Secretary, while county and borough police were answerable to different joint bodies, the former to standing joint committees of justices and county councillors, and the latter to watch committees composed of elected councillors and the mayor acting as a justice of the peace.
98. For the role of the police in public order issues, including the General Strike, see, for example, Emsley, above n 51, pp 136–143; Critchley, above n 18, pp 198–200; Ascoli, above n 24, pp 12–21; Browne Rise of Scotland Yard, above n 56, pp 330–332. For the controversies involving the corrupt activities of Sergeant Goddard of Vine Street police station and of the controversial arrests of Major Sheppard, Major Graham Murray and the couple arrested in Hyde Park, Irene Savidge and Chiozza Money, see Emsley above n 51, pp 144–145; Ascoli, above n 24, pp 213–216; Critchley, above n 18, pp 200–201 (Critchley unaccountably does not refer to the Goddard affair); Emsley, C ‘Sergeant Goddard: the story of a rotten apple or a diseased orchard?’ in Levy, R and Srebnick, A (eds) Crime and Culture/Text and Context: International Essays on the History of Crime (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).Google Scholar The controversies led to the Report of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure, Cmd 3297, 1929. For sharp criticism of the role of Archibald Bodkin, the DPP, in the Savidge-Chiozza Money affair see R Jackson, above n 43, pp 218–227.
99. The murder of Gutteridge by Browne and Kennedy, both of whom were subsequently hanged in May 1928, is an extensively covered case. Among many sources, see Hastings, M The Other Mr Churchill (London: Harrap, 1963) pp 131–137 Google Scholar; Jackson, R The Chief: The Biography of Gordon Hewart, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1922–40 (London: Harrap, 1959) pp 205–206 Google Scholar; Jackson, above n 63, pp 334–349; SirHumphreys, T A Book of Trials (London: Heinemann, 1953) pp 184–194 Google Scholar; Browne, Dg Sir Travers Humphreys: A Biography (London: George G Harrap, 1960) pp 252 267 Google Scholar. Scotland Yard was involved from an early stage since the car used by Browne and Kennedy during the murder had been stolen from a doctor not far away in Billericay and was then discovered the next morning abandoned in the Brixton-Camberwell area. A spent cartridge and blood on the running board were found. However it was not until January 1928 that Browne was arrested by Chief Detective-Inspector James Berrett of Scotland Yard. For a brief description of Berrett see Ex-Deputy Commander Rawlings, W A Case for the Yard (London: John Long, 1961) pp 57 58 Google Scholar.
100. Daily Express 4 October 1927.
101. Scotland Yard's Flying Squad had been using such vehicles since 1920. See Darbyshire and Hilliard, above n 70, pp 30–36.
102. A few had been installed in some counties and also in London during Horwood's regime as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. But the significant introduction occurred during Lord Byng's tenure as commissioner between 1928 and 1931 and was extended under the aegis of his successor, Viscount Trenchard.
103. Daily Express 5 October 1927.
104. In regard to the Gutteridge case, the irony was that the crime was solved not by Scotland Yard's finest, who for many weeks had found no leads, but indirectly as a result of old-fashioned beat policing. Thus a combination of good fortune and the keen observation by a patrolling policeman in Sheffield of a car with false number plates that had been previously involved in a traffic collision led inquiries to Browne. For the details see SirSillitoe, P Cloak Without Dagger (London: Cassell, 1955) pp 96–106 Google Scholar. Sillitoe was chief constable of Sheffield City Police at the time. He later became chief constable of Glasgow and was subsequently appointed director-general of the Security Service, MI5.
105. It is unnecessary to set out the details here. The thrust of the riposte was that detectives were available throughout the Metropolitan Police district 24 hours a day and that communications were adequate to the task of transmitting messages from provincial forces. Moreover it was mere ‘journalistic imagination’ to suggest that when some London police stations were closed between 10 pm and 6 am, members of the public with urgent messages to convey between those hours were obliged to use the notebook and pencil nailed to the police station's locked door.
106. Newsam to Joynson-Hicks HO45/19921 7 October 1927.
107. Daily Express 14 October 1927.
108. The newspaper referred to an un-named case in ‘very recent years’ where two men had shot dead the victim. There was no doubt as to the men's guilt. However, the local police did not call in Scotland Yard, missed crucial evidence and adopted methods described as ‘elementary and foolish’, as a result of which the murderers escaped. The present writer has been unable to identify the case.
