Before I Sleep (6 page)

In late January 1934, the Russells got a telegram through to me. The Police Department was advertising thirty vacancies for men under twenty years of age to join the Force as trainee constables. I got back to Adelaide, applied, and joined the 300 applicants who had survived the rigorous medical examination. We then sat for a written paper. I understand I topped this test and was the first of the intake to be appointed.

3
The South Australian Police Force

(1934-1940)

I
joined the South Australian Police Force in February 1934 as a police messenger, a kind of cadet. I was on twenty shillings a week, and I lived at home. I wore a uniform that allowed me to ride on the trams for nothing. Life took on hope, meaning, a promise of happiness. I had emerged into bright light at the end of a very dark tunnel. My naive impressions of a policeman's lot were still based on those bedtime stories of the Birdsville sergeant that my mother had told me. It seemed to me that a person could get paid for just doing a daily good turn over and over. And my social life blossomed as I became accepted as a possible son-in-law to the Russells. Mavis was most happy with my appointment and I now became her “steady boyfriend”. We entered upon a more customary courtship of regular Saturday nights at the pictures on our own, shared Sunday activities with her family, and occasional weeknight meetings.

But “the job” as it is called worldwide by all manner of coppers, did not turn out the way I expected. About two years earlier, Commissioner Leane had decided to develop a more educated force by recruiting lads with intermediate and matriculation certificates at a younger age than the customary twenty-one years. They would fill in the years with clerical work until they turned twenty-one and could be sworn in as officers. By rotating the cadets within the various branches of the force, it was hoped that they would acquire a working knowledge of each. I believe that Commissioner Leane did not succeed in selling this concept and that he failed to achieve the active cooperation of his officers. Most officers were content with the status quo and saw no personal advantage in the scheme. Perhaps they believed that it would affect their chances of promotion, and perhaps they lacked sufficient commitment to the ideals of British policing. The idea that an individual constable should receive his authority from the community and exercise it on his own initiative ran counter to the easy assumption that all a young policeman needed to do was follow orders from on high. As well, most of the twenty cadets and messengers were mediocre material by secondary school standards; they were certainly inexperienced in leadership roles. A number of lads were from the country and lacking in urban sophistication. However, we were welcomed into the various branches at headquarters in Angus Street — though this welcome, I think, was mainly because we took the position of “the lowest man on the totem pole”.

Instead of receiving systematic instruction on procedures, we became the gophers, the typists and tea-getters. This was especially true when we were supervised by civil servants. The young trainee became an assistant to the civilian office boy, relieving him of his more mundane tasks. A few of our number were already touch typists. They possessed a skill so valuable in a force where one-finger typing was the rule that they were kept at this task for their entire traineeships. I arrived full of enthusiasm for community servicing and was immediately made dockets clerk in the commissioner's office registry. All day long, five days a week, I picked up big bundles of dockets in the main office and took them to a small, airless room to file away, or I began the reverse process of finding dockets to match a list I was given. There were five copies of every document, the result of copious use of carbon paper. I managed a reasonable morning's filing, but by early afternoon I was bored stiff. I took to reading the more interesting dockets and so, I suppose, I did learn a little — especially about rape, and murder.

After six months I was moved to the fingerprint/photographic section. I was delighted: at last I would be involved in some real police work. I should have known better. This section was run by civilian photographers who had taught themselves fingerprinting from a classic textbook by Henry Dalton. There were only three photographers and they were jealous guardians of their status as experts. I was assigned to a disabled ex-serviceman, a former policeman who needed a crutch to move. He maintained the criminal records, which were the responsibility of the section. These were all on 10 x 8 inch ruled cards; details of crimes and convictions were recorded by pen. My job was to obtain the daily list of court appearances and verdicts, find the corresponding cards in the drawers and hand these to the clerk, who would record the details. He would then hand the cards back to me for refiling. I did this for nearly a year. It was deadening. I would try to sneak into the darkroom to watch film being developed, but I received no encouragement. On a few occasions, I got hold of a copy of Dalton which had been left out during the lunchbreak. I read through it quickly. It was easy to follow and the fingerprint classification procedures were well illustrated. But if I was discovered with the book I was shooed away — the secrets it held were only for the initiated. However hard I tried, I could not muster any enthusiasm for my chores with the record cards. Even when the clerk went on his four weeks' annual leave and I was allowed to enter the details myself, I still found the job boring. My wage of twenty shillings was well-earned. The man I replaced earned seventy shillings.

