THE BOMBAY CITY POLICE

Mounted Police Constable

Bombay City

THE BOMBAY CITY POLICE

A HISTORICAL SKETCH
1672-1916

BY
S. M. EDWARDES, C.S.I., C.V.O.,
formerly of the Indian Civil Service and sometime
Commissioner of Police, Bombay

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS
1923

PREFACE

I have been prompted to prepare this brief record of the past history and growth of the Bombay Police Force by the knowledge that, except for a few paragraphs in Volume II of the Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, no connected account exists of the police administration of the City. Considering how closely interwoven with the daily life of the mass of the population the work of the Force has always been, and how large a contribution to the welfare and progress of the City has been made by successive Commissioners of Police, it seems well to place permanently on record in an accessible form the more important facts connected with the early arrangements for watch and ward and crime-prevention, and to describe the manner in which the Heads of the Force carried out the heavy responsibilities assigned to them.

The year 1916 is a convenient date for the conclusion of this historical sketch; for in September of that year commenced the violent agitation for Home Rule which under varying names and varying leadership, and despite concessions and political reforms, kept India in a state of unrest during the following five or six years.

Other considerations also suggest that the narrative may close most fitly in the year preceding the memorable pronouncement in Parliament, which ushered in the recent constitutional reforms. No one can foretell what changes may hereafter take place in the character and constitution of the City Police Force; but it is improbable that the Force can remain unaffected by the altered character of the general administration. Ere old conditions and old landmarks disappear, it seems to me worth while to compile a succinct history of the Force, as it existed before the era of “democratic” reform.

I am indebted to the present Acting Commissioner of Police for the photographs of the portraits hanging in the Head Police Office and of the types of constabulary; to the Record-Keeper at the India Office for giving me access to various police reports and official papers dating from 1859 to 1916; and to Mr. Sivaram K. Joshi, 1st clerk in the Commissioner’s office, who spent much of his leisure time in making inquiries and framing answers to various queries which the Bombay Government kindly forwarded at my request to the Head Police Office.

S. M. EDWARDES

London, 1923

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BOMBAY CITY POLICE
A HISTORICAL SKETCH
1672-1916

CHAPTER I
The Bhandari Militia
1672-1800

A perusal of the official records of the early period of British rule in Bombay indicates that the credit of first establishing a force for the prevention of crime and the protection of the inhabitants belongs to Gerald Aungier, who was appointed Governor of the Island in 1669 and filled that office with conspicuous ability until his death at Surat in 1677. Amidst the heavy duties which devolved upon him as President of Surat and Governor of the Company’s recently acquired Island,[1] and at a time when the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Mogul, the Sidi and the Marathas offered jointly and severally a serious menace to the Company’s trade and possessions, Aungier found leisure to organize a rude militia under the command of Subehdars, who were posted at Mahim, Sewri, Sion and other chief points of the Island.[2] This force was intended primarily for military protection, as a supplement to the regular garrison. That it was also employed on duties which would now be performed by the civil police, is clear from a letter of December 15, 1673, from Aungier and his council to the Court of Directors, in which the chief features of the Island and its administrative arrangements are described in considerable detail.[3] After mentioning the strength of the forces at Bombay and their distribution afloat and ashore, the letter proceeds:—

“There are also three companies of militia, one at Bombay, one at Mahim, and one at Mazagon, consisting of Portuguese black Christians. More confidence can be placed in the Moors, Bandareens and Gentus than in them, because the latter are more courageous and show affection and good-will to the English Government. These companies are exercised once a month at least, and serve as night-watches against surprise and robbery.”

A little while prior to Aungier’s death, when John Petit was serving under him as Deputy Governor of Bombay, this militia numbered from 500 to 600, all of whom were landholders of Bombay. Service in the militia was in fact compulsory on all owners of land, except “the Braminys (Brahmans) and Bannians (Banias),” who were allowed exemption on a money payment.[4] The majority of the rank and file were Portuguese Eurasians (“black Christians”), the remainder including Muhammadans (“Moors”), who probably belonged chiefly to Mahim, and Hindus of various castes, such as “Sinays” (Shenvis), “Corumbeens” (Kunbis) and “Coolys” (Kolis).[5] The most important section of the Hindu element in this force of military night-watchmen was that of the Bhandaris (“Bandareens”), whose ancestors formed a settlement in Bombay in early ages, and whose modern descendants still cherish traditions of the former military and political power of their caste in the north Konkan.

The militia appears to have been maintained more or less at full strength during the troubled period of Sir John Child’s governorship (1681-90). It narrowly escaped disbandment in 1679, in pursuance of Sir Josia Child’s ill-conceived policy of retrenchment: but as the orders for its abolition arrived at the very moment when Sivaji was threatening a descent on Bombay and the Sidi was flouting the Company’s authority and seizing their territory, even the subservient John Child could not face the risk involved in carrying out the instructions from home; and in the following year the orders were rescinded.[6] The force, however, did not wholly escape the consequences of Child’s cheese-paring policy. By the end of 1682 there was only one ensign for the whole force of 500, and of non-commissioned officers there were only three sergeants and two corporals. Nevertheless the times were so troubled that they had to remain continuously under arms.[7] It is therefore not surprising that when Keigwin raised the standard of revolt against the Company in December 1683, the militia sided in a body with him and his fellow-mutineers, and played an active part in the bloodless revolution which they achieved. Two years after the restoration of Bombay to Sir Thomas Grantham, who had been commissioned by the Company to secure the surrender of Keigwin and his associates, a further reference to the militia appears in an order of November 15th, 1686, by Sir John Wyborne, Deputy Governor, to John Wyat.[8] The latter was instructed to repair to Sewri with two topasses and take charge of a new guard-house, to allow no runaway soldiers or others to leave the island, to prevent cattle, corn or provisions being taken out of Bombay, and to arrest and search any person carrying letters and send him to the Deputy Governor. The order concluded with the following words:—

“Suffer poor people to come and inhabit on the island; and call the militia to watch with you every night, sparing the Padre of Parel’s servants.”

The terms of the order indicate to some extent the dangers and difficulties which confronted Bombay at this epoch; and it is a reasonable inference that the duties of the militia were dictated mainly by the military and political exigencies of a period in which the hostility of the neighbouring powers in Western India and serious internal troubles produced a constant series of “alarums and excursions”.

The close of the seventeenth and the earlier years of the eighteenth century were marked by much lawlessness; and in the outlying parts of Bombay the militia appears to have formed the only safeguard of the residents against robbery and violence. This is clear from an order of September 13, 1694, addressed by Sir John Gayer, the Governor, to Jansanay (Janu Shenvi) Subehdar of Worli, Ramaji Avdat, Subehdar of Mahim, Raji Karga, Subehdar of Sion, and Bodji Patan, Subehdar of Sewri. “Being informed,” he wrote, “that certain ill people on this island go about in the night to the number of ten or twelve or more, designing some mischief or disturbance to the inhabitants, these are to enorder you to go the rounds every night with twenty men at all places which you think most suitable to intercept such persons.”[9] The strengthening of the force at this period[10] and the increased activity of the night-patrols had very little effect in reducing the volume of crime, which was a natural consequence of the general weakness of the administration. The appalling mortality among Europeans, the lack of discipline among the soldiers of the garrison, the general immorality to which Ovington, the chaplain, bore witness,[11] the prevalence of piracy and the lack of proper laws and legal machinery, all contributed to render Bombay “very unhealthful” and to offer unlimited scope to the lawless section of the population.

As regards the law, judicial functions were exercised at the beginning of the eighteenth century by a civil officer of the Company, styled Chief Justice, and in important cases by the President in Council. Neither of these officials had any real knowledge of law; no codes existed, except two rough compilations made during Aungier’s governorship: and justice was consequently very arbitrary. In 1726 this Court was exercising civil, criminal, military, admiralty and probate jurisdiction; it also framed rules for the price of bread and the wages of “black tailors”.[12] Connected with the Court from 1720 to 1727 were the Vereadores,[13] a body of native functionaries who looked after orphans and the estates of persons dying intestate, and audited accounts. After 1726 they also exercised minor judicial powers and seem to have partly taken the place of the native tribunals, which up to 1696 administered justice to the Indian inhabitants of the Island.[14] So matters remained until 1726, when under the Charter creating Mayors’ Courts at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras the Governor and Council were empowered to hold quarter sessions for the trial of all offences except high treason, the President and the five senior members of Council being created Justices of the Peace and constituting a Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery.

For purposes of criminal justice Bombay was considered a county. The curious state of the law at this date is apparent from the trial of a woman, named Gangi, who was indicted in 1744 for petty treason in aiding and abetting one Vitha Bhandari in the murder of her husband.[15] She was found guilty and was sentenced to be burnt. Apparently the penalty for compassing a husband’s death was the same as for high treason: and the sentence of burning for petty treason was the only sentence the Court could legally have passed. Twenty years earlier (1724) an ignorant woman, by name Bastok, was accused of witchcraft and other “diabolical practices.” The Court found her guilty, not from evil intent, but on account of ignorance, and sentenced her to receive eleven lashes at the church door and afterwards to do penance in the building.[16]

The system, whereby criminal jurisdiction was vested in the Governor and Council, lasted practically till the close of the eighteenth century. In 1753, for example, the Bombay Government was composed of the Governor and thirteen councillors, all of whom were Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery. They were authorised to hold quarter sessions and make bye-laws for the good government etc. of Bombay: and to aid them in the exercise of their magisterial powers as Justices, they had an executive officer, the Sheriff, with a very limited establishment.[17] In 1757 and 1759 they issued proclamations embodying various “rules for the maintenance of the peace and comfort of Bombay’s inhabitants”; but with the possible exception of the Sheriff, they had no executive agency to enforce the observance of these rules and bye-laws, and no body of men, except the militia, for the prevention and detection of offences. When, therefore, in 1769 the state of the public security called loudly for reform, the Bombay Government were forced to content themselves and their critics with republishing these various proclamations and regulations—a course which, as may be supposed, effected very little real good. In a letter to the Court of Directors, dated December 20th, 1769, they reported that in consequence of a letter from a bench of H. M.’s Justices they had issued on August 26, 1769, “sundry regulations for the better conducting the police of the place in general, particularly in respect to the markets for provisions of every kind”; and these regulations were in due course approved by the Court in a dispatch of April 25, 1771.[18]

Police arrangements, however, were still very unsatisfactory, and crimes of violence, murder and robbery were so frequent outside the town walls that in August, 1771, Brigadier-General David Wedderburn[19] submitted proposals to the Bombay Government for rendering the Bhandari militia[20], as it was then styled, more efficient. His plan may be said to mark the definite employment of the old militia on regular police duties. Accordingly the Bombay Bhandaris were formed into a battalion composed of 48 officers and 400 men, which furnished nightly a guard of 12 officers and 100 men “for the protection of the woods.” This guard was distributed as follows:—

From these posts constant patrols, which were in communication with one another, were sent out from dark until gunfire in the morning, the whole area between Dongri and Back Bay being thus covered during the night. The Vereadores were instructed to appoint not less than 20 trusty and respectable Portuguese fazendars to attend singly or in pairs every night at the various police posts. All Europeans living in Sonapur or Dongri had to obtain passes according to their class, i.e. those in the marine forces from the Superintendent, those in the military forces from their commanding officer, all other Europeans, not in the Company’s service, but living in Bombay by permission of the Government, from the Secretary to Government, and all artificers employed in any of the offices from the head of their office.

