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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
OUR DETECTIVE POLICE.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
THE ASHBURNHAM COLLECTIONS.
A SKETCH FROM MY STUDY WINDOW.
AN INTERESTING ISLAND.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
‘ONLY COUSINS, DON’T YOU SEE?’
No. 22.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1884.
OUR DETECTIVE POLICE.
The number of murders that have taken place,and the very few murderers that have beenbrought to justice in and about London duringthe last few months, must go far towards contradictingthe assertion to the effect that the metropolisof England is ‘the safest city in the world’to live in. And if to the list of crimes against lifewhich have not been, and never are likely to be,brought home to the perpetrators, we add theinnumerable thefts, burglaries, and other offencesagainst property which go unpunished because thecriminals are never found out, it can hardly bedenied that we require a new departure in thesystem of our Detective Police, for the simplereason that, as at present constituted, the practicalresults of the same are very much the reverseof satisfactory.
It has been my lot, for reasons which need notbe entered into here, to see not a little of theFrench detective system, and of the plans adoptedby those employed in discovering crime in Paris.The two systems, those of the London andParisian detective, differ most essentially. Withus, it is as if the general commanding an army inthe field was to send spies into the enemy’s camp,taking care they were dressed and behaved themselvesin such a manner that every one wouldknow who they were. On the other hand, theFrench system of detection is based on the principlethat the enemy—namely, the criminalsamongst whom they have to make their inquiries—shouldnever be able to discover who the spiesare. Now, with some fifty or sixty detectivestrained to perfection in the art of disguising themselves,must it not be far more easy to discoverthe whereabouts of crime and the identity of thecriminals, than can possibly be done under oursystem? Our detectives are as well known to aLondoner of any experience, and we may presumethey are also just as well known to the criminalclasses, as if they wore uniform. Nay, in a veryuseful volume called The Police Code and Manualof the Criminal Law, compiled by Mr HowardVincent, it is clearly laid down t