Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld (36 page)

Nor is the current fashion for convicts, thugs and sociopaths to take legal action against the police new. Many seeking legal redress in the nineteenth century were no more deserving than their twenty-first century counterparts. Bent tells a story that shows as much. On hearing that a man in Newton Heath had knocked down his wife and was jumping on her, he went to investigate. By the time he arrived friends had rescued her and it was the husband who was in danger from several hundred neighbours who had gathered round the house ready to take retribution. Behind the bolted door, armed with a knife and a poker, the husband was loudly threatening to kill anyone who crossed the threshold. Bent, like most policemen of the time, favoured the direct approach. He kicked down the door and snatched up a kitchen chair, which he used to pin the wife-beater’s head to the wall. Bent was a great believer in the effectiveness of a chair as a weapon against anyone wielding a knife or a poker and used it to good effect on many occasions.

The six months the wife-beater spent in Strangeways only served to deepen his sense of grievance. No doubt the laughter of fellow inmates when he described his arrest did little to reconcile him to his sentence. On release he appealed to the magistrates for a summons against Bent for putting his head in a chair – without success.

Nor was notoriety a bar to legal action. Many thieves demonstrated a touching confidence in the ability of the law to protect them from the consequences of their dishonesty. No one had more regard for British law than Jack, a notorious thief. According to Bent ‘he was considered one of the greatest thieves ever to trouble Flixton and neighbourhood’. He specialised in stealing fowl and when Bent questioned him he immediately threatened legal action on the grounds that the police were harassing him without any justification. On that occasion the court, unimpressed by his claims of victimisation, sentenced him to six months and later, after a short interlude of freedom, to fifteen months.

Most likely to threaten action against the police were thieves with a veneer of respectability. Those of middle class origin felt socially superior to policemen. The middle class criminal assumed he was not only better educated but also more intelligent than the policeman arresting him. Those at the other end of the social spectrum, who had no social pretensions, also posed difficulties, making it hard for even the most upright policeman to keep his good name. After all, criminals were then, as today, the best source of criminal intelligence. Any detective who hoped to succeed had to maintain informants and the best informants were the ones nearest to the criminals; that is, the ones who were themselves active criminals. When a detective gets such a useful source he is loath to lose it. The problem is that there is a thin line between cultivating an informant and conspiring with a criminal to protect him from punishment. Who is to say when a detective has crossed it?

Jerome Caminada certainly nurtured his contacts. He guaranteed their anonymity, a consideration that extended long beyond their usefulness and into his retirement, even to the extent that in his memoirs he makes no mention of their existence. Sometimes the police got lucky: a man with a grievance denounced a former accomplice, or a neglected mistress, like Charlie Peace’s paramour, betrayed her lover. But this sort of thing was an unearned bonus and most information came only as the result of carefully cultivated informers.

The issue of police informers was even more sensitive in the nineteenth century than today. The fear of the police as the enemies of individual freedoms, as they were in many repressive regimes in Europe, was standard currency among left-wing groups. There were also many liberals who were vigilant for any sign of the misuse of police powers. Informers, they argued, were a form of agents provocateurs used by the likes of the Tsar’s secret police in Russia to entrap political enemies. The police, therefore, found it wise to conceal this aspect of their work and to stress their deterrent role. Even the use of plain-clothes detectives was suspect in liberal eyes and the authorities played down their importance. As late as 1870, when the Metropolitan Police Force numbered 9,000 men, Scotland Yard admitted to having only twenty plainclothes detectives.

None of this, however, diminished the value of inside information. Reading the memoirs of any Victorian detective, it is obvious that many of the flashes of insight they put down to intuition were in reality the result of ‘information received’. Yet few detectives of this era make any mention of this, preferring to maintain a tactful silence which has the additional advantage of adding to their own reputation. The peelers who threw stones at young Edward Ward were not representative of their colleagues. Generally the police were the ones who were bombarded from all quarters – assaulted by criminals, resented by the public, criticised by the middle class ratepayers, ostracised by their own class. They were in an impossible situation and the demands imposed on them were beyond them.