109. In fact the number of separate police forces fell from 183 in 1939 to 131 in 1947. See Critchley, above n 18, p 244n.
110. Minutes of Chief Constables' conference, Home Office, HO 358/2 15 November 1929, item 21, summarising the Minutes of Conference of Chief Detective Officers, no 3 Area, Bradford, 29 January 1929.
111. Daily Express 7 January 1929; Daily Mail 7 January 1929.
112. Early instances of this were witnessed by the deployment under central ‘inducement’ (‘direction’ would be too strong a word in the light of British constitutional proprieties) of different police forces to South Wales during the miners' strike of 1921. See Morgan, above n 69, p 101. In respect of the General Strike of 1926 the same author, in a chapter entitled ‘Towards a national police force’, observed that, ‘F Division [the Police division of the Home Office]“directed” operations without any compulsion being applied. In all, police were imported by nine forces in disturbed areas from over thirty other areas...’ See ibid, p 130.
113. See Sir R Clarke ‘Can we foil the motor bandit?’[London] Evening News 15 January 1927; also Birmingham Gazette 3 February 1933, reporting that Scotland Yard was targeting ‘motor-car thieves – many of whom are responsible for “smash and grab” raids’. For Flying Squad concerns in 1929 that their own vehicles were being worn out by constant usage and by the need to keep up with the motor bandits' latest ‘borrowed’ cars, see Darbyshire and Hilliard, above n 70, pp 65-66.
114. See HO144/15844-6 for details of the Agility scheme.
115. According to one author, the Scotland Yard team would work, in the post-war era, under the provincial chief constable of the force concerned. See Harrison, R Whitehall 1212 (London: Arrow Books, 1958) p 107 Google Scholar. It seems more likely, however, that at worst they would be primi inter pares.
116. The Times 3 and 4 June 1913; Gray, above n 28, pp 21–22. Arrested by Chief Inspector Gough of Scotland Yard and Detective-Sergeant Walters of Reading police, Winifred Franks was found guilty but insane of the murder of her young son in May 1913.
117. Hansard HC Deb, col 442, 13 February 1929, Mr Hayes to Sir V Henderson, Under-Secretary of State, Home Office.
118. For a Scotland Yard table listing all 41 cases, together with additional details of dates, the provincial force involved, the nature of case (they were not all murder cases, as noted above) and the outcome, see MEPO3/2970.
119. The non-murder cases were a threat to kidnap, a suspicious but eventually non-homicide death, a notorious sex procurement case in East Sussex in 1925, on which see Jackson, above n 63, pp 314–332, an armed attack in Cheshire, a conspiracy and larceny case in Dover in 1923, the Lord Jersey burglary in 1922 discussed previously, and a well-known defamatory libel case in West Sussex discussed in Browne, above n 99, pp 199–202.
120. Report of the Departmental Committee on Detective Work and Procedure vol 1, 1938, paras 74–75. Though the details and, in particular, the names of the cases and the outcomes were not officially stated in the report, they clearly included the five provincial cases between those dates discussed in Tullett, above n 27, pp 99–131 (it is unnecessary to provide the details here). For the ghoulishly named Brighton Trunk Murder Cases no 1 and no 2, both in 1934, see Hyde, Hm Norman Birkett: A Life of Lord Birkett of Ulverston (London: Reprint Society, 1965) pp 394–418 Google Scholar. For the remaining years before 1940, provincial cases involving Scotland Yard detectives between 1929 and 1930 and between 1937 and the end of 1939 can be found in the following sources: The Times 8 July 1929; McClure, J Killers (London: Fontana/Collins, 1976) pp 54–95 Google Scholar , esp at p 60; Whittington-Egan, R The Ordeal of Philip Yale Drew (London: Penguin, 1989)Google Scholar; Tullett, above n 27, pp 88–94; Burt, L Commander Burt of Scotland Yard (London: Heinemann, 1959) pp 131–145 Google Scholar, 159–170; Adamson, I The Great Detective: A Life of Deputy Commander Reginald Spooner of Scotland Yard (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1966) pp 78–91 Google Scholar; and Hatherill, G A Detective's Story (London: Andre Deutsch, 1971) pp 83–97 Google Scholar. Again the details are not provided here but can be found in the sources cited.
