Review: Police Headquarters
| Published date | 01 January 1957 |
| Date | 01 January 1957 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X5703000114 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS 71
occasion to define what is meant by "private friendship," that he
certainly would not attempt to do so in the circumstances; and that
whatever should be the definition of "private friendship," the facts
of
this case did not bring this particular appellant within it.
Reviews
CRITICAL
YEARS
AT
THE
YARD
by Belton Cobb. London:
Faber
&Faber, ISs.
The title suggests perhaps an historical treatise on the problem
of
establishing
the infallibility
of
finger-prints
or
on notorious cases
that
rocked the Yard on its
heels well within living memory, such as those
of
Leo Money
and
Mrs. Meyrick.
Mr. Belton
Cobb
goes much further back
than
that
to describe over the period
1860 to 1890 the weaning
of
what we now know as the Criminal Investigation
Department.
It
was one thing to evolve a system
of
protective beats and patrols
by uniformed officers; it was a far more difficult thing to introduce asound technique
for criminal investigation. Sherlock Holmes delighted in demonstrating the in-
competency of the Yard, but Holmes was wrong in stigmatising those early detec-
tives as stupid. They were astute men, but they lacked the generations
of
proved
technique which the modern detective has behind him,
and
forensic science existed
only in the writings
of
Conan
Doyle. .
Thus we find in Mr. Cobb's first "crisis" one
of
the two
Yard
Detective Inspectors
basing the arrest of the daughter
of
arespectable family for the murder of a child
solely on a
"hunch"
and without a scrap of evidence. Investigation would become a
humdrum affair without the occasional flash
of
brilliant inspiration, but this one
served only to discredit the Inspector
and
the Yard. When, many years later, the
girl voluntarily confessed to the crime
and
was given a life sentence, nobody
attempted to vindicate the Inspector, least of all he himself.
At this time, the more sensational crimes suffered from excessive lime-light.
News from the outside world travelled slowly
and
it was
not
so easy to get excited
about
some international tension on the continent
that
had arisen four days ago
as it was about some fearful crime committed in London last night. Moreover,
substantial rewards for information were commonplace. The public demanded
and
the Press obliged with almost hour-by-hour descriptions
of
the investigations.
The Commissioner personally supervised his detectives,
and
the contents
of
the
daily reports made to him seemed to be in the hands
of
the public almost as soon
as they reached the Commissioner's Office. Without the aid
of
the B.B.C., famous
detectives became household names.
It
is mainly on the detailed news reports of the
time
that
the
author
has relied for his material.
The central figure is one Frederick Williamson, nurtured in the Department
and
rising eventually to be Chief Constable in charge
of
it. A man
of
stern principles
and
the deepest loyalty, but nonetheless an unusually kindly character for a senior
police officer
of
those days. He and his Department" faced many vicissitudes, the
worst being when Superintendent Williamson's three chief
aides-all
trusted Chief
Inspectors-were
charged with corrupt collusion with a gang running abetting
swindle. The C.I.D. owes its survival to the Williamsons
of
the last century.
POLICE
HEADQUARTERS
by Quentin Reynolds.
London:
Cassel, 18s.
Quentin Reynolds' able pen has woven an entertaining documentary
round
the
"good
American
cop."
In describing the Herculean battle against crime in New
York, he has built his book on the service over the last 30 years
of
one selected,
illustrious and oft commended plain clothes policeman. Frank Phillips is the name,
an Irish-American now in charge
of
some 450 men
and
women at the Central
Office Bureau. A field-worker if ever there was one, and now they have made him
an administrator as they have made so many good policemen in so manv different
countries. .
. One
of
his colleagues says:
"It
was good to have
Frank
Phillips with you (in a
tight corner). He was never behind you; he was always right alongside you." He
obviously revels in a place in the front line and he has an encyclopaedic knowledge
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