The duties of the patrols were to keep the peace, to seize all persons found rioting, pending examination, to arrest all robbers and house-breakers, to seize all Europeans without passes, and all coffrees (African slaves) found in greater numbers than two together, or armed with swords, sticks, knives or bludgeons. All coffrees or other runaway slaves were to be apprehended, and were punished by being put to work on the fortifications for a year at a wage of Rs. 3 per month, or by being placed aboard cruisers for the same term, a notice being published of their age, size, country of origin and description, so that their masters might have a chance of claiming them. If unclaimed by the end of twelve months, they were shipped to Bencoolen in Sumatra.

The standing order to all persons to register their slaves was to be renewed and enforced under a penalty. The Company agreed to pay the Bhandari police Rs. 10 for every coffree or runaway slave arrested and placed on the works or on a cruiser; Re. 1 for every slave absent from his work for three days; and Rs. 2 for every slave absent from duty for one month; Re. 1 for every soldier or sailor absent from duty for forty-eight hours, whom they might arrest; and 8 annas for every soldier or sailor found drunk in the woods after 8 p.m. The money earned in the latter cases was to be paid at once by the Marine Superintendent or the Commanding Officer, as the case might be, and deducted from the pay of the defaulter; and the total sum thus collected was to be divided once a month or oftener among the Bhandaris on duty.

Armed Police Constable

Bombay City

The officers in charge of the police posts and the Portuguese fazendars, attached thereto, were to make a daily report of all that had happened during the night and place all persons arrested by the patrols before a magistrate for examination. The Bhandari patrols were to assemble daily at 5 p.m. opposite to the Church Gate (of the Fort) and, weather permitting, they were to be taught “firing motions and the platoon exercise, and to fire balls at a mark, for which purpose some good havaldars should attend to instruct them, and the adjutant of the day or some other European officer should constantly attend.”

These Bhandari night-patrols, as organized by General Wedderburn, were the germ from which sprang the later police administration of the Island. We see the beginnings of police sections and divisions in the three main night-posts with their complement of officers and men; the forerunner of the modern divisional morning report in the daily report of the patrol officer and the fazendar; and the establishment of an armed branch in the fire-training given to the patrols in the evening. The presence of the fazendars was probably based on the occasional need of an interpreter and of having some advisory check upon the exercise of their powers by the patrols. In those early days the fazendar may have supplied the place of public opinion, which now plays no unimportant part in the police administration of the modern city.

Notwithstanding these arrangements, the volume of crime showed no diminution. Murder, robbery and theft were still of frequent occurrence outside the Fort walls: and in the vain hope of imposing some check upon the lawless element, the Bombay Government in August, 1776, ordered parties of regular sepoys to be added to the Bhandari patrols. Three years later, in February, 1779, they decided, apparently as an experiment, to supplant the Bhandari militia entirely by patrols of sepoys, which were to be furnished by “the battalion of sepoy marines”. These patrols were to scour the woods nightly, accompanied by “a peace officer”, who was to report every morning to the acting magistrate.[21] Still there was no improvement, and the dissatisfaction of the general public was forcibly expressed at the close of 1778 or early in the following year by the grand Jury, which demanded a thorough reform of the police.[22] In the course of their presentment they stated that “the frequent robberies and the difficulties attending the detection of aggressors, called loudly for some establishment clothed with such authority as should effectually protect the innocent and bring the guilty to trial”, and they proposed that His Majesty’s Justices should apply to Government for the appointment of an officer with ample authority to effect the end in view.[23]

This pronouncement of the Grand Jury was the precursor of the first appointment of an executive Chief of Police in Bombay. On February 17, 1779, Mr. James Tod (or Todd) was appointed “Lieutenant of Police”, on probation, with an allowance of Rs. 4 per diem, and on March 3rd of that year he was sworn into office; a formal commission signed by Mr. William Hornby, the Governor, was granted to him, and a public notification of the creation of the office and of the powers vested in it was issued. He was also furnished with copies of the regulations in force, and was required by the terms of his commission to follow all orders given to him by the Government or by the Justices of the Peace.[24]

Tod had a chequered career as head of the Bombay police. The first attack upon him was delivered by the very body which had urged the creation of his appointment. The Grand Jury, like the frogs of Æsop who demanded a King, found the appointment little to their liking, and were moved in the following July (1779) to present “the said James Todd as a public nuisance, and his office of Police as of a most dangerous tendency”; and they earnestly recommended “that it be immediately abolished, as fit only for a despotic government, where a Bastille is at hand to enforce its authority”.

The Government very properly paid no heed to this curious volteface of the Grand Jury, and Tod was left free to draft a new set of police regulations, which were badly needed, and to do what he could to bring his force of militia into shape. His regulations were submitted on December 31, 1779, and were approved by the Bombay Council and ordered to be published on January 26th, 1780. They were based upon notifications and orders previously issued from time to time at the Presidency and approved by the Justices, and were eventually registered in the Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery on April 17, 1780. Between the date of their approval by the Council and their registration by the Court, Tod revised them on the lines of the Police regulations adopted in Calcutta in 1778.[25] It was further provided at the time of their registration that “a Bench of Justices during the recess of the Sessions should be authorized from time to time to make any necessary alterations and amendments in the code, subject to their being affirmed or reversed at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace next ensuing”. Tod’s regulations, which numbered forty-one, were the only rules for the management of the police which had been passed up to that date in a formal manner. They were first approved in Council, as mentioned above, by the authority of the Royal Charter of 1753, granted to the East India Company, and were then published and registered at the Sessions under the authority conveyed by the subsequent Act (13 Geo. III) of 1773. They thus constituted the earliest Bombay Police Code.

Meanwhile Tod found his new post by no means a bed of roses. On November 30th, 1779, he wrote to the Council stating that his work as Lieutenant of Police had created for him many enemies and difficulties. He had twice been indicted for felony and had been honourably acquitted on both occasions: but he still lived in continual dread of blame. “By unremitting and persevering attention to duty I have made many and bitter enemies”, he wrote, “in consequence of which I have been obliged in great measure to give up my bread.” He added that his military title of Lieutenant of Police had proved obnoxious to many, and he offered to resign it, suggesting at the same time that, following the precedent set by Calcutta, he should be styled Superintendent of Police. Lastly he asked the Council to fix his emoluments. The censure of the Grand Jury, quoted in a previous paragraph, indicates clearly the opposition with which Tod was faced; and one cannot but sympathize with an officer whose endeavours to perform his duty efficiently resulted in his arraignment before a criminal court. That he was honourably acquitted on both occasions shows that at this date at any rate he was the victim of malicious persecution.

As regards the style and title of his appointment, the Bombay Council endorsed his views, and on March 29th, 1780, they declared the office of Lieutenant of Police annulled, and created in its place the office of Deputy of Police on a fixed salary of Rs. 3,000 a year. Accordingly on April 5th, 1780, Tod formally relinquished his former office and was appointed Deputy of Police, being permitted to draw his salary of Rs. 3,000 a year with retrospective effect from the date of his first appointment as “Lieutenant”. On the same day he submitted the revised code of police regulations, which was formally registered in the Court of Oyer and Terminer on April 17th. In abolishing the post of Lieutenant the Bombay Government anticipated by a few months the order of the Court of Directors, who wrote as follows on July 5th, 1780:—

“Determined as we are to resist every attempt that may be made to create new offices at the expense of the Company, we cannot but be highly displeased with your having appointed an officer in quality of Lieutenant of Police with a salary of Rs. 4 a day. Whatever sum may have been paid in consequence must be refunded. If such an officer be of that utility to the public as you have represented, the public by some tax or otherwise should defray the charges thereof.”

Before leaving the subject of the actual appointment, it is to be noted that at some date previous to 1780 the office of High Constable was annexed to that of Deputy of Police; for, in his letter to the Court of Sessions asking for the confirmation and publication of his police regulations, Tod describes himself as “Deputy of Police and High Constable”. No information, however, is forthcoming as to when this office was created, nor when it was amalgamated with the appointment of Deputy of Police.[26]

The actual details of Tod’s police administration are obscure. At the outset he was apparently hampered by lack of funds, for which the Bombay Government had made no provision. On January 17th, 1780, he submitted to them an account of sums which he had advanced and expended in pursuance of his duties as executive head of the police, and also informed the Council that twenty-four constables, “who had been sworn in for the villages without the gates”, had received no pay and consequently had, in concert with the Bhandaris, been exacting heavy fees from the inhabitants. Tod requested the Government to pay the wages due to these men, or, failing that, to authorize payment by a general assessment on all heads of families residing outside the gates of the town. The Council reimbursed Tod’s expenses and issued orders for an assessment to meet the cost of the constabulary.

While allowing for the many difficulties confronting him, Tod cannot be held to have achieved much success as head of the police. His old critics, the Grand Jury, returned to the charge at the Sessions which opened on April 30th, 1787, and protested in strong terms against “the yet inefficient state of every branch of the Police, which required immediate and effectual amendment”. “That part of it” they said, “which had for its object the personal security of the inhabitants and their property was not sufficiently vigorous to prevent the frequent repetition of murder, felony, and every other species of atrociousness—defects that had often been the subject of complaint from the Grand Jury of Bombay, but never with more reason than at that Sessions, as the number of prisoners for various offences bore ample testimony.”

They animadverted on the want of proper regulations, on the great difficulty of obtaining menial servants and the still greater difficulty of retaining them in their service, on the enormous wages which they demanded and their generally dubious characters. So far as concerned the domestic servant problem, the Bombay public at the close of the eighteenth century seems to have been in a position closely resembling that of the middle-classes in England at the close of the Great War (1914-18). The Grand Jury complained also of the defective state of the high roads, of the uncleanliness of many streets in the Town, and of “the filthiness of some of the inhabitants, being uncommonly offensive and a real nuisance to society”. They objected to the obstruction caused by the piling of cotton on the Green and in the streets, to the enormous price of the necessaries of life, the bad state of the markets, and the high rates of labour. They urged the Justices to press the Bombay Government for reform and suggested “the appointment of a Committee of Police with full powers to frame regulations and armed with sufficient authority to carry them into execution, as had already been done with happy effect on the representation of the Grand Juries at the other Presidencies.”

