The Masters of Bow Street (69 page)

Simon set himself to find out whether Jackson might prove a more valuable contact than Godley, and more reliable.

Almost at once, however, he was forced to consider other pressing matters. The war with France took a turn for the worse and British ships were again in danger on the high seas. In London, trade was slowing down, and Simon found the problems of supplies and shipping all-demanding. The government, with an eccentric, if not mad, King on the throne, was uncertain except in one thing: to continue the war against France.

The seat for Minshall was left vacant for more than a year, and when eventually Richard was elected there was an utter lack of interest in the police among the people as well as among politicians. The nation was fighting for its colonies, its wealth, its survival.

Richard found himself not only blocked wherever he turned but frustrated because there seemed nothing useful he could do. The war dragged on. Months passed. Then, in 1811, when he had already been in the House for nearly four years, two brutal outrages that left six people murdered set London by the ears.

‘Oysters,’ Mr. Marr said, ‘that’s what I’d like for my supper.’ He finished stacking the bales of linen on the shelves of his shop while his assistant stifled a yawn. It was nearly midnight and he must be back by seven o’clock the next morning to open the shop. ‘You go and get two dozen best oysters, girl,’ Marr said to a maid, and she slipped out to another shop not far along Ratcliffe Street.

She left the door ajar.

None of those in the house or shop heard anyone enter, but suddenly a tornado of violence swept in; a man slashed with chisel and maul, smashing the skulls of the two men, battering Mrs. Marr to death, killing her child in its cradle. When the maid summoned a watchman because the door was locked on her, she stood confronted by the hideous scene.

But the murderer was not found.

A few days later, on December 19, terror struck at The King’s Arms, in Gravel Lane, not far from the linen shop. The proprietor, an old man, was found savagely murdered, his throat cut, and a maidservant was killed in the same way.

Panic began in Wapping and quickly spread. Bow Street men and Runners from the Shadwell office searched all haunts of known men of violence, foreigners were blamed, and when proved innocent, there was always the Irish. Then out of the blue the police found a clue which led them to a Dane named Peterson who led to another man named Williams. Committed to Coldbath Prison to await trial, Williams hanged himself.

So great was the panic caused by these murders that the government was inundated with demands for a force to prevent such things happening again. But still it did nothing.

A few months later a sudden wave of rioting and violence began to run through the country, organised by a group of Luddites. Founded among the hosiers of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, Luddites were little known until they spread to the woollen cloth and cotton works in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Hand workers in all these industries, fearing for their livelihood if machines replaced men, smashed and burned the machines. Savage punishment was meted out and troops and yeomanry quelled the riots, but as soon as they were smothered in one place they broke out in another.

In some ways, the next few years were to prove one of the blackest periods in London’s history. Slums grew filthier and nothing was done to prevent the spread of disease. When, in 1815, a new Corn Bill was introduced to prohibit the free import of corn into England unless home-produced wheat reached a guaranteed price, Parliament was besieged by rioters demanding the defeat of the bill in a way that brought back memories of the Gordon Riots.

On the eighteenth of June, after months of preparation, Richard was to present a bill for a minor reform of Bow Street, adding to the wages paid to officers and the numbers employed. It was a strange day, although he did not realise it. A Member sitting next to him, known as ‘Old Puff and Blow’ because of his constant wheezing and sneezing, was agog with the news.

Napoleon, his army once again almost as powerful as rumour claimed, had met Wellington’s forces at Waterloo, after Blucher’s Prussians had been defeated. That much was certain. None but those closest to the Cabinet had any idea what was going on; few knew of the tense hours before the victory, the period when Wellington stood alone, his army battered. Few in England learned until weeks afterward how Blucher appeared at the last moment with his ranks reformed, and how what had promised to be a French triumph was turned to bitter defeat.

On that day in June carrier pigeons brought the first tidings to Westminster as Richard James Marshall sat in the House of Commons, heavyhearted not only because his bill was bound to be postponed but because he was sure that after the sweet glory of victory would come the bitterness of disillusion. Tens of thousands of soldiers would soon be home, vast numbers would not be able to find work and there would be yet another wave of crime, with the hapless homecomers pressed into service by the criminal leaders. And London was no better able to cope than ever.