There were, however, other policemen whose difficulties were the result of their own deficiencies. In the middle of the century, for instance, drunkenness in the force was a major problem. In many ways this was simply a reflection of Manchester society. In one case, a member of the Salford public found on duty a PC John Pollet in such a drunken stupor, that in a reversal of roles, he carried the sodden peeler home. Nor was this an isolated instance. The problem was so great that fifteen years after PC Pollet’s riotous night out the Salford Watch Committee instructed the Chief Constable Palin to lock up and then take before the magistrates any constable drunk on duty.

Needless to say, these were the exceptions. Most of the men who joined the force and stayed in it had a powerful sense of duty and high personal expectations. It was to fully utilise these qualities that during the 1870s the force was split into five divisions, with bases at Knott Mill on Deansgate, Goulden Street in Collyhurst, Fairfield Street, Cavendish Street and the force headquarters at the town hall building, which was in King Street until 1871 and thereafter Albert Square. The Chief Constable’s office took up a part of the ground floor, which also housed the charge office and cells.

By 1877, however, attacks on arresting officers in the Collyhurst area occurred with such frequency that it was necessary to build a new station. For a long time Collyhurst men believed that no man worthy of the name would allow the police to take an acquaintance, and certainly not a neighbour or a ‘mate’, in charge without putting up a fight. Nor did the struggle end at the entrance to the lock-up. Consequently the new station in Willert Street was built to withstand the most violent siege. Metal plate reinforced its thick walls and there were no windows facing the street.

The officers besieged in the Oldham Road station in 1889 didn’t have the advantage of such defences. When soldiers from the Tib Street barracks wrecked the station to avenge a slight to a comrade, not even reinforcements from other divisions could save them. The cobbles ran red with blood and it was only the Colonel of the Regiment, sword drawn, riding on horseback into the tangle of bodies, who prevented further carnage. Colonel Arbuthnot’s courage scattered the rioters. But their thirst for vengeance was not satisfied and the men of the 15th Regiment of Foot Soldiers fled into the city where they converged on several police stations, dragging out the occupants and beating them in the streets. In this droves of unemployed cotton weavers, delighted to get their own back, enthusiastically supported them. The previous week the force, at the behest of the employers, had evicted them from several mills. When the weavers gathered in the nearby streets, the police hauled them before the magistrates, charged with illegal assembly. Industrial action of this sort was a major cause of antagonism between peelers and workers.

In meeting this array of challenges effective leadership was vital. Few organisations can be any more effective than their leaders. Unfortunately for the Manchester force those charged with ultimate responsibility were not of the necessary quality. Captain William Palin was universally popular with those he commanded. He was a forceful and effective leader and a vigorous defender of his men. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for his successor, Charles Malcolm Wood, who was only thirty-four at the time of his appointment.

Despite his youth, Wood was a popular appointment. Before serving as Palin’s deputy, he gained experience in the Indian Civil Service and as Assistant District Superintendent in the Karachi Police. He presented himself as the candidate of continuity, a man who would maintain the traditions nurtured by Palin, rebuff unjustified criticism and strengthen the force’s status. He failed to deliver on all counts. A uniquely troublesome subordinate mired his entire period of office in scandal.

In 1882 the Watch Committee promoted John Bannister to Superintendent of D division, though there was nothing in his career to suggest he was suitable for such a post. In fact, Bannister was the least experienced inspector in the division and therefore, according to established precedent, not eligible for such a post. But what Bannister lacked in qualifications he made up for with friends in high places. In Alderman Bennett, Chairman of the Watch Committee, he had a determined advocate. Though Wood fought Bannister’s appointment, Alderman Bennett persisted and, despite resentment among his colleagues, Bannister took up his new position. Wood never recovered from this error. His acquiescence in the appointment irretrievably damaged his authority and made it clear that the Watch Committee could impose appointees in whom he had no confidence.

