Review: Fire on the Beat
| Date | 01 July 1935 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3500800326 |
| Published date | 01 July 1935 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
THE POLICE JOURNAL
A survey of the other cases reveals men sharing the iniquity of the
women,
but
few men, if any, could have played the part of devoted and
affectionate nurse or attendant as some of the poisoners did.
It
might be said that Helene Jegado, like some of the others, missed
her vocation; as an actress she might have shone on the stage; or, was
hers
just
a case of " self-dramatization as a ministering
angel"?
Seldom
did she betray her real feeling,
but
once at least she was seen to be glancing
at one of her hated victims with
the"
look of a wild beast, a tiger
cat".
This
lapse may have been due to the pain of a cancer from which she was suffering.
In
another case a woman killed her husband with a single dose of
arsenic within forty-eight hours.
The
medical evidence was inconclusive,
and the defence made much of her jocularity with him
just
before giving
the fatal dose. But was she, too, acting a
part?
The
jury
acquitted her,
but
the judge dwelt very severely on her admitted intimacy with a vain-
glorious and worthless cad.
A curious case given is that of a woman of very humble birth,
but
filled with insatiable ambition. She secured an elderly
but
enormously
wealthy lover of very high station, and somehow obtained and retained
an inexplicable hold on him, after treating him with contumely amounting to
physical cruelty. Only when she fears disinheritance does she compass his
death. Interested parties secured a hand-picked
jury
who brought in a
verdict of suicide; and the lady subsequently defeated an attempt to deprive
her of her ill-gotten wealth on the ground of
"undue
influence".
To
all who take any interest in human motives and temperaments
these researches will afford much food for reflection. With a spice of
cynicism here and there the work is easy to read and very well produced.
FIRE
ON
THE
BEAT.
The
Common Sense of Rescue and Attack.
pp. 40. Reprinted from the Police Review, with a prefatory note by
LIEUT-.COLONEL
G.
SYMONDS,
D.S.O., Fire Adviser to the Home Office.
(Published by Police Review Publishing Co.) Price
6d.
IN the interest of us all it is to be hoped that every policeman will " read,
mark, learn, and inwardly
digest"
the admirable pamphlet before us.
It
begins by emphasizing the duty of giving the alarm at the earliest
possible moment to the nearest Fire
Station-the
duty which takes precedence
of all others alike in time and importance.
And this is to be given by the use of a street fire
alarm-when
at all
handy-rather
than by the ordinary telephone.
To
make the call effective we are told what the Fire Brigade want
to know.
Then
follow an explanation of the danger of letting amateur rescuers
-of
"the
fools thirsting for
glory"
type-rush
in, where even policemen
would only enter with most careful precautions; and an emphatic warning
of the extreme importance of keeping the fire shut in, as far as humanly
possible, till the Brigade arrives.
Then
come directions as to how the policeman, once he has got control
of would-be
rescuers-may
best occupy the time of waiting for the Brigade,
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