SCOTLAND YARD

By WILFRED WEBSTER, in Everybody's Magazine

London’s Police Force Dates Back to the Day of King Charles II, But it

Wasn't Until Peel’s Reorganization of 1829 That Londoner’s Felt Safe to

Walk the Streets Alone at Night— For a Hundred and Seventeen Years

London’s Metropolitan Police Force Has Been World-Renowned for Tact and

Efficiency — Mr. Webster Gives Us Here Some Highlights on the Develop-
ment of This Famous, English Police Organization.

THE DETECTION of criminals being part of
a policeman’s job, it was only to be ex-
pected that experts from Scotland Yard
should be called in to help catch and
identify leading Nazis immediately aiter
Germany's defeat. They did the work with
their usual thoroughness, even bringing
from England dental X-ray plates to iden-
tify Nazis who had lived in Britain before
the war.

AVING CAUGHT the chief German
minals, British Police Officers are now
ying a major part in the reformation
the German nation. Their aim is
replace the jack-boot tyranny of the
zi police with something approaching
e splendid service rendered to the public
the British police. Ii they succeed,
e men from Scotland Yard now work-
sin Germany will have made no small
ntribution to the peace of Europe.
Under a former Superintendent of
etropolitan Police, whose new post is
at of Assistant to the Inspector-General
the Control Commission in the British
ne of occupation, Yard men are running
school to train instructors for the new
erman police force. In a few months,
is hoped, forty complete new German
lice forces will be operating in the
ritish zone. Training schools are to be
ened in each province, and in these,
structors trained in the central school
ill themselves train five hundred recruits
a time.
In troubled Greece, too, men of Scot-
nd Yard are winning fresh renown. A
titish Police Mission of thirty-nine
ficers has successfully undertaken the
rmidable task of raising a new Greek
ree of 20,000 gendarmes and 6,009
wn police. These are to take over in-
rnal security and, as the head of our
ission, Sir Charles Wickham, has ex-
ained, should enable the Greek civil
ithorities once more to take responsi-
lity for keeping law and order.
“We have tried,’ Sir Charles said
cently, “to instil into the Greek police

IFTEENTH EDITION

and public that their country has now
got a decent, law-abiding police, work-
ing for the State and not for a political
party.” Already the plan is succeeding.
Sir Charles has reported a re-birth of
public confidence in Greece. People who
have been on the run for months, afraid
to go back to their homes, have been
returning.

In Britain we have long taken it for
granted that law and order should pre-
vail in our great cities, and we have come

‘to regard the presence of uniformed

policemen, whom we trust and respect,
as an essential part of our civilisation.
But it is not long, as history goes, since
graft and violence held sway and local
authorities, especially in London, fought
obstinately against having an adequate
police force.

For six successive days in 1780 the
cities of London and Westminster were,
according to the Annual Register, “de-
livered up into the hands of a mob, to be
plundered at its discretion.”

-This was when the Gordon riots,

starting as an anti-Catholic demonstra-
tion, developed into what Dickens de-
scribed in “Barnaby Rudge” as orgies of
drunken looting by “the very scum and
refuse of London, whose growth had
been fostered by bad criminal laws, bad
prison regulations and the worst concetv-
able police.”

The guardians of London at this time
were for the most part watchmen, who
were called “Charlies,” after a body
formed in the City of London in the
reign of Charles I]. About all the
“Charlies” achieved was to keep honest
Londoners awake by shouting the time
and the state of the weather at intervals
throughout the night. They were em-
ployed by local, unpaid magistrates, who
were notoriously corrupt.

Public indignation over the utter fail-
ure to check the Gordon riots led to
the introduction in Parliament five years
later of a bill which would have pro-
vided a single police force for the cities
of London and Westminster as well
as adjacent parts of Surrey and Middle-

Before Scotland Yard or the Metropolitan Police were thought of, troops often had to assist
the London “Watch.” The mob dispersed by musketry during the Gordon riots in 1780. (From
the picture by Seymour Lucas.)

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