That year there was to be a World Scout Jamboree in Frankston, Victoria. I had kept up my scouting and was now acting as the scouter in charge of the Flinders Street Church troop. I was keen to go to Frankston but decided that I couldn't afford it on my twenty shillings a week. Then I learned that all of the Russell offspring would be going, including Mavis who was in charge of a girl guide troop. This was at a time when I could barely let her out of my sight lest some handsome prince come along and sweep her off her feet … and she was now bound for ten days in far-away Victoria. I was some pounds short of the fee but I had access to scout funds which had been entrusted to me for another purpose. Against all my moral principles, I borrowed the money without consent. I was only twenty at the time, but I was put in charge of the entire Adelaide contingent of scouts: four troops. At Frankston we had a wonderful time, mixing with scouts from all over the world. My contingent put on a display of boomerang throwing before the entire jamboree. Mavis and her sisters stayed with friends in Melbourne, but journeyed to the Jamboree by train every day. I kept as close to her as I could, neglecting my scouter responsibilities. I gave no thought to my misdeed until I returned home and the realisation of what I had done sank in. I went to the person who had entrusted the money to me and ashamedly told him what I had done. He was an old friend and covered for me until I was able to replace the money. I learnt a very hard lesson which has remained with me ever since.

In the following year, April 1935, I was posted to the Police Depot at Port Adelaide for my last year as a cadet. There were forty junior constables living at the depot, receiving basic training before being sworn in at age twenty-one. By this time the creation of the rank of junior constable had replaced Commissioner Leane's cadet scheme. In the main, the junior constables were lads with even less education than the cadets.

We paid for our food out of our twenty shillings a week wage. One of us was appointed cook. The food was mainly edible. We sat in crowded, makeshift classrooms (former dockside sheds) and wrote down in longhand the sixteen Acts and Regulations we would be called upon to enforce after we were sworn in. These were read out aloud by one of the more senior lads. No explanations were given, no demonstrations provided. We were supposed to learn the Acts and Regulations by heart. This was training at its most primitive, but we were all glad to get it for the alternative was unemployment.

Conditions in the depot were equally primative. The kitchen was right next to the stables and hoards of flies migrated between the two buildings. As we were all poor and had to buy our own food, we bought the cheapest possible.

At the depot, we were each allocated a horse — mine was an aged chestnut gelding named Ripple. He was a friendly animal and my anxiety about sitting on his back — sometimes without stirrups — soon dissipated. I was lucky: some of the horses were anything but friendly, they would give you a quick nip or a kick if you let your guard down for an instant. I cleaned out Ripple's stall each morning and groomed, fed and watered him before I had breakfast myself. I saved apple pieces and other titbits for him. After breakfast we carried out riding drills, with and without swords. We did some PT ourselves. After lunch we had lessons in law and police procedure. In the evenings we cleaned saddles and bridles and did some study. I enjoyed my association with Ripple but not much else. There is a lot to be said for the responsibility of looking after a large animal. For the first time in my life, I had a genuine dependant. We were left in no doubt: if our horses became lame, it was our fault.

The senior instructor was an ex-Indian Army Sergeant-Major, very pukka and proud of it. He wore the Mounted Police uniform of a navy blue jacket with a high collar and silver buttons, white riding britches and spurs. We called him The Rajah, although not to his face. He called us all “boy”. He could bellow across the rough, gravel parade ground like a wild bull. But he understood men and he soon had us doing things on horses we wouldn't have dreamed possible. We rode bareback without stirrups. We learned to mount our horses on the run, while they cantered beside us. Out of the saddle we marched and spent a lot of time on drill. We were proud of our marching and worked hard to do our best, even with the local wharfies lined up along fence for a bit of free entertainment.