The serious increase of robbery and “nightly depredations” was ascribed chiefly to the fact that all persons were allowed to enter Bombay freely, without examination, and that the streets were infested with beggars “calling themselves Faquiers and Jogees (Fakirs and Jogis)”, who exacted contributions from the public. The beggar-nuisance is one of the chief problems requiring solution in the modern City of Bombay: and it may be some consolation to a harassed Commissioner of Police to know that his predecessor of the eighteenth century was faced with similar difficulties. The Grand Jury were not over-squeamish in their recommendations on the subject. They advocated the immediate deportation of all persons having no visible means of subsistence, and as a result the police, presumably under Tod’s orders, sent thirteen suspicious persons out of the Island.[27]

Three years later, in 1790, Tod’s administration came to a disastrous close. He was tried for corruption. “The principal witness against him (as must always happen)”, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, “was his native receiver of bribes. He expatiated on the danger to all Englishmen of convicting them on such testimony; but in spite of a topic which, by declaring all black agents incredible, would render all white villains secure, he was convicted; though—too lenient a judgment—he was only reprimanded and suffered to resign his station”.[28] Sir James Mackintosh, as is clear from his report of October, 1811, to the Bombay Government, was stoutly opposed to the system of granting the chief executive police officer wide judicial powers, such as those exercised by Tod and his immediate successors: and his hostility to the system may have led to his overlooking the exceptional difficulties and temptations to which Tod was exposed. The Governor and his three Councillors, in whom by Act XXIV, Geo. III, of 1785 (“for the better regulation and management of the affairs of the East India Company and for establishing a Court of Judicature”), the supreme judicial and executive administration of Bombay were at this date vested, realized perhaps that Tod’s emoluments of Rs. 250 a month were scarcely large enough to secure the integrity of an official vested with such wide powers over a community, whose moral standards were admittedly low, that Tod had done a certain amount of good work under difficult conditions, and that the very nature of his office was bound to create him many enemies. On these considerations they may have deemed it right to temper justice with mercy and to permit the delinquent to resign his appointment in lieu of being dismissed.

The identity of Tod’s immediate successor is unknown. Whoever he was, he seems to have effected no amelioration of existing conditions. In 1793 the Grand Jury again drew pointed attention to “the total inadequacy of the police arrangements for the preservation of the peace and the prevention of crimes, and for bringing criminals to justice.” Bombay was the scene of constant robberies by armed gangs, none of whom were apprehended. The close of the eighteenth century was a period of chaos and internecine warfare throughout a large part of India, and it is only natural that Bombay should have suffered to some extent from the inroads of marauders, tempted by the prospect of loot. A system of night-patrols, weak in numbers and poorly paid, could not grapple effectively with organized gangs of free-booters, nurtured on dangerous enterprises and accustomed to great rapidity of movement. The complaints of the Grand Jury, however, could not be overlooked, and led directly to the appointment of a committee to consider the whole subject of the police administration and suggest reform.

This committee was in the midst of its enquiry when Act XXXIII, Geo. III. of 1793 was promulgated and rendered further investigation unnecessary. Under that Act a Commission of the Peace, based upon the form adopted in England, was issued for each Presidency by the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal. The Governor and his Councillors remained ex officiis Justices of the Peace for the Island, and five additional Justices were appointed by the Governor-General-in-Council on the recommendation of the Bombay Government. The Commission of the Peace further provided for the abolition of the office of Deputy of Police and High Constable, and created in its place the office of Superintendent of Police.

The first Superintendent of Police was Mr. Simon Halliday, who just prior to the promulgation of the Act above-mentioned had been nominated by the Justices to the office of High Constable. So much appears from the records of the Court of Sessions; and one may presume that after the Act came into operation in 1793 Mr. Halliday’s title was altered to that of Superintendent. His powers were somewhat curtailed to accord with the powers vested in the Superintendent of Police at Calcutta, and he was bound to keep the Governor-in-Council regularly informed of all action taken by him in his official capacity.

Mr. Halliday was in charge of the office of Superintendent of Police until 1808. His assumption of office synchronized with a thorough revision of the arrangements for policing the area outside the Fort, which up to that date had proved wholly ineffective. Under the new system, which is stated in Warden’s Report to have been introduced in 1793 and was approved by the Justices a little later, the troublesome area known as “Dungree and the Woods” was split up into 14 police divisions, each division being staffed by 2 Constables (European) and a varying number of Peons (not exceeding 130 for the whole area), who were to be stationary in their respective charges and responsible for dealing with all illegal acts committed within their limits.

The disposition of this force of 158 men was as follows:—

The names of the police-stations or chaukis (chokeys) show that the area thus policed included roughly the modern Dhobi Talao section and the southern part of Girgaum, most of the present Market and Bhuleshwar sections and the western parts of the modern Dongri and Mandvi sections. In fact, the expression “Dongri and the Woods” represented the area which formed the nucleus of what were known in the middle of the nineteenth century as the “Old Town” and “New Town”. At the date of Mr. Halliday’s appointment, this part of the Island was almost entirely covered with oarts (hortas) and plantations, intersected by a few narrow roads; and if one may judge by the illustration “A Night in Dongri” in The Adventures of Qui-hi (1816),[30] a portion of this area was inhabited largely by disreputable persons.

Simultaneously with the introduction of the arrangements described above, an establishment of “rounds” hitherto maintained by the arrack-farmer, consisting of one clerk of militia, 4 havaldars and 86 sepoys, and costing Rs. 318 per month, was abolished. Mahim, which was still regarded as a suburb, had its own “Chief,” who performed general, magisterial and police duties in that area; while other outlying places like Sion and Sewri were furnished with a small body of native police under a native officer, subject to the general supervision and control of the Superintendent. In 1797 the condition of the public thoroughfares and roads was so bad that, on the death in that year of Mr. Lankhut, the Surveyor of Roads, his department was placed in charge of the Superintendent of Police; while in 1800 the office of Clerk of the Market was also annexed to that of the chief police officer, in pursuance of the recommendations of a special committee. In the following year, 1801, the old office of Chief of Mahim was finally abolished, and his magisterial and police duties were thereupon vested in the Superintendent of Police. To enable him to cope with this additional duty, an appointment of Deputy Superintendent, officiating in the Mahim district, was created, the holder of which was directly subordinate in all matters to the Superintendent of Police. The first Deputy Superintendent was Mr. James Fisher, who continued in office until the date (1808) of Mr. Halliday’s retirement when he was succeeded by Mr. James Morley.

CHAPTER II
The Rise of the Magistracy
1800-1855

As has been shown in the preceding chapter, the importance of the office of Superintendent of Police had been considerably enhanced by the year 1809. Excluding the control of markets and roads, which was taken from him in that year, the Superintendent had executive control of all police arrangements in the Island, exercised all the duties of a High Constable, an Alderman and a Justice of the Peace, was Secretary of the Committee of Buildings, a member of the Town Committee, and a member of the Buildings Committee of H.M.’s Naval Offices in Bombay. He had been appointed a Justice of the Peace at his own request, on the grounds that he would thereby be enabled to carry out his police work more effectively. His deputy at Mahim was also appointed a Justice of the Peace on the publication of Act XLVIII, Geo. III. of 1808.

The year 1809 marks another crisis in the history of Bombay’s police administration, to which several factors may be held to have contributed. In the first place crime was still rampant and defied all attempts to reduce it. Bodies of armed men continued to enter the Island, as for example in 1806 and 1807, and to terrify, molest and loot the residents; and though these gangs remained for some little time within the Superintendent’s jurisdiction, they were never apprehended by the police.[31] In his report of November 15, 1810, Warden refers also to an attack by “Cossids”, i.e. Kasids or letter-carriers, who must have been induced to leave for the moment their ordinary duties as postal-runners and messengers by the apparent immunity from arrest and punishment enjoyed by the bands of regular thieves and free-booters. In consequence of the general lawlessness traffic in stolen goods was at this date a most lucrative profession, and obliged the Justices in 1797 to nominate individual goldsmiths and shroffs as public pawnbrokers for a term of five years, on condition that they gave security for good conduct and furnished the police regularly with returns of valuable goods sold or purchased by them.[32] Another source of annoyance to the authorities was the constant desertion of sailors from the vessels of the Royal Navy and of the East India Company. These men were rarely arrested and the police appeared unable to discover their haunts. The peons, i.e. native constables were declared to be seldom on duty, except when they expected the Superintendent to pass, and to spend their time generally in gambling and other vices. In brief, the police force was so inefficient and crime was so widespread and uncontrolled that public opinion demanded urgent reform.

In the second place, the old system whereby the Governor and his Council constituted the Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery disappeared on the establishment in 1798 of a Recorder’s Court. The powers of the Justices, who were authorized to hold Sessions of the Peace, remained unimpaired, and nine of them, exclusive of the Members of Government, were nominated for the Town and Island. It was inevitable that the constitution of a competent judicial tribunal, presided over by a trained lawyer, should, apart from other causes, lead to a general stock-taking of the judicial administration of Bombay, and incidentally should direct increased attention to the subject of the powers vested in the Police and the source whence they drew their authority.

The powers of the Superintendent of Police at this epoch were very wide. First, he had power to convict offenders summarily and punish them at the police office. This procedure, in the opinion of the Recorder, Sir James Mackintosh (1803-11), was quite illegal, inasmuch as the punishments were inflicted under rules, which from 1753 to 1807 were not confirmed by the Court of Directors and had therefore no validity. The rules made between 1807 and 1811 were likewise declared by the same authority to be invalid, as they had not been registered in the court of judicature. On other grounds also the police rules authorizing this procedure were ultra vires. Secondly, the Superintendent inflicted the punishment of banishment and condemned offenders to hard labour in chains on public works. Between February 28, 1808, and January 31, 1809, he (i.e. Mr. Halliday) banished 217 persons from Bombay, and condemned 64 persons to hard labour in the docks. During the three years, 1807-1809, about 200 offenders were thus condemned to work in chains. On the other hand, the Superintendent frequently liberated prisoners before the expiry of their sentence, and in this way released 26 persons on December 20, 1809, without assigning any reason. He condemned persons also to flogging. He kept no record of his cases. “He may arrest 40 men in the morning”, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, “he may try, convict and condemn them in the forenoon; and he may close the day by exercising the Royal prerogative of pardon towards them all.” It is hardly surprising that the mind of the lawyer revolted against the system, and that in his indignation he characterized the powers of the Superintendent as “a precipitate, clandestine and arbitrary jurisdiction.”[33]

In the third place, the powers of the Governor-in-Council to enact police regulations for Bombay were defined anew and enlarged by Act XLVII, Geo. III. of 1808, under the provisions of which the Government was empowered to nominate 16 persons, exclusive of the members of the Governor’s Council, to act as Justices of the Peace. The promulgation of this Act, which was received in Bombay in 1808, rendered necessary a thorough revision of the conditions and circumstances of police control.

In consequence, therefore, of the prevalence of crime and the notorious inefficiency and corruption of the Police, the hostility of the new Recorder’s Court to the existing system of administration, and the need of a new enactment under Act XLVII, the Bombay Government appointed a committee in 1809 to review the whole position and make suggestions for further reform. The President of the committee was Mr. F. Warden, Chief Secretary to Government, who eventually submitted proposals in a letter dated November 15, 1810. The urgent need of reform was emphasized by the fact that the Superintendent of Police, Mr. Charles Briscoe, who had succeeded Mr. Halliday in 1809, was tried at the Sessions of November, 1810, for corruption, as Tod had been in 1790, and that complaints against the tyranny and inefficiency of the force were being daily received by the authorities. Sir James Mackintosh was only expressing public opinion when in 1811 he recommended Government “in their wisdom and justice to abolish even the name of Superintendent of Police, and to efface every vestige of an office of which no enlightened friend to the honour of the British name can recollect the existence without pain.”

