Becoming a Police Detective in Victorian and Edwardian London

Abstract

Studies of police detectives in a historical context, mostly published during the inter‐war and the post‐Second World War period, generally document the institutional development of bodies engaged in official plain‐clothes activity in London and the most dramatic criminal investigations they conducted. Little is revealed about the detectives themselves and their work experience outside the immediate context of crime investigation. The present article attempts to fill this gap by tracing aspects of the personal and occupational history of detectives who served in the London Metropolitan Police during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. To do so, the article first discusses the institutional development of the detective system, the type of detective that the authorities hoped to recruit and the system of recruitment they pursued. Then, using both impressionistic and empirical evidence (collected in the Public Record Office at Kew Gardens and analyzed specifically for this article), it sketches a collective portrait of the detectives, focusing on the circumstances that led them into the detective ranks and the influence of their past on both their personal careers and the evolution of the detective branch. The study also examines the extent to which the pre‐police life of these men prepared them for work in a public service that demanded both physical ability and literacy skills, and which operated in one of the largest cities in the world.

Keywords:

• Metropolitan Police
• Criminal Investigation Department
• Victorian and Edwardian Period
• Profile
• Recruitment of Detectives

Notes

Haia Shpayer‐Makov is with the Department of History at the University of Haifa. Correspondence to: Haia Shpayer‐Makov, Department of History, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel. E‐mail: shpayer@research. haifa.ac.il.

A notable exception is Petrow (1993).

The City of London Police, which was separate from the Metropolitan Police, also had a detective branch, but it was principally the detectives of Scotland Yard who drew the most attention.

It was this scandal that precipitated the restructuring of the detective system in 1878.

In 1888, e.g., first class sergeants in the uniformed police received a weekly wage of £1.18 and in the CID £2.10. The equivalent figures for chief detectives were £3.13 and £5.15, respectively (London Metropolitan Police, 1888).

In the case of Detective Inspector John Conquest of the E Division, it took eight years (Departmental Committee, 1890: 425–426).

The data consist of all the detectives who joined the Metropolitan Police in the even‐numbered years between 1889 and 1908. The sample size at our disposal is 302 individuals. The total number of recruits during this period was close to 22,000.

This particular division into five social classes is based on a scale suggested by Armstrong (1972: 191–310).

“London” is defined here as the Metropolitan Police District, and a “city” as a population centre of over 20,000 inhabitants.

Some recruits had served in more than one of these public bodies.

The profile of a typical police recruit is based on the same service records used in this article to portray the typical detective. The sample consists of 20 per cent of the total annual enrollment between 1889 and 1909, taken at two‐yearly intervals (2,252 cases). The data form the basis of many of the conclusions reached in my book entitled The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829–1914 (Shpayer‐Makov, 2002).

For evidence that this may have indeed been a conscious policy, see New Scotland Yard (1912).