SCOTLAND YARD

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 145, 16 December 1929, Page 11

SCOTLAND YARD

ITS MECHANISATION

A CENTURY Of PROGRESS

ADVANCE OF SCIENCE

By Edwin I. Woodhall,

(Copyright.)

Aeroplanes may pursue the criminal of to-morrow, but for the past hundred 1829-1029, it has been on the road and increasingly so, for crimo has developed with the development of the road, and the forces of the law and the machinery of the police have kept in step. In a hundred years, however, the balance of power has varied. In 1529 it was definitely in favour of the criminal; to-day the advantage is with the police. When the law took up the chase a century ago tho difficulties of its officers were well nigh unsurmountable. Whether the fugitive was making his escape by road—by horse, by private coach, or public postchaise—it was easy for him to confuse tho trail, for all travellers were strangers thirty miles from their own p\aecs; there was little or no co-opcratioh between local authorities; communication was slow and often uncertain; roads wcro bad. For the criminal the channels of escape were many—there was a way out of every cordon, and oven if the Bow street runner had tracked him after out of his proper province, the pursuer ■was viewed with suspicion. The harshness of tho laws provided tho criminal with easy sympathy and very ready help.

Iv 1829, then, tho arm of the law was remarkably short. Yet onwards from that date it began to lengthen, just as its grasp became more severe, more tenacious. Tho road improved, transport developed, communication progressed, and even- while the enterprising criminal was quick to utilise these bettered media to his advantage, so law and order used them, as well.

The Bow Street runners died about IS-9, and the London Metropolitan Police Force came in their place, and there were laid the foundations of that ■wonderful system of crimo detection and prevention -which have made Britain's crimo statistics the envy of the •whole world. In that building up, however, there has been an important and outstanding -characteristic. One word might well express tho direction of its development—tho word 'mechanisation, for the modern machinery of the law is really and truly mechanical, and most of its remarkable progress has been made in terms of machinery. Without the instrument the modern detective would be aa badly equipped to light crimes as tho Bow Street runner of an older day. . CHANNELS TO FREEDOM. There have been new developments in that mechanisation only recently, and in the morrow it would appear that the fight with crime will put all the trumpa in tho hands of the police. Or will tho criminal go one bettor?' These latest developments, however, carried out by Lord Byng, a groat military organiser, provide a curious reminder of the fact •that it was another great military organiser—the Duke of Wellington— ■who stood behind that first real Commissioner of Police, Sir Robert Peel, and gave the police force tho first impetus towards mechanisation. The Duke's day was ominous for the criminal in its variety of invention. In 1822 ho saw the first mail steamer from Dover to Calais. The escape of the criminal abroad was, facilitated. Yet so was tho pursuit made better. In 1525 the first train run from Stockton to Darlington. A surer way of escape; but also a more public one. In 1820 the first omnibus plyed in London streets; in 1833 the first hansom cab; two simple extensions of transport increasing the range and mobility of the criminal; yet also reducing the unknown channels to freedom. In 1838 the first liner reached New York and in the same year electric telegraph had its birth ... a vague foreshadowing of the new forces that in time would be linked against the criminal. Wellington had nothing to do with the utilisation of these inventions by the police, nor for that matter did Sir Robert Peel, though the latter steadfastly urged the equipment of tho force with every service that would increase their efficiency. In fact, two years before his death, he saw at least ono of his cherished ideas put in practice. When. Trowell, the murderer, mado Ma escape from London by means of a train from Paddington, the police, close ill pursuit,, requested the uso of the Great Western Railway Company's telegraph system to bring about his arrest. Thus in 1850, the first police message was telegraphed, and, bymeans of the instructions sent to West Drayton, Trowell was arrested as he stepped from the train. Yet it was not until 1870 that the telegraph was used as a means of linking up every station in the London Metropolitan police area with Scotland Yard, although every successive police commissioner had endeavoured to introduce as many of the mechanical aids of the time into tho police system. The telegraph lasted eight years' when the invention of the telephone brought about another revolution in the police system of communication. By 1883, Bow street, Marlboi'ough street, Lcman street, and Whitechapel, and other principal stations, were nil connected with Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard first spoko to Paris by telephone in 1890, and the same year, saw another big step forward, for, us'tho result of a two years' agitation, every Metropolitan police station was put on the public telephone system. .Mechanism had given the public tho car of the police . . . the essential fact of any modern crime play—a telephone message to . tho sergeant-in-charge—had been made a reality. THEN CAME WIRELESS. From the message by wire to the message by ether is a small step in history, though a bigger in invention. Wireless entered the service of our police in 1922, though its uses had been well emphasised in the year 1910 through the medium of* the wireless apparatus of tho "Daily Mail." The fugitive murderers Hawley, liarvy and Crippers, detected upon the High Seas, opened tho Yard's eyes to its future tremendous possibilities in the detection of crime. Tho first police messages by wireless, however, were those broadcast by the 8.8.C. in 1922, though but a year later Scotland Yard possessed its first wireless station, and followed it up by forming that most romantic of uuromantic bodies—the Mobile Raiding Squad, better known as "The Flying Squad." Wireless in 1924 provided yet another use in police work. This was the transmission of a message in a special iJode —known as the Collins system—relating to the fingerprint of two Australian criminals. The message was flashed to Melbourne, and I was present ■when, an hour later, the reply was re* csived —'"Both are convicted criminals." In this record of the mechanising of Scotland Yard and the central police sysfsnv a dividing lino can well be drawn between the older and tho nswer Tegirne. To-':a7 modern police work is marked not only by an application of r.-.iMfilig ine?hnuscal appliances and r.K-ilii-ss l>ut ly their elaboration and