Warden’s proposals were briefly the following. He advocated the adaptation to Bombay of Colquhoun’s system for improving the police of London, and suggested the appointment on fixed salaries of two executive magistrates for the criminal branch of the Police, to be selected from among the Company’s servants or British subjects—“one for the Town of Bombay, whose jurisdiction shall extend to the Engineer’s limits and to Colaba, and to offences committed in the harbour of Bombay, with a suitable establishment; and a second for the division without the garrison, including the district of Mahim, with a suitable establishment.” Both these magistrates were to have executive and judicial functions, and were also to perform “municipal duties”.[34] The active functions of the police were to be performed by a Deputy, while “the control, influence, and policy” were to be centred in a Superintendent-General of Police, aided by the two magistrates. The latter officer was to be responsible for the recruitment of the Deputy’s subordinates, and the Mukadams (headmen) of each caste were to form part of the police establishment.

Warden dealt at some length with the qualifications and powers which the chief police officer should possess. He proposed that the Superintendent’s power of inflicting corporal punishment should be abolished, and that his duties should extend only to the apprehension, not to the punishment, of offenders; to the enforcement of regulations for law and order; to the superintendence of the scavenger’s and road-repairing departments; to watching “the motley group of characters that infest this populous island;” and to the vigilant supervision of houses maintained for improper and illegal purposes. “He should be the arbitrator of disputes between the natives, arising out of their religious prejudices. He should have authority over the Harbour, and should be in charge of convicts subjected to hard labour in the Docks, and those sent down to Bombay under sentence of transportation. He should not be the whole day closeted in his chamber, but abroad and active in the discharge of his duty; he should now and then appear where least expected. The power and vital influence of the office, and not its name only, should be known and felt. He ought to number among his acquaintances every rogue in the place and know all their haunts and movements. A character of this description is not imaginary, nor difficult of formation. We have heard of a Sartine and a Fouché; a Colquhoun exists; and I am informed that the character of Mr. Blaqueire at Calcutta, as a Magistrate, is equally efficient.” Warden, indeed, demanded a kind of “admirable Crichton,”—strictly honest, yet the boon-companion of every rascal in Bombay, keeping abreast of his office-work by day and perambulating the more dangerous haunts of the local criminals by night. It is only on rare occasions that a man of such varied abilities and energy is forthcoming: and nearly half a century was destined to elapse before Bombay found a Police Superintendent who more than fulfilled the high standard recommended by the Chief Secretary in 1810.

The upshot of the Police Committee’s enquiry and of the report of its President was the publication of Rule, Ordinance and Regulation I of 1812, which was drafted by Sir James Mackintosh in 1811, and formed the basis of the police administration of Bombay until 1856. Under this Regulation, three Justices of the Peace were appointed Magistrates of Police with the following respective areas of jurisdiction:—

(a) The Senior Magistrate, for the Fort and Harbour.

(b) The Second Magistrate, for the area between the Fort Walls and a line drawn from the northern boundary of Mazagon to Breach Candy.

(c) The Third Magistrate, with his office at Mahim, for all the rest of the Island.[35]

Included in the official staff of these three magistrates were:—

The executive head of the Police force was a Deputy of Police and High Constable on a salary of Rs. 500 a month, while the general control and deliberative powers were vested in a Superintendent-General of Police. All appointments of individuals to the subordinate ranks of the force were made by the Magistrates of Police, who with the Superintendent-General met regularly as a Bench to consider all matters appertaining to the police administration of Bombay. European constables were appointed by the Justices at Quarter Sessions, and the Mukadams or headmen of each caste formed an integral feature of the police establishment.

The strength and cost of the force in 1812 were as follows:—

Thus, including the Deputy of Police, the land force comprised 10 Europeans, one of whom was in charge of the markets, and 86 Indians, of whom two were inspectors of roads. The clerical staff consisted of three Prabhus. The water-police consisted of 53 Indians and one clerk. The cost of the force, including the water-police, amounted to Rs. 27,204 a year, to which had to be added Rs. 888 for contingencies, Rs. 1425 for the clothing of havaldars and peons, and Rs. 2000 for stationery.[36]

The inclusion in the magisterial establishment of “a Cauzee” etc. requires brief comment. Down to 1790 the administration of criminal justice in India was largely in the hands of Indian judges and officials of various denominations, though under European supervision in various forms; and even after that date, when the native judiciary had ceased to exist except in quite subordinate positions, the law that was administered in criminal cases was in substance Muhammadan law, and a Kazi and a Mufti were retained in the provincial courts of appeal and circuit as the exponents of Muhammadan law and the deliverers of a formal fatwa. The term Kazi on this account remained in formal existence till the abolition of the Sadr Courts in 1862.[37] The object of associating Kazis with the Bombay magistrates of police at the opening of the nineteenth century was doubtless to ensure that in all cases brought before them, involving questions of the law, customs and traditions of the chief communities and sects inhabiting the Island, the magistrates should have the advantage of consulting those who were able to interpret and give a ruling on such matters. The Kazi proper was the authority on all matters relating to the Muhammadan community; the “Jew Cauzee” on matters relating to the Bene-Israel, who from 1760 to the middle of the nineteenth century contributed an important element to the Company’s military forces;[38] the Bhat presumably gave advice on subjects affecting Hindus of the lower classes; while the “Andaroo” (i.e. Andhiyaru, a Parsi priest) was required in disputes and cases involving Parsis, whose customs in respect of marriage, divorce and inheritance had not at this date been codified and given the force of law.

The Regulation of 1812 effected little or no improvement in the state of the public security. Gangs of criminals burned ships in Bombay waters to defraud the insurance-companies; robberies by armed gangs occurred frequently in all parts of the Island;[39] and every householder of consequence was compelled to employ private watchmen, the fore-runners of the modern Ramosi and Bhaya, who were often in collusion with the bad characters of the more disreputable quarters of the Town.[40] Even Colaba, which contained few dwellings, was described in 1827 as the resort of thieves.[41] The executive head of the force at this date was Mr. Richard Goodwin, who succeeded the unfortunate Briscoe in 1811 and served until 1816, when apparently he was appointed Senior Magistrate of Police, with Mr. W. Erskine as his Junior.

The proceedings of both the magistrates and the police were regarded with a jaundiced eye by the Recorder’s Court, and Sir Edward West, who filled the appointment, first of Recorder and then of Chief Justice, from 1822 to 1828, animadverted severely in 1825 upon the illegalities perpetrated by the magisterial courts, presided over at that date by Messrs. J. Snow and W. Erskine[42]. His successor in the Supreme Court,[43] Sir J. P. Grant, passed equally severe strictures upon the police administration at the opening of the Quarter Sessions in 1828.

“The calendar is a heavy one. Several of the crimes betoken a contempt of public justice almost incredible and a state of morals inconsistent with any degree of public prosperity. Criminals have not only escaped, but seem never to have been placed in jeopardy. The result is a general alarm among native inhabitants. We are told that you are living under the laws of England. The only answer is that it is impossible. What has been administered till within a few years back has not been the law of England, nor has it been administered in the spirit of the law of England; else it would have been felt in the ready and active support the people would have given to the law and its officers, and in the confidence people would have reposed in its efficacy for their protection.”[44]

The punishments inflicted at this date were on the whole almost as barbarous as those in vogue in earlier days. In 1799, for example, we read of a Borah, Ismail Sheikh, being hanged for theft: in 1804 a woman was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for perjury, during which period she was to stand once a year, on the first day of the October Sessions, in the pillory in front of the Court House (afterwards the Great Western Hotel), with labels on her breast and back describing her crime: and in the same year one Harjivan was sentenced to be executed and hung in chains, presumably on Cross Island (Chinal Tekri), where the bodies of malefactors were usually exposed at this epoch. One James Pennico, who was convicted of theft in 1804, escaped lightly with three months’ imprisonment and a public whipping at the cart’s tail from Apollo Gate to Bazaar Gate; in 1806 a man who stole a watch was sentenced to two years’ labour in the Bombay Docks.[45] The public pillory and flogging were punishments constantly inflicted during the early years of the nineteenth century. The pillory, which was in charge of the Deputy of Police, was located on the Esplanade in the neighbourhood of the site now occupied by the Municipal Offices. The last instance of its use occurred in 1834, when two Hindus were fastened in it by sentence of the Supreme Court and were pelted by boys for about an hour with a mixture composed of red earth, cowdung, decayed fruits and bad eggs. At intervals their faces were washed by two low-caste Hindus, and the pelting of filth was then resumed to the sound of a fanfaronade of horns blown by the Bhandaris attached to the Court.[46] Meanwhile the English doctrine of the equality of all men before the law was gradually being established, though the earliest instance of a Brahman being executed for a crime of violence did not occur until 1846. The case caused considerable excitement among orthodox Hindus, whose views were based wholly upon the laws of Manu.[47]

The early “thirties” were remarkable for much crime and for a serious public disturbance, the Parsi-Hindu riots, which broke out in July, 1832, in consequence of a Government order for the destruction of pariah-dogs, which at this date infested every part of the Island. Two European constables, stimulated by the reward of eight annas for every dog destroyed, were killing one in the proximity of a house, when they were attacked and severely handled by a mob composed of Parsis and Hindus of several sects. On the following day all the shops in the Town were closed, and a mob of about 300 roughs commenced to intimidate all persons who attempted to carry out their daily business. The bazar was deserted; and the mob forcibly destroyed the provisions intended for the Queen’s Royals, who were on duty in the Castle, and stopped all supplies of food and water for the residents of Colaba and the shipping in the harbour. As the mob continued to gather strength, Mr. de Vitré, the Senior Magistrate of Police, called for assistance from the garrison, which quickly quelled the disturbance.[48]

The Press of this date recorded constant cases of burglary and dacoity. “The utmost anxiety and alarm prevail amongst the inhabitants of this Island, especially those residing in Girgaum, Mazagon, Byculla and the neighbourhood, in consequence of the depredations and daring outrages committed by gangs of robbers armed with swords, pistols and even musquets, who, from the open and fearless manner in which they proceed along the streets, sometimes carrying torches with them, seem to dread neither opposition nor detection, and to defy the police.” It was even said that sepoys of the 4th Regiment of Native Infantry, then stationed in the Island, joined these gangs of marauders, and when two men of the 11th Regiment were arrested on suspicion by a magistrate, their comrades stoned the magistrate’s party. “It would be far better that the Island should be vacated altogether by the sepoy regiments,” said the Courier, “than that it should be exposed repeatedly to these excesses.” Fifty men of the Poona Auxiliary Force had to be brought down to aid the police and to patrol the roads at night.[49]

According to Mrs. Postans, the police administration had improved and robberies had become less frequent at the date of her visit, 1838. “The establishment of an efficient police force,” she writes, “is one of the great modern improvements of the Presidency. Puggees (Pagis i.e. professional trackers) are still retained for the protection of property: but the highways and bazaars are now orderly and quiet, and robberies much less frequent.”[50] The authoress admitted, however, that the Esplanade—particularly the portion of it occupied by the tents of military cadets—was the resort of “a clique of dexterous plunderers,” who during the night used to cast long hooks into the tents and so withdraw all the loose articles and personal effects within reach.[51] The prevalence of more serious crime is indicated by her remarks about the Bhandari toddy-drawers:—

“It appears that in many cases of crime brought to the notice of the Bombay magistracy, evidence which has condemned the accused has been elicited from a Bundarrie, often sole witness of the culprit’s guilt. Murderers, availing themselves of the last twilight ray to decoy their victims to the closest depths of the palmy woods and there robbing them of the few gold or silver ornaments they might possess, have little thought of the watchful toddy-drawer, in his lofty and shaded eyry.”[52]

That the improvement was not very marked is also proved by the fact that in 1839, the year after Mrs. Postans’ visit, the Bench of Justices increased their contribution to Government for police charges to Rs. 10,000, the additional cost being declared necessary owing to the rapid expansion of the occupied urban area, and to the grave inadequacy of the force for coping with crime. So far as watch and ward duties were concerned, the police must have welcomed the first lighting of the streets with oil-lamps in 1843. Ten years later there were said to be 50 lamps in existence, which were lighted from dusk to midnight, and the number continued to increase until October, 1865, when the first gas-lamps were lighted in the Esplanade and Bhendy Bazar. On the other hand drunkenness was a fruitful source of crime, and the number of country liquor-shops was practically unlimited. “On a moderate computation” wrote Mrs. Postans “every sixth shop advertises the sale of toddy.” With such facilities for intoxication, crime was scarcely likely to decrease.