In the following year, Richard’s worst fears were confirmed. Riots were breaking out all over the country. News came from Suffolk and Cornwall and Devon, from Norfolk and Essex, from northern counties, of the burning of houses and destruction. ‘Bread or blood!’ screamed the mob and when the yeomanry were turned on them they threw or catapulted huge stones, used fireballs, raided churchyards and took cover behind tombstones, hurling huge pieces of brick and stone at their attackers.

‘But
why
?’ Richard begged young Daniel Ross to tell him.

‘Hunger, sir - pure and simple hunger. Can’t you do
anything
?’ Ross pleaded.

It was almost useless to try. Richard made representations but the Ministers dismissed the riots as trivial and local, and declared through the Prince Regent, ‘The manufacturers, commerce and revenue of the United Kingdom are in a flourishing condition.’

Meanwhile, the people begged or fought for food, and were slaughtered, transported or sent to jail for crimes committed out of their hunger. Here and there an employer would follow the example set by Robert Owen, who tried to make his mills clean and well run, would not employ child labour, even paid wages when there was no work to be done.

‘
Why
?’ he was asked in turn by a parliamentary committee on which Richard sat.

‘To prevent crime and its misery,’ Owen replied. ‘If the poor cannot procure employment they must either commit crimes or starve.’

‘Yes, Owen is a good man,’ Daniel Ross admitted freely to Richard. ‘With a hundred such there might be hope. With one or two there will be constant conflict. You know yourself, sir, that London has more thieves, more prostitutes, more brothels of both sexes—’

‘
Both
sexes!’ exclaimed Richard.

‘Many men prefer young boys to girls, sir. Don’t you shut your eyes to facts, no matter how ugly.’

‘I won’t close them once they are open,’ Richard promised. He could understand the helplessness, the hopelessness of young men like Daniel Ross.

Yet now and again a flash of good came, and in that same year of 1816 prison took the place of the pillories.

‘But it should have happened two hundred years ago,’ protested Daniel. ‘Mr. Marshall, I always appear to be complaining to you and I wish it were not so - I know you exert yourself to improve conditions - but my friends are impatient and I am afraid of what may happen. We had a meeting last evening at which one of us complained with great bitterness that the rich can buy justice, can
buy
the Bow Street Runners, but these are not at the service of the poor because the cost is too high.’

‘There is a committee sitting on the subject of the Runners and police work, Daniel,’ Richard told him. ‘I will raise this matter.’

He sat in the crowded committee room the next day, eyes sore from tobacco smoke, Old Puff and Blow wheezing next to him, listening to the chief magistrate at Bow Street, Sir Nathaniel Conant, giving evidence, his voice rather too loud, as if he not only resented being there but resented the questions asked.

Five times Richard raised his hand to be called; five times he was ignored. On his sixth attempt the chairman of the committee, an elderly Member, said in a croaky voice, ‘Your question, Mr. Marshall. Your question.’

‘If a poor man is robbed of a few shillings, which might well mean more to him than hundreds of pounds to a rich one, will the Bow Street men help him?’

‘Help him?’ echoed Conant. ‘The men will help anyone, and no charge is made for an investigation into a murder or other atrocious event. But the officers have to live. They have to receive payment for services, for they would starve on their official pay. But the charge is small - one guinea a day plus fourteen shillings for living expenses.’ He glared at Richard before going on. ‘But if a bank or wealthy merchant is robbed I will send six or even eight Runners out and charge a one-hundred-pound fee for every thousand stolen. We are not a charity, sir.’

‘So those who are rich can get justice and those who are poor can get none,’ Richard said tartly.

‘Give me a hundred more officers and
all
will get what help they need,’ rasped Conant.

‘I question that,’ Richard said. ‘Is it not more likely that the rich would be even better served whilst the poor would still be rejected?’

