The teeming streets of Victorian London provided author Michael Crighton with the perfect setting for his historical fiction, The Great Train Robbery. It was here Crighton describes the poorest and the wealthiest streets in the world next to one another in London, “like a diamond embedded in coal” (73). At the time Victorian London, the world’s largest city, was home to pickpockets, forgers, and thieves of all kinds Crighton explains (22). Out of these conditions, in the society that was seeking to define civilization itself, it is not difficult to understand why the need for and the fulfillment of a public police force originated.
It was from this beginning through the present day that Scotland Yard has broken much ground in the area of police investigation but also defined entire parts of society in London, England as country, and all of Western Civilization. How to maintain control and order in the isle of Britain has been a struggle for all the civilized groups of Europe, points out Historian H. Paul Jeffers in his book Bloody Business (12). Jeffers uses the Romans as a prime example beginning with Julius Caesar’s decree that the Pax Romana would never extend its peaceful rule west of the channel into the land of the warlike Celts (12).
Even as the Island fell to the Angles and the Saxons of northern Europe, the induction of two concepts, Christianity and monarchy, only partly pacified Briton adds Jeffers (13). Both of these concepts added to the order of the everyday life of the barbarians. Jeffers continues, that proclaiming divine rule through Biblical law, the monarchs promised protection for their subject’s obedience, and appointed men as shire reeves, eventually called sheriffs, to keep the king’s peace in specific regions (13).
These sheriffs were not on the king’s payroll but were allowed to collect taxes from their individual regions, thus providing for easy corruption of their office, explains Jeffers (13). Jeffers credits this corruption to a rebellion that sent the responsibility of law enforcement back to local police, and left the future kings to deal with keeping the peace in each their own way (14). London, home of the ruling family since before the Norman invasion of England, was the largest of the cities on the island, and constantly plagued with what the Tudor statute book called “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars,” Jeffers describes (15).
Almost every aspect of law enforcement was put to test by the monarchs, from the employment of elderly men as watchmen to the reliance on private bounty hunters, who made multimillion dollar businesses out of criminal taking, Jeffers continues (16). This constantly changing system of policing caused London to fall lawless disorder until playwright turned politician Henry Fielding set up a pistol armed public crime fighting force known as the Bow Street Runners, who were the only form of policing in London for 90 years, Jeffers concludes (17).
It was then in 1822 that the Secretary to Ireland Robert Peel was called back to England and made Home Secretary to reform the system of policing the streets of London, as described on the Metropolitan Police’s web page (1+). The Met. Police web site continues, that Peel first sought to reform the penal code of London and create punishments worthy of the crimes committed, “trying to prevent criminals from becoming killers” (1+). Prior to this it is easy to imagine that a criminal who commits rape and knows he would receive capitol punishment wound would not restrain from killing his victim to avoid being caught.
This concept of crime appropriate punishment is one primary example of the positive effects the establishment of Scotland Yard has had on the development of crime legislation in Western Society. The Met. Police web page explains that Soon Peel became both Tory Leader of the House of Commons and again Home Secretary, when in 1829 he advised Parliament to: “… afford the inhabitants of the Metropolis and its vicinity, the full and complete protection of the law and to take prompt and decisive measures to check the increase in crime which is now proceeding at a frightfully rapid pace” (18+).
In 1829, sates Met. Police web page, Peel introduced his Metropolitan Police Improvement Bill and it became law on June 19 (1+). The Met. Police web page explains that the law created an entirely new system of police, for the control of which he named two Justices of the Peace, Colonel Sir Charles Rowan, a military man experienced in organizing many men, and Mr. Richard Mayne, an experienced criminal lawyer (1+). The Met. Police web page compares both men to the later J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, setting the standard and tone of their new position that would remain to the present (1+).