But other and deeper reasons existed for the unsatisfactory state of the public peace and security. Throughout the whole of the period from 1800 to 1850, and in a milder form till the establishment of the High Court in 1861, there was constant friction, occasionally of an acute character, between the Supreme Court and the Company’s government and officials. Moreover, the original intention of the Crown that the Supreme Court should act as a salutary check upon the Company’s administration was frustrated by several periods of interregnum between 1828 and 1855, the Court being represented frequently by only one Judge and on one occasion being entirely closed owing to the absence of judges. This antagonism between the highest judicial tribunal and the executive authority could not fail to react unfavourably on the subordinate machinery of the administration, and coupled with inadequacy of numbers, insufficiency of pay, and a general lack of integrity in the Police force itself, may be held to have been largely responsible for the comparative freedom enjoyed by wrong-doers and their manifest contempt for authority.

Contemporary records indicate that the Police Office at this period (1800-1850) was located in the Fort; the court of the Senior Magistrate of Police was housed in a building in Forbes Street, and the court of the Second Magistrate in a house in Mazagon. The powers of both Magistrates were limited, and all cases involving sentences of more than six months’ imprisonment, or affecting property valued at more than Rs. 50, had to be sent to the Court of Petty Sessions or committed to the Recorder’s, subsequently the Supreme Court. The Court of Petty Sessions was composed of the two Magistrates of Police and a Justice of the Peace (the Superintendent-General of Sir J. Mackintosh’s draft Regulation), and sat every Monday morning at 10 a.m. at the Police Office in the Fort. The constitution of this Court was afterwards amended by Rule, Ordinance and Regulation 1 of 1834, which, though not registered in the Supreme Court as required by Act XLVII, Geo. III, was subsequently legalized by India Act VII of 1836. By that Ordinance the Court was composed of not less than three Justices of the Peace, one of whom was a Magistrate of Police, the second was a European, and the third was a Native of India, not born of European parents. It remained in existence, with extended powers, until the year 1877, when, together with three Magistrates of Police, it was superseded by the Presidency Magistrates Act.

A word may here be said on the subject of the well-known uniform of the Bombay constabulary, the bright yellow cap and the dark blue tunic and knickers, which once caused a wag to style the Bombay police-sepoy “the empty black bottle with the yellow seal.” The origin of the uniform is obscure; but it was certainly in use in 1838, for Mrs. Postans describes the dress of the men as “a dark blue coat, black belt, and yellow turban.”[53] An illustration in The Adventures of Qui-Hi, entitled “A Night in Dongri,” shows that the uniform was worn at a still earlier date. In the background of the picture two persons are obviously having an altercation with a police-constable, and the latter is depicted wearing the flat yellow cap and blue uniform familiar to every modern resident of Bombay. The dress of the constabulary must therefore have been adopted at some date prior to 1816, and it is probably a legitimate inference that it dates back to the reorganization of 1812, and was possibly adapted from an older dress worn at the end of the eighteenth century. In any case the distinctive features of the dress of the Bombay police-constable of to-day are well over one hundred years old.

Police Constable

Bombay City

When Thomas Holloway relinquished the office of High Constable in 1829, his place was taken by one José Antonio, presumably a Portuguese Eurasian, who had been serving as Constable to the Court of Petty Sessions. José Antonio seems to have performed the duties of executive police officer until 1835, when Captain Shortt was appointed “Superintendent of Police and Surveyor etc. etc.” Between 1829 and 1855 the following officials were responsible for the police administration of Bombay:—

It will be apparent from this list that from 1835 to 1855 the executive control of the Police force was entrusted to a series of junior officers belonging to the Company’s military forces, who probably possessed little or no aptitude for police work, were poorly paid for their services, and had no real encouragement to make their mark in civil employ. Consequently, despite increased expenditure on the force, these military Superintendents of Police secured very little control over the criminal classes, and effected no real improvement in the morale of their subordinates. In 1844, for example, a succession of daring robberies was carried out in the Harbour by gangs of criminals, who sailed round in boats from Back Bay. The most notorious of them was known as the Bandar Gang[54]; and their unchecked excesses led to the formation of a separate floating police-force under the control of a Deputy Superintendent on Rs. 500 a month. House-breaking was of daily occurrence in Colaba, Sonapur, Kalbadevi and Girgaum,[55] and constant complaints of dishonesty among the European constables and of the gross inefficiency of the native rank and file were made to the authorities by both public bodies and private residents.[56] Corruption was prevalent in all ranks of the force, and most of the subordinate officers, both European and Indian, were in secret collusion with agents and go-betweens, some of them members of the higher Hindu castes, who assisted their acts of extortion and blackmail and shared with them the proceeds of their venality. Bands of ruffians infested the thoroughfares and lanes of the native city, and no respectable resident dared venture unprotected into the streets after nightfall.

The period immediately preceding the year of the Mutiny was also remarkable for two serious breaches of the public peace. The earlier occurred at Mahim in 1850, on the last day of the Muharram festival, in consequence of a dispute between two factions of the Khoja community, and resulted in the murder of three men and the wounding of several others.[57] The later riots broke out in October, 1851, between the Parsis and Muhammadans, in consequence of a very indiscreet article on the Muhammadan religion which was published in the Gujarati, a Parsi newspaper. The Muhammadans, incensed at the statements made about the Prophet, gathered at the Jama Masjid on October 17th in very large numbers, and after disabling a small police patrol, stationed there to keep the peace, commenced attacking the Parsis and destroying their property. The public-conveyance stables at Paidhoni, which at that date belonged to Parsis, were wrecked, liquor-shops were broken open and rifled, shops and private houses were pillaged. Captain Baynes, the Superintendent of Police, and Mr. Spens, the Senior Magistrate, managed with a strong force to disperse the main body of rioters, capturing eighty-five of them: but towards evening, as there were signs of a fresh outbreak and the neighbourhood of Bhendy Bazaar was practically in a state of siege, the garrison-troops were marched down to Mumbadevi and thence distributed in pickets throughout the area of disturbance. This action finally quelled the rioting, and the annual Muharram festival, which commenced ten days later, passed off without any untoward incident.[58]

In the year 1855 the post of Senior Magistrate was held by Mr. Corfield, Messrs. T. Thornton and N. W. Oliver being respectively Junior and Third Magistrates. In that year the public outcry against the police had become so great, and the general insecurity had been reflected in so constant a series of crimes against person and property, that Lord Elphinstone’s government determined to institute a searching enquiry into the whole subject. With this object they appointed to the immediate command of the force in 1856 Mr. Charles Forjett, who was serving at the moment as Deputy Superintendent. Through his energy and activity, they were able to satisfy themselves fully of the prevalence of wholesale corruption in the force. Drastic executive action was at once taken; and this was followed by the drafting and promulgation of Act XIII of 1856 for the future constitution and regulation of the Police Force. At the same time Mr. Corfield was succeeded as Senior Magistrate by Mr. W. Crawford. The credit for the introduction of the reforms and for the restoration of public confidence belongs wholly to Charles Forjett, whose successful administration during a period fraught with grave political dangers deserves to be recorded in a separate chapter. His appointment in 1855 may be said to inaugurate the régime of the professional police official as distinguished from the purely military officer, and to mark the final disappearance of an antiquated system, under which inefficiency and crime flourished exceedingly. Henceforth a new standard of administration was imposed, whereby the Bombay Police Force was enabled to maintain the public peace effectively and also to acquire by degrees a larger share of the confidence and co-operation of the general body of citizens.[59]

CHAPTER III
Mr. Charles Forjett
1855-1863

Charles Forjett[60], who was appointed Superintendent of Police in 1855, was of Eurasian (now styled Anglo-Indian) parentage and was brought up in India. His father was an officer of the old Madras Fort Artillery and had been wounded at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. In Our Real Danger in India, which he published in 1877, some few years after his retirement, Forjett states that he served the Bombay Government for forty years, first as a topographical surveyor and then successively as official translator in Marathi and Hindustani, Sheriff, head of the Poona police, subordinate and chief uncovenanted assistant judge, superintendent of police in the Southern Maratha Country, and finally as Commissioner of Police, Bombay. He first earned the favourable notice of the Bombay Government by his reform and reorganization of the police in the Belgaum division of the Southern Maratha Country; and there is probably considerable justification for his own statement that the peace and security of the southern districts of the Presidency during the period of the Mutiny were chiefly due to his constructive work in this direction.

He owed his later success as a police-officer to three main factors, namely his great linguistic faculty, his wide knowledge of Indian caste-customs and habits, and his masterly capacity for assuming native disguises. Born and bred in India, he had learnt the vernaculars of the Bombay Presidency in his youth, and had been familiar from his earliest years with those subtle differences of belief and custom which the average home-bred Englishman knows nothing about and can never master. His black hair and sallow complexion—in brief, the strong “strain of the country” in his blood—enabled him, when disguised, to pass among natives of India as one of themselves. A story is told to illustrate his powers of disguise. He once told the Governor, Lord Elphinstone, that in spite of special orders prohibiting the entrance of any one and in defiance of the strongest military cordon that His Excellency could muster, he would effect his entrance to Government House, Parel, and appear at the Governor’s bedside at 6 a.m. Lord Elphinstone challenged him to fulfil his boast and took every precaution to prevent his ingress. Nevertheless Forjett duly appeared the following morning in the Governor’s bedroom—in the disguise of a mehtar (sweeper). With these special qualifications for police work were combined a strong will and great personal courage.

