The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (5 page)

One of the pests of society an officer has to meet with is the voluntary ‘informer’, who for monetary consideration offers to discover the criminal wanted. To place too much confidence in such a person is, to say the least, risky, for he will often draw small sums on account for current expenses, and finally deceive you. And yet one cannot altogether ignore him or do without him.
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The costs of informers and the recovery of these costs and other work-related expenses often left the detectives out of pocket, as the reimbursement of expenses by the Yard’s administrators appears to have been a challenging process. Williamson commented in 1877: ‘I am perfectly certain that men often will not put down items of expenses, because they know that they will be disputed, and they would rather lose money than enter into a dispute upon them … I consider it most unfair.’
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It seems likely that the grudging attitude towards expenses stemmed from Mayne’s attitude to these matters (’it is a mistake to give men too much money’), implemented by an eagle-eyed chief clerk.
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The consequences of this approach were considerable. At one extreme, Edwin Coathupe, who became a sergeant in the department in 1863, stated that ‘I had £2 a week and used to spend £3 of my own money to be able to keep myself respectable’.
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As a man of independent means, Coathupe had that luxury. Others (including Clarke) did not have that elasticity in their own finances and either had to fight their corner on the expenses issue or had to rely on additional sources of income to offset their expenditure. One such source was gratuities from those members of the public who wished to acknowledge good service. Subject to the approval of the commissioner, these gratuities could be retained by the individual detectives, and many saw them as an essential subsidy to compensate for the difficulty of recovering their full expenses. The consequences were almost inevitable:

[Gratuities] used to be the great evil of Scotland Yard; not one of the officers of Scotland Yard would ever look at a case of picking up a thief in the streets; it was beneath them. ‘It does not pay’ used to be the answer. ‘I can wait and get a case from Mr So-and-so, or Mr So-and-so’s solicitor which will bring me in £5 or £7’. Those people would hang about the office for five or six days with the hope of getting a case of that kind.
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Such was the world in which Clarke now worked, and in which he had to learn on the job because, like others who found themselves in the detective department in the 1860s, he would not have received any formal training in detective work. Fortunately, he must have done enough in the first few months to satisfy his superiors, as his post was made permanent on 29 November 1862.
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The first press reports of cases involving Clarke after he joined Scotland Yard appeared early in 1863 and involved crimes in cities in the north of England. The first of these was a bank robbery in Manchester carried out by two men, Potter and Welby, who had drilled through to the bank vaults from an adjoining cellar. Having removed some £1,000 in gold and silver (worth £43,000 today), the men were seen to catch a train to London. Likely train destinations and police forces were alerted by telegraph. Welby got off the train at Crewe and was immediately arrested; Potter was arrested by Clarke at Camden Town station (where the trains always stopped for ticket inspection). Clarke found that Potter was carrying a portmanteau containing £346 4
s
7
d
from the robbery. He gave evidence to this effect at the magistrate’s hearing in Manchester and at the Crown Court trial, when both men were found guilty and each was sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude.
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The second case involved David Charles Lloyd, who had worked as a clerk for a share broker in Newcastle and had dealt with the purchase of £600 of stock in the North Eastern and Berwick Railway Company for a client, James Oliver. After leaving his employment Lloyd had approached the registrars of the stock, claiming to be James Oliver, and asked for a new stock certificate, ‘as he had lost his during a recent move to a new address’. On receipt of the certificate, Lloyd had then attempted to sell the stock, forging James Oliver’s signature in the process, in an attempt to realise the £600 plus any profit. However, an alert clerk suspected fraud and the sale was stopped at the company’s office. Superintendent Hawker of the North Eastern Railway police was then asked to track down the fraudster in collaboration with Clarke. The two men tracked Lloyd to the Gloucester Hotel, Brighton, where Clarke arrested him on 2 June 1863. Clarke gave evidence at the Bow Street Police Court hearing on 9 June and at the Old Bailey trial on 13 July; Lloyd was found guilty and received a sentence of five years’ penal servitude.
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Forgery was also the basis of a third case, where Clarke travelled to Hull on 10 January 1864 to arrest Charles Alberti for ‘forging two checks [sic]’ for £94 and £214. Alberti pleaded guilty at his trial at the Old Bailey and he was also sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.
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It seems more than a coincidence that Clarke’s first three documented cases after joining the detective department involved a link with the north of England, and it may be that each detective sergeant had some liaison responsibility for different sectors of the country. Likewise, all three cases had a link to financial institutions, and it is probable that some ‘division of labour’ was established within the detective department on the nature of the cases that individual detectives would take responsibility for. However, as Clarke’s career developed, he would become involved in investigations of a very diverse range of crimes.

During 1863 and 1864 some further staffing changes were made at the detective department. Inspector Whicher retired on 19 March 1864.
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Whicher later became a private detective and Clarke would meet up with him again, in a major investigation in 1873. Whicher’s position was filled by the promotion of Sergeant James Thomson who, like Williamson earlier, had clearly been marked out for fast-tracking.
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Williamson’s own promotion to inspector was confirmed on 6 August 1863 and Richard Tanner was also promoted to acting inspector on 25 March 1863, an appointment that was confirmed later, in March 1864. These changes restored the full complement of three inspectors.