121. Cf West, Dj Murder Followed by Suicide (London: Heinemann, 1965).Google Scholar
122. Report of the Departmental Committee on Detective Work and Procedure, above n 120.
123. Cf ‘... since homicide is regarded as a most serious offence it is probably more often reported than other forms of crime. The statistics of homicide are therefore probably closer to the real level of the offence...’ See Emsley, C Crime and Society in England (London: Longman, 2nd edn, 1991) p 40 Google Scholar. Between 1880 and 1966 there was a stable average of around 150 murders per annum. See Godfrey, B and Lawrence, P Crime and Justice, 1750–1950 (Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2005) pp 90–94 Google Scholar who refer to other studies arguing for significant under-reporting of homicides, a view also expressed in Wensley, above n 22, p 14. For England and Wales from 1974 to 2007–2008 (November) an average of 554 murders per annum (excluding the Harold Shipman effect), that is, four times the average of the earlier twentieth century, is suggested by the Home Office figures cited in ‘Fact file UK: part three, crime’Guardian (supplement) 26 April 2010.
124. For an analysis of detective training and the emergence of detective ‘doctrine’ in the 1930s see the present author's The Development of Detective Doctrine in the 1930s (in preparation).
125. That is, before the era of mass (non-compulsory) fingerprinting commenced in May 1948 in Blackburn, Lancashire, after Scotland Yard had been called in to investigate the murder of four-year-old June Devaney, abducted from her hospital bed. Forty thousand males in the town had their prints taken before Peter Griffiths' prints showed a match with prints found on a bottle on a ward trolley. See Thorwald, J The Marks of Cain (London: Pan, 1968) pp 137–142 Google Scholar; Morton, J Catching the Killers: A History of Crime Detection (London: Ebury Press, 2001) pp 38 41 Google Scholar.
126. There is a strong possibility that the killer was an American, Earle Leonard Nelson, hanged for murder in Winnipeg in 1928, and suspected of many more murders. See for example, Whittington-Egan, R and M Murder on File (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2005) pp 143 144 Google Scholar; Murder of Vera... Hoad..., 1924–1934, MEPO3/1603 which includes correspondence with the chief constable of Winnipeg.
127. The Essex Constabulary also lost no time in asking the nearby RAF authorities to provide airmen to help in the search for the girl's missing clothes. For these points see The Times 20 January 1939.
128. The Times 25 January 1939. The Times 25 and 26 January, 30 March, 1 April 1939; Browne and Tullett, above n 56, pp 361–363; Evans, C The Father of Forensics (London: Ieon, 2009) p 276 Google Scholar . See also Murder of Pamela Coventry MEPO3/806 1939–1940.
129. For the creation of the Met's scientific laboratory, established next to the force's Hendon Police College that had formally opened in 1934 to train the uniformed branch (the earlier idea for a national police college having come to naught), see Boyle, A Trenchard: Man of Vision (London: Collins, 1962) pp 620–622 Google Scholar, 643–644, 660–661. In fact a number of small police laboratories had already existed in Cardiff, Bristol and Nottingham. See Ward, J Crime Busting: Breakthroughs in Forensic Science (London: Blandford Press, 1998) p 173 Google Scholar. For criminal records offices in the Met and at the West Yorkshire Constabulary at Wakefield (both pre-First World War), see Critchley, above n 18, pp 209, 258.
130. Report of the Departmental Committee on Detective Work and Procedure, above n 120, para 60.
131. Perhaps one ought to say ‘apparently cleared up’ in respect of those cases, such as that in 1922 of the Hay-on-Wye solicitor, Major Armstrong (later hanged), where doubts were present or later emerged. See Beales, M Dead Not Buried: Herbert Rowse Armstrong (London: Robert Hale, 1995)Google ScholarPubMed where Armstrong's innocence is strongly argued. For the coincidental nature of the late Martin Beales' involvement in the case see ibid. For the conventional view of Armstrong's guilt see Odell, R Exhumation of a Murder: The Life and Trial of Major Armstrong (London: Souvenir Press, 1988).Google Scholar
132. See above n 120, for reference to various Scotland Yard detectives.
133. Ibid for the various sources.
134. Cf the clear-up rate (to conviction), between 1919 and 1928, of more than 50% of otherwise apparently intractable cases, noted previously.
135. London's deputy mayor for policing has recently claimed that the power and autonomy of chief constables in England and Wales have now become excessive and ought to be curbed. See The Times 5 August 2010.