Crime in the Port of Calcutta
| Published date | 01 July 1930 |
| Date | 01 July 1930 |
| Author | C. E. S. Fairweather |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3000300305 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Crime in the Port
of
Calcutta
WITH
SPECIAL REFERENCE
TO
THE
CARGO
PILFERAGE
QUESTION
By C. E. S. FAIRWEATHER
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Port Police), Calcutta
IN the January 19
29
number of the Police Journal (vol. ii.
p. 132) there was an article entitled' Cargo Pilferage and the
Police,' written by the Chairman of the Pilferage Committee of
the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom. I found
this article of absorbing interest as at that time I had been
engaged for over a year in similar inquiries. In the present
article I shall endeavour to outline some of the results.
The
first warehouse in the Port of Calcutta set up in 1690
by Job Charnock was soon followed by others. From the very
beginning the necessity for protection must have been obvious,
and in 1696 the merchants obtained from the Moghul Nawab
, the right to defend themselves.' Their first step was to build
the first Fort William, and their second to institute a kind of
police under a ' deputy
zemindar'
(landholder). They were
afraid both
of'
pillage' and
of'
pilferage.' Neither measure
was a complete success, for both apprehensions were fulfilled.
The
deputy zemindar, according to Holwell (of Black Hole
fame), committed sundry abuses and depredations, and the
pillage of the Port was perpetrated by the Nawab himself when,
in 1796, he sacked Calcutta.
In
1829 Lord William Bentinck appointed aCommittee
to consider the question of the improvement of the Police in
Calcutta and in this report we find the first reference to a River
Police.
The
main crime complained of was petty theft
, carried out by the River Police in collusion with servants of
boat owners.'
The
implied sequence in agency is interesting.
Matters apparently did not improve very
much;
for in
37°
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