Forjett’s fame rests mainly upon his action during the Mutiny, and one is apt to overlook the great but less sensational services which he rendered to Government and the public in subduing lawlessness and crime in Bombay. As mentioned in the previous chapter, he was serving as Assistant or Deputy Superintendent of Police for some few months before Lord Elphinstone placed him in control of the force, and during that period he set himself to test the extent of the corruption which was believed to prevail widely among all ranks. By means of his disguises he managed to get into close touch with the men who were acting as go-betweens and receivers of bribes, and even dined with one of them, a high-caste Hindu, without betraying his identity. Through these men he also contrived on various occasions to test the integrity of individual members of the force. In consequence he was able in a very short time to expose the whole system of corruption and to furnish Government with the evidence they required for a drastic purging of the upper and lower grades.

That duty accomplished, he turned his attention to the criminal classes.[61] “At a time” wrote the late Mr. K. N. Kabraji in his Reminiscences of Fifty Years Ago, “when the public safety was quite insecure, when the city was infested by desperate gangs of thieves and other malefactors, Forjett had to use all his wonderful energy and acumen to break their power and rid the city of their presence. He strengthened and reformed the Police, which had been powerless to cope with them. There was a notorious band of athletic ruffians in Bazar Gate Street, consisting chiefly of Parsis. They used to occupy some rising ground, from which they swooped down on their prey. Their daily acts of crime and violence were committed with impunity, and their names were whispered by mothers to hush their children to silence.

“I may here give a personal instance of the insecurity of the times. As I was returning one night with my father from the Grant Road theatre in a carriage, a ruffian prowling about in the dark at Falkland road snatched my gold-embroidered cap and ran away with it. The road had been newly built and ran through fields and waste land. Khetwadi, as its name implies, was also an agricultural district. Grant road, Falkland road and Khetwadi were then lonely places on the outskirts of the City, and it is no wonder that wayfarers in these localities could never be secure of purse or person. But on the Esplanade, under the very walls of the Fort, occurred instances of violence and highway robbery, which went practically unchecked. Not a few of the offenders were soldiers. They used to lie in wait for a likely carriage with a rope thrown across the road, so that the horse stumbled and fell, and then they rifled the occupants of the carriage at their leisure. It was Mr. Forjett, whose vigilance and activity brought all this crying scandal to an end.”[62]

The rapid change for the better which followed Forjett’s appointment to the office of Superintendent is illustrated by the fact that whereas in 1855 only 23 per cent of property stolen was recovered, in 1856 the percentage had risen to 59. Mr. W. Crawford, “Senior Magistrate of Police and Commissioner of Police”, in his annual return of crime for the year 1859 remarked that “the total continued absence of gang and highway robbery is most satisfactory”, and drew pointed attention to the efficiency of the “executive branch of the police” under Mr. Forjett.[63] In the following year, 1860, there were only three cases of burglary, and although the value of property stolen amounted to Rs. 187,000, the police managed to recover property worth Rs. 73,000. Serious offences against the person also seem to have decreased in number during Forjett’s régime. The Senior Magistrate observed with satisfaction that “the debasing spectacle of a public execution was not called for” during the year 1859; and such records as still exist of the later years of Forjett’s administration point to the same conclusion.[64]

It must not be assumed, however, that this period lacked causes célèbres. A brief reference to a few of the more important cases will serve to show the varied character of the enquiries carried out by the Police. In 1860 a European seaman, the chief mate of the Lady Canning, was arraigned before the Supreme Court for an attempt to administer poison to the Master and three others belonging to the vessel. The chief witness for the prosecution, however, though bound by recognizances to appear at the trial, sailed from Bombay before the proceedings commenced and could not be brought back. The prisoner was therefore acquitted. In the same year a Bene-Israel and two Hindus were convicted of piracy at the Sessions and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, for having plundered a vessel at anchor off Alibag of ten thousand rupees in silver. In 1861 a Parsi contractor was committed for trial on a charge of manslaughter. He was in charge of the work of digging foundations for a new cotton-spinning mill in Tardeo (probably one of Sir Dinshaw Petit’s mills), when an accident occurred in which five men lost their lives. The contractor was held to have shown a culpable lack of caution; but the Grand Jury threw out the bill against him, and further action was abandoned. A more famous case in the same year was the Bhattia Conspiracy Trial, connected with the famous Maharaja Libel Case of 1862, in which Gokuldas Liladhar and eight other Bhattias were accused of conspiracy to obstruct and defeat the course of justice, by intimidating witnesses and preventing them from giving evidence in the libel-suit brought by Jadunathji Brijratanji Maharaj against Karsondas Mulji and Nanabhai Ranina, editor and printer respectively of the Satya Prakash.[65] Forjett and one of his European constables, George Gahagan, gave evidence before the Supreme Court of the meeting of the conspirators. The accused were found guilty, and Sir Joseph Arnould sentenced the two leading members of the conspiracy to a fine of Rs. 1000 apiece, and the rest to a fine of Rs. 500 each. There was considerable disturbance in Court when these sentences were pronounced.

Forjett served as Superintendent of Police until the end of 1863 or the early part of 1864, with a period of leave to Europe in 1860, during which his work was carried on by Mr. Dunlop, Deputy Superintendent in charge of the Harbour or Water Police.[66] In addition to his duties as head of “the executive police,” he was a member of the old Board of Conservancy (1845-1858), and later one of the triumvirate of Municipal Commissioners, established by Act XXV of 1858, which was responsible for the entire conservancy and improvement of the town of Bombay until its supersession in 1865 by a full-time Municipal Commissioner and the body corporate of the Justices. It was in this capacity that Forjett in 1863 conceived and inaugurated the project of converting the old dirty and dusty Cotton Green into what later generations know as the Elphinstone Circle. The scheme was warmly supported in turn by Lord Elphinstone and Sir Bartle Frere. The Municipal Commissioners bought up the whole site and resold it at a considerable profit in building-lots to English business firms; and by the end of 1865, two years after Forjett had proposed the scheme, the Elphinstone Circle was practically completed and ready for occupation.[67]

In addition to regular police duties, the Superintendent of Police at this date was also in charge of the Fire Brigade—an arrangement which lasted until 1888, and which accounts for the fact that an annual return of fires signed by Forjett and his successor formed a regular feature of the annual crime return submitted to Government by the Senior Magistrate of Police. The officers and men of the brigade were members of the regular police force, the European officers performing both police and fire-brigade duties and the Indian ranks being restricted to fire-duty only.[68]

During Mr. Forjett’s tenure of office, the post of Senior Magistrate was held by Mr. W. Crawford, between whom and the Superintendent of Police the most amicable relations existed. The position of both officials was considerably strengthened by the passing of Act XLVIII of 1860, amending Act XIII of 1856, which gave the police wider powers for the regulation and prevention of nuisances, and enabled the magistracy to deal promptly and effectively with offences to which the old Act of 1856 did not extend.[69]

The period of the Mutiny (1857) was fraught with anxiety for the English residents of Bombay. Between May and September rumours and hints of the probability of a rising of the native population were constantly disseminated, and more than one Indian of standing narrowly escaped arrest for treason as the result of false complaints laid before the authorities by interested parties. Among those thus secretly impeached was the famous millionaire, Mr. Jagannath Shankarshet (1804-65), who might well have succumbed to the attacks of his accusers, had the Governor, Lord Elphinstone, been less calm, circumspect and resolute. Jagannath’s guilt was firmly believed in by several influential Englishmen, who brought their views to the notice of the Governor. He instructed Forjett to investigate the matter; and the latter was able to prove that the charges were wholly without foundation.[70] The belief in Jagannath’s treasonable dealings with the mutineers in Bengal may perhaps have resulted from action taken by Forjett immediately after the outbreak of the Mutiny. In the garden of Jagannath Shankarshet’s mansion was a large rest-house or dharamshala intended for the accommodation of wandering Brahman mendicants, who during the day begged food and alms in the town. Sanyasis and Bhikshuks from all parts of India visited this rest-house, bringing all kinds of information of events in Bengal and the upper Provinces: and Forjett lost no time in placing an intelligent up-country Brahman, disguised as a mendicant, on detective duty in the dharamshala. It is quite possible that this plan may have been partly responsible for the rumour that Jagannath was in collusion with the infamous Nana Saheb. On the other hand the detective must have supplied Forjett with much of the evidence which enabled him to disprove the Hindu millionaire’s complicity in the Sepoy rebellion.[71]

At this date the military forces in Bombay comprised three native regiments and one British force of 400 men under the command of Brigadier Shortt. The native troops were implicitly trusted by their officers, and the chief danger apprehended by the Bombay Government was from the Muhammadan population of the city, which numbered about 150,000. Forjett from the first combated this view and wrote a special letter to the Governor’s Private Secretary, warning him that the main danger was from the troops. His own inquiries had convinced him that the townspeople would not rise unless the native regiments gave them the lead, and that the latter were planning mutiny. Much to the disgust of General Shortt, he made no secret of his views, declaring that the sepoys were the real potential source of disturbance and danger. Forjett’s own force consisted of 60 European police and a number of Indian constables; but on the fidelity of the latter he could not implicitly rely. Consequently, after news reached Bombay of the disasters at Cawnpore and other centres, he obtained Lord Elphinstone’s special permission to enrol a body of 50 European mounted police.[72]

Meanwhile the Muharram, which was always an occasion of anxiety and frequently of disturbance, was drawing near. The plans made by the Government for maintaining order involved the division of the European troops and police into small parties, which were posted in various parts of the town.[73] Forjett disapproved wholly of this arrangement, as no considerable body of European troops or police would be at hand to quell a mutiny of the sepoys, which was certain to break out in the neighbourhood of their barracks. He was naturally not empowered to revise the arrangement of the military forces; but he definitely informed Lord Elphinstone that he felt bound to disobey the orders for the distribution of the police. “It is a very risky thing”, said the Governor, “to disobey orders; but I am sure you will do nothing rash.”[74]

Despite the risk, Forjett disobeyed the orders and concentrated all his efforts on outwitting the plotters. He summoned a meeting of the leading Muhammadans and addressed them in very strong terms on the subject of fomenting disorder—a step which earned Lord Elphinstone’s personal commendation. Then, night after night, both before and during the celebration of the festival, he wandered about the city in disguise, and whenever he heard anyone speaking of the mutineers’ successes in other parts of India in anything like a tone of exultation, he arrested him on the spot. A whistle brought up three or more of his detective police, who took charge of the culprit and marched him off to the lock-up. The bad characters of the town were so much alarmed by these mysterious arrests, which seemed to indicate that the authorities knew all that was afoot, that they relinquished their plans for an outbreak. In his dealings with the badmash element, Forjett received valuable assistance from the Kazi of Bombay, from a Muhammadan Subehdar of police, and from an Arab with whom he used, when disguised, to visit mosques, coffee-shops, and other places of popular resort.[75]