With in two weeks of starting their positions the two men, returned to Peel with a report covering everything from the number of officers needed, to individual beets, to a pay scale, to a uniform description, the Met. Police web page explains (1+). The Met. Police web page cites The General Instruction Book, as perhaps the most lasting part of the Rowan and Mayne report, written by Saunders Welch, one of the original Bow Street Runners, it remains a reference today for its advice on police work, including the recognition of times in which officers must rely on their “intuition and gut” (1+).
The Met. Police web page continues that out of this report came the plans for the Metropolitan Police Head Quarters on 4 Whitehall Place, which backed up to a street that since Stuart times had housed visiting Scottish royalty, the foremost entrance to the building opened up towards this land thus yielding the name Scotland Yard (1+). American on line Encyclopedia points out that the original force of 1,000 officers did not include the position of detective (1+).
American on line Encyclopedia continues that in 1842, eight officers were promoted to the new Detective Department, for the investigation into crimes “with no immediate solution” (1+). These detectives were assigned to plain clothes and quickly made many criminal contacts in the London underworld, some of which lead to a scandal that sent three top detectives to prison describes the American on line Encyclopedia (1+).
Editor Agnus Hall writes in book The Crime Busters, that the scandal discredited the Detective Department and lead to the establishment of the Criminal Investigation Department, or C. I. D. (19). Hall descries the C. I. D. as the most well known branch of the Metropolitan Police force, and is what is referred to in literature as the whole of Scotland Yard (19). This group of detectives, much romanticized by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, are not a national institution, as commonly believed, but a metropolitan organization that has developed many of the most prominent investigative techniques world wide, explains Hall (20).
Possibly Scotland Yard’s most essential and lasting contribution to investigation is it’s work in the area of fingerprint identification. Around the turn of the century several volumes theorizing on the identification and uses of fingerprints were published prompting the formation of a committee in 1900, to inquire into the methods of the identification of criminals by fingerprinting, Hall begins (96). Hall continues that one of sixteen experts called upon to address the committee was Edward Henry, who had published a book titled The Classification of Fingerprints and their Uses (97).
Henry was appointed head of Fingerprint division of Scotland Yard, employing the system that bears his name writes Hall (97). Today the Fingerprint division that began with three workers has expanded into the Criminal Investigation agency that has the second largest fingerprint task force and the second largest fingerprint record books Hall concludes (99). Scotland Yard also achieved much success in the advancement of animals in police work.
The Metropolitan Police web page describes Scotland Yard’s extensive research in the uses of police dogs, after widespread military use by the Germans in World War I(1+). This lead to the worlds foremost police dog training facility in London and the development of the first drug sniffing dogs the Met. Police web page explains (1+). Hall cites the efficiency of Scotland Yard Mounted division in relaying messages to officers and the patrol of parks and the many pedestrian streets of London (75). These are examples of the ingenuity of the Metropolitan Police force.
Scottland Yard also holds the honor of being the first police force to use both the radio and the emergency phone line Hall continues (18+). Hall writes that in 1922 all mobile police units were fitted with radios and dispatched by the then newly formed British Broadcasting Company. The second of the most important technical advancements of Scotland Yard, Hall explains, was the emergency phone line, that when established in 1950 a simple 999 would connect citizens with a police dispatcher (19).
Both of these technological advancements were not soon after adopted by their American counterparts. On the surface the Metropolitan Police Force bears much to the American FBI, but the two differ in many ways, the foremost is that the Metropolitan Police Force in not national organization, but an organization with in the city of London, as described by the American on line Encyclopedia (1+). With this in mind Scotland Yard is the larger and more advanced then any single city’s police force in the United States.
Despite becoming a fixture in popular literature and thus a highly romanticized history, Scotland Yard, whether in reference to the entire Metropolitan Police Force, or to the Criminal Investigation Department in particular has set many standards in the crime fighting world that are apparent the world over. Making Scotland Yard a model agency not only in the areas of investigation for which they are known, but also in the area of Humanity in the recognition of crime prevention as the only safe and effective way to solve the struggle with crime that has existed on the British island since its civilization.