Nor was Wood the only one to doubt Bannister’s suitability. Not only was he lacking experience, he was extremely volatile. Worse still his integrity was questionable. Yet with such powerful supporters, he acted as if he were invulnerable. His division became notorious as a haven for the feckless, the dishonest and the timeservers of the force.

By 1892 Bannister’s behaviour was causing such public outrage that it was impossible to ignore. In particular, his fraternisation with one of the city’s most infamous madams, whose brothel in Shepley Street was his favourite haunt, led to an inquiry by the Watch Committee. Contrary to all expectations, Bannister managed to muddy the water sufficiently to avoid outright censure. Nevertheless, Wood was confident that his demand for Bannister’s resignation, backed as it was by most of the Watch Committee, would mark the end of the troublesome superintendent. But Bannister decided to brazen it out. The Watch Committee let the matter drop in the hope of limiting the damage to the force’s reputation. Bannister had shown that he was answerable to no one. He continued to act much as he always had.

In 1897 matters again reached a crisis. D division was an open sewer, infecting the morale of the entire force. The Lord Mayor bypassed the tangle of procedural obstacles and initiated a special inquiry. The report revealed fundamental weaknesses in the management of the force. The nub of the problem was the Watch Committee’s insistence on making appointments in the face of the Chief Constable’s opposition. Among instances of this that came to light was one involving a man Bannister had recommended for promotion. Wood had objected on the grounds that the candidate’s record showed he had been fined on five occasions for being drunk on duty – a dismissal offence. Yet an alderman strongly supported Bannister’s nomination and, backed by other members of the Committee, secured the appointment.

Though the report did not state as much, it is clear that the Committee’s actions were not motivated by the best interests of the force or even by what was reasonable and fair. Corruption, or at least blatant nepotism, was at work.

Or was it blackmail? Among other things, the inquiry revealed Bannister’s links with many brothels throughout the city. He acted as the protector of several. It is possible that through these connections he found out certain things about members of the Watch Committee, things they desperately wanted to conceal. Nothing about Bannister suggests he would have had any qualms about using such information to his advantage.

The manner in which he ran D division was certainly not to the advantage of the Manchester public. Drunkenness was common among officers on duty and there was a culture of senior officers borrowing money from their juniors and never repaying it. What was perhaps most embarrassing for the Watch Committee was evidence of malpractice extending beyond D division to all areas of the force. Several witnesses spoke of the systematic doctoring of statistical returns, especially with regard to beerhouses and brothels. Bannister was not the only peeler whose relationship with pub and bordello was a little too cosy.

The scandal undermined the integrity of police management. Eventually the council swept away most of the old Watch Committee and sustained press criticism drove the chairman from office. The Chief Constable dismissed thirteen constables from D division and as many more resigned. The report marked the end for Wood. His feeble leadership had resulted in a steady decline in the force’s morale, worsened by long hours, poor pay and appalling conditions.

Wood’s successor, Robert Peacock, found he also had other problems. He admitted in 1900 that many officers were incapable of writing a coherent report. Judging from the number of complaints against peelers for using violence against men in custody, there were many among the Manchester constabulary who did not put their trust in paperwork. Given the derisory penalties imposed on those convicted of assaulting the police – even when offensive weapons were used – it is hardly surprising that many officers agreed with the famous American Inspector, Alexander S. Williams. Known as ‘Clubber’ Williams, his philosophy was, ‘There is more justice in the end of a nightstick than in any court decision.’

Despite all these difficulties, there is no doubt that crime in Manchester was less conspicuous in 1900 than 1870. Caminada, looking back on a long and distinguished career, pointed to the demolition of the labyrinth of Deansgate slums and the sweeping away of the droves of bogus beggars as clear evidence that crime was on the wane. Many of the seediest drinking dens had gone.
The Manchester Evening News
of 12 July 1895 struck a similarly smug note. Writing of crime over the previous twenty years, the editorial purred, ‘One cannot compare the present and past state of the city without recognising the wonderful improvement.’