The Muharram would have ended peacefully but for the stupidity of a drunken Christian drummer, belonging to one of the native regiments, who towards the end of the festival insulted a religious procession of Hindus by knocking down the idol which they were escorting. He was at once arrested and locked up. The men of his regiment, incensed at the action of the police, whom they detested on account of Forjett’s known distrust of themselves, hurried to the lock-up, released the drummer and carried him off, together with two police-guards, to their lines. An English constable and four Indian police-sepoys, who went to demand the surrender of the drummer and the release of their two comrades, were resisted by force. A struggle ensued, and the police had to fight their way out, leaving two of their number seriously wounded. The excitement was intense, and the sepoys of the native regiments were bent upon breaking out of their lines. On receiving news of the disturbance, Forjett galloped to the scene, leaving orders for his assistant, Mr. Edginton, and the European police to follow him. He found the native troops trying to force their way out of the lines, and their officers with drawn swords endeavouring to hold them back. At the sight of Forjett the anger of the men rose to white heat. “For God’s sake Mr. Forjett,” cried the officers, “go away”. “If your men are bent on mischief” was the reply, “the sooner it is over the better.” The sepoys hesitated, while Forjett sat on his horse confronting them. A minute or two later Mr. Edginton and fifty-four European police rode up; and Forjett cried, “Throw open the gates. I am ready for them.” The native troops were unprepared for this prompt action, and judging discretion to be the better part of valour, remained in their lines and gradually recovered their senses.[76]

But the trouble, though scotched, was not killed. A few days later Forjett erected a gibbet in the compound of the Police Office, summoned the chief citizens whom he knew to be disaffected, and, pointing to the gibbet, warned them that on the slightest sign that they meditated an outbreak, they would be seized and hanged. This forcible demonstration had the desired effect. Forjett had quashed all chance of a rising in the bazar. But the danger from the native troops remained. Forjett redoubled his detective activities and soon discovered that a number of them were regularly holding secret meetings in the house of one Ganga Prasad, who had gained the confidence of the sepoys in the triple rôle of priest, devotee and physician.[77] Forjett had this man arrested and induced him to confess all he knew. The next night he went in disguise to the house in Sonapur (Dhobi Talao) and listened to the sepoys’ conversation. He learnt that they intended to mutiny during the Hindu festival of Divali in October, pillage the city, and then escape from the Island. He reported the facts at once to the military officers, who received them with incredulity. But Forjett eventually persuaded Major Barrow, the commandant of one of the regiments, to accompany him in disguise to the house and hear the details of the plot from a convenient hiding-place. Major Barrow was convinced and reported the facts to General Shortt, who exclaimed:—“Mr. Forjett has caught us at last!” Court-martials were promptly held: the two ringleaders—a native officer of the Marine Battalion and a private of the 10th N. I.—were blown from guns on the Esplanade, and six of their accomplices were transported for life. According to James Douglas, thirty men deserved the same fate as the ringleaders, but owed their reprieve to the clemency of Lord Elphinstone.[78]

Thus by his energy, courage and detective ability did Forjett save Bombay from a mutiny of the garrison. His services had more than local effect, for in Lord Elphinstone’s opinion, if the Mutiny in Bombay had been successful, nothing could have saved Hyderabad, Poona and the rest of the Presidency, and after that “Madras was sure to go too.”[79] The formal thanks of the Bombay Government were conveyed to Forjett in a letter from the Secretary, Judicial Department, No. 1681 of May 23rd, 1859, nearly six months after the Queen’s Proclamation announcing the end of the East India Company’s rule. The words of the letter were as follows:—

“The Right Honourable the Governor in Council avails himself of this opportunity of expressing his sense of the very valuable services rendered by the Deputy Commissioner of Police,[80] Mr. Forjett, in the detection of the plot in Bombay in the autumn of 1857. His duties demanded great courage, great acuteness, and great judgment, all of which qualities were conspicuously displayed by Mr. Forjett at that trying period.”

The scars left by the Mutiny in India were barely healed, when Bombay entered upon that extraordinary era of prosperity, engendered by the outbreak of the American Civil war and the consequent stoppage of the American cotton-supply, which gave her in five years 81 millions sterling more than she had regarded in previous years as a fair price for her cotton, and which eventually led, after a period of great inflation, to the financial disasters of 1865. An enormous influx of population took place; the occupied area rapidly expanded; and the burden thrown upon the police force, which was numerically inadequate, must have been excessive. It redounds to Forjett’s credit that in spite of all difficulties, and in conjunction with his duties as a Municipal Commissioner in a time of feverish urban progress, he contrived to keep crime within reasonable bounds, and put an end finally to the hordes of ruffians who infested the skirts of the town and nightly lay in wait for passers-by.[81]

The Indian merchants of Bombay were not slow to recognise his services to the city, and showed their gratitude for the security which he had afforded to them by presenting him in 1859 with an address, and subscribing at the same time “a sum of upwards of £1300 sterling for the purpose of offering to him a more enduring token of their esteem.”[82] That was not all. After his retirement to England early in 1864, the Indian cotton-merchants sent him a purse of £1500, “in token of their strong gratitude for one whose almost despotic powers and zealous energy had so quelled the explosive forces of native society that they seem to have become permanently subdued:” while the Back Bay Reclamation Company, which was formed at the height of the share mania, allotted him five shares in his absence, and when the price reached a high point, sold them and sent him the proceeds in the form of a draft for £13,580.[83] These large sums, presented to Forjett after his final departure from India, form a striking testimony to the value of his work as a police-officer and to the great impression left by his personality upon Indians of all classes in Bombay.

Forjett’s services at the time of the Mutiny were separately acknowledged. From the public he received various addresses and a purse of £3,850, subscribed by both English and Indian residents. The Government, whose eulogy of his action has already been quoted, granted him an extra pension and also bestowed a commission in the Army upon his son, F. H. Forjett, who was in command of one of the native regiments in Bombay at the time of the great Hindu-Muhammadan riots of 1893.[84] Yet Forjett is said to have regarded himself as slighted by Government in not having received from them any decoration.[85] It certainly seems curious that so admirable a public servant should not have been rewarded with a Knighthood or admitted to one of the Orders of Chivalry. But in Forjett’s day the Government bestowed decorations very sparingly, and it may have been thought that this faithful servant of the vanished East India Company was sufficiently recompensed by the grant of a commission to his son and by permission to accept the handsome pecuniary rewards offered to him by a grateful urban population.

After his retirement, Forjett purchased a property near Hughenden, which he called “Cowasjee Jehangir Hall” after the well-known Parsi philanthropist, who gave so largely to educational and charitable institutions in Western India.[86] In 1877 he published Our Real Danger in India, in which he sought to explain the lesson of his own experience during the Mutiny and gave an account of the events of that period in Bombay. He died in London on January 27th 1890, but at what age is unknown, as the date of his birth has never been satisfactorily determined. He can hardly have been less than thirty-five years of age when he was appointed Superintendent of the Bombay Police in 1855, and was possibly older. Sir Lees Knowles of Westwood, Pendlebury, met him in 1886, and describes him at that date as “a man of middle height, with a very pale olive complexion, and highly nervous: he could not without shaking raise a glass of water to his lips.”[87] Forjett’s pension was paid in rupees, and after the more or less permanent decline in the exchange-value of the rupee, he requested the British Government on more than one occasion to permit him to draw his pension in sterling, but failed to obtain sanction to his request.

Here it is well to take leave of Charles Forjett, the first efficient chief that the Bombay Police ever had. One hesitates to imagine what might have happened in Bombay, if a man of less courage and ability had been in charge of the force in 1857: and looking back upon all that he achieved during his nine years of office, one realizes why Lord Elphinstone trusted him so implicitly, and why the Indian and European public regarded him with so much respect and admiration. His name still lives in Forjett Street, a thoroughfare of minor importance leading from Cumballa hill into the mill-area of Tardeo. He himself will live for ever in the history of the “First City in India” as the man who raised the whole tone of police administration, brought the criminal classes of Bombay for the first time under stern control, and saved the city from the horrors and excesses which must inevitably have attended a rebellion of the native garrison.

CHAPTER IV
Sir Frank Souter Kt., C.S.I.
1864-1888

Forjett was succeeded in 1864 by Mr. Frank H. Souter, son of Captain Souter of the 44th Regiment who was a prisoner in Afghanistan in 1842. Mr. Souter had served as a volunteer against the rebels in the Nizam’s dominions in 1850, and was appointed Superintendent of Police, Dharwar, in 1854. During the Mutiny he captured the rebel chief of Nargund, for which he received a sword of honour, and two years later (1859) was engaged in suppressing the Bhil brigands of the northern Deccan. This task he successfully completed by killing Bhagoji Naik, the notorious Bhil outlaw, and capturing his chief followers, showing on several occasions so much courage and resource that he was recommended for the Victoria Cross. He thus had several years of distinguished service to his credit before he assumed charge of the Bombay Police Force in 1864.

SIR FRANK SOUTER

The appointment of Mr. Souter, who was awarded the C.S.I. in 1868 and was knighted by H. R. H. the Prince of Wales in 1875, synchronized with a thorough revision of the strength of the force. As already stated, the period 1860-65 witnessed a phenomenal expansion of the town, in consequence of the great profits derived from the sale of cotton during the American Civil War. Much reclamation of land from the sea was carried out, the mill-industry throve apace, the town spread northward with amazing rapidity, and shoals of immigrants of all classes poured into Bombay in the hope of making a fortune or securing a livelihood from the many economic and industrial projects then floated. In the large army of workers that invaded the Island there were naturally many persons of bad character and shady antecedents, who soon found their level among the criminal classes and helped to swell the crime-returns. It was obvious at the date of Mr. Forjett’s retirement that the police-force had not been augmented pari passu with the growth of the population and the expansion of the residential area, and the Census of 1864, carried out by the Health Officer under the instruction of Sir Bartle Frere’s government, proved beyond cavil that the force was quite inadequate to deal with the population of 816,562 then recorded.

Accordingly in 1864 Colonel Bruce, Inspector-General of Police with the Government of India, was despatched to Bombay to investigate local conditions and make recommendations for the future constitution of the force. His proposals, which were approved and adopted in 1865, were briefly the following. The total force was to number 1456, as he was “unable to perceive that the work could be done with fewer hands”, divided under the following main heads:—

Besides these, there were 84 police for the Government Dockyard, who had existed for several years and were paid for by the Marine Department, and a few miscellaneous police, who guarded municipal graveyards and burning-grounds and were paid for by the Municipal Commissioners. Neither these nor the Dock police were available for ordinary police work. Excluding the Harbour police, who numbered 101, the police force proper in 1865 was composed as follows:—

These numbers were appreciably in excess of the total strength of the force in Mr. Forjett’s time and placed the Bombay police on a level with the forces maintained in the sister-towns of Calcutta and Madras.

The office of Commissioner of Police dates also from Colonel Bruce’s reorganization of 1865. He proposed that the appointments of Police Commissioner and Municipal Commissioner should be amalgamated: but this suggestion was very wisely negatived by Government. The senior officer of the police force was thenceforth made responsible solely for the police administration of the city, with the title of Police Commissioner, while under the new Municipal Act of 1865 the executive power and responsibility in municipal matters were vested in a Municipal Commissioner appointed for a term of three years. From this date, therefore, the Commissioner of Police, though he still controlled the fire-brigade and sat on the Municipal Corporation as an elected or nominated member, ceased to exercise any official powers in regard to conservancy, rating, lighting and the water-supply.