With some sergeant vacancies also arising during 1863 and 1864, Mayne took the unusual step of appointing Sergeant Coathupe as a direct entrant to the detective department in April 1863. Coathupe had no previous experience as a policeman but had applied indirectly to Mayne through a family friend; he had previously qualified as a surgeon and had been practising as such in Chippenham. Though perhaps the first direct entrant to the department, Coathupe would not be the last.
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Such appointments undoubtedly created tensions; one later appointed direct entrant, George Greenham, confirmed that there was internal jealousy of those men brought in from outside, and James Thomson, one of the ‘insiders’ (though with much less police experience than Clarke), expressed the view that ‘taking people into the service who have no police experience is a great mistake’.
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Coathupe only stayed in the department for three years before becoming head of the detective force at Manchester and, later, head constable in Bristol. Despite this rapid career progression, James Thomson (who seems never to have been at a loss for a robust and dismissive comment on anything and anybody) commented that Coathupe ‘was an amateur policeman and he will be an amateur policeman to the end of his days’.
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Sergeant Coathupe’s arrival was followed by the appointment in October 1863 of 22-year-old Nathaniel Druscovich to fill the sergeant vacancy created by Tanner’s promotion.
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Druscovich, formerly and briefly a constable in C Division, was born in England but had a Moldavian father and an English mother. He also spent some of his youth in Wallachia.
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He was fluent in several languages, albeit not in English, and his appointment caused a further flutter in the Scotland Yard dovecote. Speaking in 1877 with the benefit of some recent hindsight, James Thomson said:

My individual opinion is that it is unwise to let foreigners have anything to do with our police. They think a great deal of themselves, they take too much upon themselves and they get into difficulties. I was strongly opposed to Druscovich coming to Scotland Yard and I advised them at the time not to have him … I thought there was a good deal of the foreigner in him, because when he first came to Scotland Yard … his English was almost broken English.
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To complete the staff changes, Sergeant John Mulvany was transferred to the department in April 1864 from S Division. Born in Chelsea, Mulvany had joined the police in 1848 and was now 37 years old and therefore, like Clarke, one of the ‘old guard’.
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Precisely what Clarke thought of his new workmates is not recorded but, with almost twenty-four years’ police experience under his belt, he had more in common with Mulvany than with Coathupe or Druscovich. By 1864 the department contained a very diverse range of natural ability, experience and skills. Williamson, Clarke, Druscovich and Palmer would remain together for the next thirteen years.

While the detection of crime was the principal objective of the department, not all of its responsibilities were restricted to dealing with criminal cases. There were also activities of national and imperial importance to deal with, including State visits by royalty and international political figures. The detectives were also frequently deployed to work with the uniformed police in the management of public order both in London and at the major horse-racing meetings. In addition, private citizens were entitled to purchase the services of the police for investigations or for the policing of events, subject to the agreement of the commissioner.

During Clarke’s first two years at Scotland Yard, the most important political visit was by Giuseppe Garibaldi in April 1864. Garibaldi, the Italian freedom fighter, was a popular hero amongst the anti-Catholic majority of Victorian Britain.
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However, the Irish-Catholic community did not share this enthusiasm and, in September and October 1863, the Metropolitan Police had found it difficult to deal with violence in Hyde Park when pro-Garibaldi demonstrators were attacked by Irish-Catholics.
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It was therefore likely that the detective department were working behind the scenes to help prevent further violent outbreaks during his visit in 1864. Despite Garibaldi attracting large crowds, events seemed to have passed off reasonably peacefully, partly due to the fact that Garibaldi cut short his visit on health grounds.

There is no doubt that Clarke was actively involved during his detective career in the management of betting crime and other villainy at horse-racing meetings. Williamson is recorded as saying that ‘you want a man who is a little rough to go to races, and who will hold his own’, and it seems that Clarke and Tanner both fitted this description.
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Tanner was the detective who was most frequently deployed to take the lead at the major race meetings, until he retired in July 1869, and Tanner and Clarke were often on duty together at racecourses.
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The Epsom meeting, in particular, was a huge public event; Derby Day was the highlight, invariably patronised by the Prince of Wales and by the swell-mob and other assorted criminals and ‘roughs’. For the police present, such events could present a challenging and hostile environment. Tanner recorded in his personal notebook such an occasion at Epsom in 1857:

Robert Travers
a pugilist apprehended by myself on the 29th May 1857 for violently assaulting me on Epsom Race Course (Oaks Day); taken before B. Coombe Esq. at Southwark Police Court and fined 40/- [shillings] or one months imprisonment.
Remarks.
The Races were over and a fight was got up between two roughs. Travers was seconding one, and Inspector Henry Smith and myself went into the crowd, when Plumb the jockey and Smith fell out. Plumb told Travers his grievance and he came and struck me to the ground insensible.
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Precisely how Tanner, from his unconscious state, then apprehended Travers is not explained. However, such events were not uncommon, as another detective, John Meiklejohn, also described. After arresting a man at Epsom on Derby Day who had already thrown him to the ground once, Meiklejohn recalled:

Perhaps I had somewhat relaxed my vigilance on the prisoner’s assurance that he would accompany me quietly. At any rate, we had not gone many yards when, by a sudden wrestling trick with which I was unfamiliar he again brought me to the ground with a crash. I was dazed but still retained my grip. There was no hope of assistance in such a crowd. It was rather hostile than otherwise. But regaining my feet I concluded to bring matters to a decided issue, and set about him until he was as tame as a rabbit. When after some further difficulty I got him to the station at the back of the Grandstand, my clothes were hanging in ribbons and his eyes were completely bunged up. Even then he was not entirely subdued, for when the Serjeant [sic] attempted to search him he sent that valued officer rolling down the steps of the Station like a football.
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