development for the special purpose of waging war on the criminal. Improvisation and opportunism have given place to careful examination of the problem of checkmating the' move the criminal has not yot made. In other words, it can be safely declared that the modern detective ia ahead of the criminal, that tho resources of Scotland Yard arc such that very shortly those engaged in nefarious pursuits may well ask: Is crimo worth while? and decide that it is uot. THE FLYING SQUAD. Look at the equipment and tho method of operation of thu Hying Squad. From that top room at Scotland Yard where tho wireless apparatus is housed there may be sent out at any hour of the 24 to all stations a message warning police and detectives to bo on tho look-out for certain men. Not only is that message picked up by stations, but it is also received by patrolling vans, tenders, and fast cars in the service of the Plying Squad. These chariots of tho law arc almost too formidable for tho evcry-day criminal, much less for the accidental thief. Of heavy construction, they aro capable of carrying four detectives at a speed of 75 miles an hour, and they are able to accelerate from 10 milea an hour to CO miles an hour in lifteeu seconds. All the cars are fitted with four-wheel brakes, and can be pulled up in almost their own length. Yet despite those distinctive features they are able to avoid recognition for, of various makes and types, they are constantly being changed in colour, their registration numbers are often varied, their radiators take on new shapes, and while they caji show the Metropolitan Police sign and are provided with a fire boll for emergency, they arc able to pass as ordinary private cars. THE UTILITY VAN. The latest vehicle is a general utility van, the outcome of Lord Byng's decision _to bring all the outlying divisions into more immediate touch with their central stations. Towards this end ho ordered tho installation of a. ring of police boxes all round the frontiers of tho Metropolitan Police area. Here the prisoner is kept in waiting for the general utility van to collect, tor it is not considered good police form to_ take a prisoner through the streets with a crowd, sometimes hostile, trailing in the wake. The general utility van has been designed to bo the most efficient vehicle in the police service. It has a stretcher fitted under the cushions of tho seats, so arranged that it can be r.un out on four wheels sunk into two 'long iron grooves. A first aid box makes the skilled first-aid officer who usually goes with tho van a valuable agent "in all serious emergencies; also a special cell is provided in caso of mental derangement or of n refractory prisoner. So the mechanisation of the Police Force proceeds. At tho present moment experiments are being carried out in tho transmission of photographs and fingerprints of criminals to all parts of tho United Kingdom and the world. For this purpose the Fultograph method' and tho' Marconi-Wright facsimile method are being employed. Aeroplane transport is also under consideration as well as inter-wireless communication throughout the country. So the mechanical police take their part in the long and bitter strugglo with tho enemies of law and order, and so they must conquer.