Police and the Press
| Author | A. F. Wilcox |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3500800204 |
| Date | 01 April 1935 |
| Published date | 01 April 1935 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Police and the Press
By A. F.
WILCOX
Junior
Station Inspector, Metropolitan Police Colleg
•.
The Value
of
Publicity
Tothe ordinary newspaper reader one of the many
remarkable features in connexion with the recent
Brighton
trunk
murder
was
the
extent to which the police
sought the aid of newspapers in their investigations.
That
this should occasion any surprise at all emphasizes
the modern tendency to regard the detection of crime as a
secret service.
The
old view, based on the principle
that
every citizen is a guardian of the peace, has always been
that
publicity is essential to police work.
In
an effort to secure
greater help from the public, Sir
John
Fielding, the Bow
Street magistrate who did so
much
to organize the English
police system in
the
eighteenth century, circulated apaper
called The Public Advertiser, containing particulars of stolen
property and persons wanted for crime, in order
that
it might
be posted up in public places all over
the
country.
Later
this
publication became The Public Hue and Cry and, in the
nineteenth century, finally developed into The
Police
Gazette.
It
is only in recent times
that
The Police Gazette has been
withdrawn from public circulation
and
reserved for con-
fidential official use.
To-day, the police use those three modern vehicles of
publicity-the
Press, the B.B.C., and the
cinema-as
links
with the general public, and of these the daily newspaper has
by far the most widespread appeal. An instructive example
of the part played by newspapers and members of the public
in the detection of crime is afforded by ex-Superintendent
A. F. Neil in his account of
the"
Brides in the
Bath"
case.
143
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