The depot was residential with two weekends off each month and no evening leave. We were allowed leave on alternate Sundays to attend a nearby church service. For this, Mavis would catch a bus from Torrensville to the city, then another to Port Adelaide, a rough area, where she would meet me outside the church. We would then sit together in a pew holding hands until the end of the service when I would escort her to the bus stop and she would return home. There was no shelter outside the church or at the bus stop. We had only a brief hug when the bus came. For this, Mavis left home early and undertook an hour-long journey alone. No trainee policeman would accept conditions like these today. Except for a small staff to feed and water the horses we could all have been released at noon on Saturday. There were no set duties for the rest of the weekend and we were left to our own devices. It is now interesting to record that none of the lads sneaked off to nearby hotels, nor did we devise any means of smuggling in some illicit grog. We were all well behaved. There were no clandestine initiation ceremonies and no outbursts of violence. The threat of dismissal kept us all in line.

I was sworn in on my twenty-first birthday as a probationary constable for one year, and posted to the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) for plainclothes duties. I was one of four so posted. The other three were also former police messengers with the Matriculation certificate. Although I was unaware of it at the time, I was joining a police force loosely based on an English model. In the early days of settlement, the founders of South Australia soon recognised the need for a law enforcement body to deal with bushrangers in the Adelaide Hills, apprehend runaway seamen, provide escorts for the traffic in gold, and protect settlers from marauding Aborigines. There was also disorderly behaviour within the city boundaries that needed controlling. South Australia's founders did not follow the practice of other British colonies of creating a para-military body, an armed gendarmerie, based on the Irish model. Instead they adopted the London Metropolitan Police model, but modified it by dividing the police force into a mounted division for country posts and foot police for the city “beats”.

Before Commissioner Leane introduced cadets, messengers and junior constables in the mid-1930s, recruits for the South Australian force were required to be twenty-one years old, fit, healthy, unmarried, with a height of at least 5 feet 10 inches, a completed primary school education and no criminal record. Most of the recruits became honest, decent, trustworthy officers. They were men who, in earlier life, had not become stabilised as tradesmen, or who had become dissatisfied with rural occupations, or were simply unemployed. Many were recent arrivals from the United Kingdom, who had been in the armed services.

When I joined the CIB in 1936 it had some thirty detectives and plainclothes staff and was based in the Police Headquarters on Victoria Square. I soon decided I would like to have my CIB posting made permanent. If this happened, I would be the first to obtain selection this way, since the normal procedure was to select uniformed members who had demonstrated above-average commitment and ability. It would also mean that I would be by far the youngest permanent CIB officer in the place. To this end I worked very hard and made sure that I did nothing wrong in the eyes of my superiors.

The twenty-six months of my cadetship spent at Police Headquarters — observing and listening to office gossip, reading official files, talking to old-timers — had widened my horizons. I now realised that the detection and conviction of offenders was as important — and far more interesting — than being a “kindly” country sergeant. I hoped one day to be a detective-sergeant. At the time, there were only two in the force — one operational and one administrative. Each sergeant had achieved that rank by virtue of his seniority, although a sergeant's written examination had filtered out some candidates. From youth's perspective I soon saw myself as sharp as the best detectives and better than most. The head of the CIB was always an inspector. When I began, it was an officer widely known as “Greasy Mick”. He was a unkept, fat man who sat in his office all day spilling cigarette ash down the front of his shirt. His only son was the local representative of the Melbourne-based
Truth.
For some reason,
Truth
always managed to get the inside information on Adelaide criminal investigations. Greasy Mick represented the old order of detectives and was not impressed with the need for education. He made it clear from the start that he didn't like me — although, at heart, it may have been the new system of recruitment that he didn't like, rather than the recruit himself. I certainly went out of my way to ensure that he had no grounds for disapproval. I worked harder and longer than any others in the branch and as a result stumbled across a couple of wanted villains. I had some other successes as well. On one occasion I located some stolen goods in an obscure second-hand dealer's shop. Fortunately, Greasy Mick soon retired and was replaced by a country inspector, William Owen Ignatius Sheridan.