The witness clenched his hand. ‘Not a question, not a question,’ the chairman croaked.

‘Then I will ask another,’ Richard persisted. ‘Is it true that officers will act as or appoint go-betweens to arrange terms for the recovery of stolen goods?’

‘And why not, sir? Would you rather that valuable gold or silver plate was melted down than a fair price arranged for its return intact?’

‘One final question,’ Richard found himself asking. ‘Are you and are your men on the side of the people and justice or on the side of the thieves?’

He sat down to some angry comments, and while he received some support, there was none strong enough to help him develop his theme that justice should be free for all. As he left the House that day he felt a mood of despair; his disillusion about some of the attitudes of the Bow Street patrols and the magistrate was tempered only slightly by the fact that they had the government’s approval simply because their system of rewards cost the government little money.

There must not be
much
more delay in creating a force which was free to all and free for everyone.

As was usual when he was angry, Richard rode from Westminster in whatsoever direction his fancy took him. Some magnetic attraction nearly always led him to the Thames, and he rode for the first time over the newly finished Regent Bridge, already called Vauxhall Bridge because it led to the famous gardens, then found his way along lanes and narrow streets to the New Strand Bridge, which was not yet finished for heavy traffic but which could be used by those on foot or on horseback. From either side of the river this bridge revealed an elegance which made it more attractive than any other. There were rumours that its name would soon be changed to the Bridge of Waterloo.

Already he was feeling less obsessed with the problems with which he attempted to cope, and was just about to ride across the river when he saw a big, tall man with long jaw and droll expression and recognised him as Talbot, one of the most successful of the Bow Street Runners. Talbot caught his eye and pushed through the crowd towards him.

‘Good evening, Mr. Marshall,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve been after us poor folk!’

‘After you—’ Richard began, and then understanding dawned. ‘Oh, you mean in the House. Has the magistrate told you what questions I put to him?’

‘Yes, sir,
and
his answers,’ declared Talbot. ‘I’m on duty here, sir. Since they put in the gas there have been a lot of pickpockets and cutpurses about and I take my turn. For thirty shillings a week!’ He gave a wry grin. ‘But I’ll be relieved in ten minutes and I’d be honoured if you’d have some coffee with me. There’s a coffee house on the corner.’

‘I shall go and keep a table,’ promised Richard.

He tied his horse outside, tipped a man to keep an eye on it, then went in. The interior, bright with advertisements, serving girls and the new gas lamps, struck warm. Richard selected a corner table where he could face Talbot when he arrived, puzzled but glad of an opportunity to rest. When at last Talbot came in, removed his tall hat and sat down, coffee was already on the table.

‘Now, rebuke me,’ Richard invited, half-smiling.

‘Rebuke you, sir? God bless my soul, why should I? For telling the truth? There’s help and protection for the rich but little for the poor, and that’s a fact. No, sir, I’ve come to inform you, begging your leave. It’s a long time since you - and your grandfather before you - spent much time at Bow Street. Things have changed.’

‘I imagine that is true.’

‘It is indeed, sir.’ Talbot drank coffee and then gave his droll smile. What an enormous jaw he has, thought Richard. ‘But
I
don’t see how you can hold back change, sir. We Runners do a very good job of work, but we can’t do miracles. The condition is a mess, to put it plainly. What with constables from the parishes, the watchmen - poor old creatures - the beadles and others, there are too many in one place, too few in another, with hundreds of different authorities controlling them. The truth is, sir, it’s not organised because it’s not organisable.’

‘And you think there should be changes?’ asked Richard quietly.

‘It may be against my own interests, sir, but yes, I do.’

In the months that followed, Richard concluded that there were three major obstacles to an organised police force. First, the mass of people, fed by the prejudice created by the merchants and bankers who wanted at all costs to control their own ‘police’. Second, a small number of Bow Street men, mostly Runners, who were making up to £5,000 a year, largely from rewards, and who wanted the present system to continue. Third, a small but powerful group of magistrates who would lose their power and authority if a new police force was established over which they had no jurisdiction.