For the first thirteen years of Sir Frank Souter’s tenure of office, the old system of Magistrates of Police and the Court of Petty Sessions continued unaltered.[89] In 1866, for example, when Sir F. Souter took furlough and Major Henderson was acting for him, the Senior Magistrate was Mr. J. P. Bickersteth, with Messrs. F. L. Brown and Dosabhai Framji Karaka as his colleagues. He was succeeded in turn by Mr. Barton, Mr. John Connon, in whose memory the John Connon High School was founded, and Mr. C. P. Cooper, who was in substantive charge of the office at the time of the passing of the Presidency Magistrates Act IV of 1877. This Act abolished the Magistrates of Police and the Court of Petty Sessions, and invested the Presidency Magistrates, who succeeded them, with powers to deal with all cases formerly committed to the Petty Sessions, and with a large number of cases formerly triable only by the High Court. Nevertheless the Chief Presidency Magistrate continued for a few years longer to submit an annual report to Government on the state of crime in Bombay, which contained inter alia a few returns, and occasionally a few remarks on undetected murder cases, by the Commissioner of Police.

These annual reports of the Senior Magistrate, and later the Chief Presidency Magistrate, were doleful documents, consisting of a mass of figures relative to various classes of crime, and unrelieved, except on very rare occasions, by illuminating comment or interesting fact. The reviews by Government of these returns were little better. Occasionally an Under-Secretary would try to infuse life into the dry bones of the crime-tables, and suggest new avenues of inquiry: but in the end the figures, like the thorns of Holy Writ, sprang up and choked him, and he had to content himself with echoing the uninspired deductions of the magisterial bench. In 1883 the Bombay Government decreed the abolition of these magisterial reports on the state of crime, and in the following year Sir Frank Souter, as Commissioner of Police, submitted the first annual report on the working of the Police in the Town and Island of Bombay.[90] The change, though overdue, was none the less welcome, for the Commissioner, with his fingers on the pulse of the city, was in a position to supply more valuable information and lend a more human touch to the report than was possible so long as his annual review of police activity was confined to a list of fires and a table showing dismissals and resignations from the force. The Chief Presidency Magistrate, with a tenacity worthy of a better cause, continued to submit a return of crime until 1886, when Government ordered its discontinuance. Since that date the only annual report on police and crime has been furnished by the Commissioner, who is accustomed to forward it for remarks to the Chief Presidency Magistrate before submitting it to Government.

During the later years of Sir Frank Souter’s régime the police force was seriously undermanned. Colonel Bruce’s proposals had brought it to approximately the right strength in 1865, but the city continued to expand so rapidly that the numbers then deemed adequate no longer sufficed for the purposes of watch and ward. In 1871 the force numbered 1473, of whom 285 were paid by Government and 1188 by the Municipality, exclusive of 396 men who did duty on the railways. In the following year the Senior Magistrate of Police, John Connon, remarked that “the European Police Force, though now too much reduced, is upon the whole a most respectable body of men, always ready for duty and capable of it. I can conscientiously say as much of numbers of natives of different ranks in the force.”[91] The reduction in numbers, to which he referred, apparently lasted for several years, the total strength of the force varying from 1402 in 1873 to 1408 in 1877. In 1879 it had decreased still further to 1392 men, of whom 262 were classed as Government and 1130 as municipal police (i.e. paid by the Municipal Corporation). In 1881 the number paid for by Government had risen to 324, but the number of “municipal police” was less by 58 than in 1871. The subject was alluded to by the Commissioner in his annual report of June 6th, 1885, and he emphasized the fact that, despite minor increases during the previous twenty years and in spite of a definite expansion of the scope and character of police-work, he was actually in command of 101 men less than in 1865.

Armed Police Jamadar

Bombay City

In 1885 the Bombay Police Force was composed as follows:—

The total cost of this force, including rent, contingencies, allowances and hospital expenses, was Rs. 475,297. The cost of the Land Police was borne by Government, the Municipal Corporation giving a fixed contribution towards it. The Corporation paid also for the constables posted at the burning and burial grounds. Government bore the whole cost of the Harbour Police, while the charges of the Prince’s Dock Police were debited to the Port Trustees.

While the force numbered 101 less than in 1865, the population of Bombay had increased from 645,000 in 1872 to 773,000 in 1881; while between 1872 and 1883 nearly 4000 new dwelling-houses had been erected and 6½ miles of new streets and roads had been thrown open to traffic. Again, whereas in Calcutta the percentage of police to population was 1 to 227, in Bombay the percentage was 1 to 506. In consequence the strain upon the men was excessive. Most of them worked both by day and night and obtained no proper rest: and this fact, coupled with the exiguous pay of Rs. 10 per month allotted to the lowest grade constable, injured recruitment and obliged the Commissioner to accept candidates of less than the standard height (5′ 6″) and chest-measurement. Sir Frank Souter also remarked that only 110 officers and 297 men, out of the whole force, were able to read and write, that no provision for their education existed, and that even if it were provided, the men were so overworked that they would be unable to take advantage of it. He urged the Government to sanction an immediate increase of 200 men in the lower ranks and to abolish the lowest grade of constable on Rs. 10 per month, on the ground that this was not a living wage and compared unfavourably with the salaries obtainable in private employ. The Bombay Government, while admitting the force of the Commissioner’s arguments, declared that financial stringency prevented their granting the whole increase required and therefore sanctioned the cost of an additional 101 men, thus merely bringing the force up to the number declared to be necessary twenty years before.

The total strength and cost of the force during the last four years of Sir Frank Souter’s régime were as follows:—

The small increase of 100 men between 1885 and 1888 was absurdly disproportionate to the extra burden of work entailed by the growth of the mill-industry, by the growing demands of the public, and by the activity of the legislature. Among the additional duties devolving on the Bombay police, which came prominently to notice after 1865, were the supervision of the weights and measures used by retail merchants and the prosecution of those whose weights did not conform to the official standard. In 1873, 112 shopkeepers were prosecuted for this offence and all except six were convicted. A year later Government commented unfavourably on the small number of prosecutions under the Arms Act and instructed the Commissioner to exercise a much stricter supervision over the importation and unlicensed sale of arms and ammunition. The Contagious Diseases Act, which no longer exists, was also the source of much extra work and fruitless trouble. In 1884 the Commissioner reported that there were 1435 women on the register, and ten years later 1500. “I regret to say,” he wrote in the course of a report submitted in the former year, “that in the existing state of the law the efforts of the Police to control contagious diseases are almost futile. Hundreds of women, who are well known to be carrying on prostitution in the most open manner, cannot be registered because Magistrates require evidence which it is next to impossible to obtain.” He added that the working of the Act involved a great deal of unnecessary expense, that the police were unable to discharge their duties satisfactorily, and that unless the hands of both the magistrates and the police were strengthened, it would be wiser to abolish the Act altogether. This view eventually found favour and, combined with strong pressure from other quarters, led to the abolition of the Act in July, 1888. A special staff of two officers and ten constables were released from an unpleasant task and were absorbed into the regular police force.

In 1884 occurs the earliest reference by the Commissioner to a matter which was destined to give him and his successors much additional work, namely the Haj or annual Muhammadan pilgrimage to Mecca. The number of pilgrims passing through Bombay had reached nearly 8,000, and had necessitated the appointment in 1882 of a Protector of Pilgrims and a regular system of passports. A Pilgrims Brokers’ Act was also under consideration by the Indian legislature. Three years later, 1887, the task of issuing passports for Jeddah and selling steamer-tickets was entrusted to Messrs. Thomas Cook and Sons; but the success of this arrangement was discounted by the ignorance and helplessness of the pilgrims themselves, who failed to make full use of the facilities offered by the firm. The number of pilgrims passing annually through Bombay was far less than during the early years of the twentieth century: but their presence was nevertheless responsible for the building of one musafirkhana in Pakmodia street in 1871 and of another in Frere road in 1884. The growth of the Haj traffic before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 added immensely to the volume of work annually devolving upon the Police Commissioner, and acquired additional importance from the political significance given to it by Indian Moslem agitators.

From time to time public interest was aroused during these years by sensational crimes. The earliest occurred in 1866, when four Europeans (3 Italians and an Austrian) murdered four Marwadis as they lay asleep in a house in Khoja Street. The motive of the crime was robbery; and the culprits were fortunately caught by the Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Edginton, and some European and Indian police, who pursued them from the scene of the crime. At the end of 1872 the Senior Magistrate of Police received information that a Parsi solicitor of the High Court and a Hindu accomplice had instigated a Fakir named Khaki Sha to kill one Nicholas de Ga and his wife by secret means for a reward of Rs. 5000. Similar information was also conveyed to Khan Bahadur Mir Akbar Ali, head of the detective police. Mr. R. H. Vincent, who was then acting Deputy Commissioner, Mir Akbar Ali, Mir Abdul Ali, Superintendent Mills and an European inspector concealed themselves behind a bamboo partition-wall in the Fakir’s house in Kamathipura and thus overheard details of the plot against the de Gas. It transpired that Mrs. de Ga was entitled to certain property, of which the Parsi solicitor and a Mrs. Pennell were executors; and having mismanaged the property, the latter were anxious to obviate all chance of inquiry by the interested parties into their misconduct. The solicitor and his Hindu accomplice were both convicted. A curious case occurred in 1874, when Mr. James Hall of the Survey Department was accused of causing the death in Balasinor of three Indian troopers, attached to that department, and was adjudged at his trial to be of unsound mind. The murder of a European broker named Roonan by a European Portuguese, de Britto, in 1877 caused some temporary excitement, as also did a murder in the compound of H. H. the Aga Khan’s house in Mazagon, perpetrated at a moment when most of the Khoja residents had gone to Byculla railway station to receive the corpse of the late Aga Ali Shah.

The last, and in some ways most interesting, case happened in November, 1888, when a Pathan strangled his wife, with the help of a friend, in a room in Pakmodia street. The two men placed the corpse of the woman in a box, tied up in sacking, and took it with a mattress on a cart to the neighbourhood of the Elphinstone Road railway station. There they left the box and mattress in charge of a cooly, telling him to watch them until they came back. They then walked into the city, where they sold the woman’s jewellery and purchased tickets for Jeddah out of the proceeds. A day or two later they sailed together for the Hedjaz. The cooly, after waiting some time, took the box and mattress to his house, where they lay until November 23rd, three weeks after the murder. By that date the stench from the box was so overpowering that the cooly in alarm removed them to a dry ditch in the vicinity, where they were discovered by the police on November 24th. The woman’s body was naturally so decomposed that identification was impossible. But by means of the box and the clothes of the deceased, Mir Abdul Ali and his men managed to trace the offenders, who were eventually arrested at Aden and brought back on December 10th to stand their trial.

Among other causes célèbres was the destruction of the Aurora in 1870, the morning after she had left Bombay, in pursuance of a conspiracy on the part of the master of the vessel and three other Europeans to defraud the underwriters by means of false bills-of-lading. The vessel was supposed to be laden with a heavy cargo of cotton which actually was never shipped. All the culprits, of whom two were ship and freight brokers in Bombay, were sentenced to long terms of penal servitude. Two interesting examples of the manufacture of false evidence occurred in 1872. In one case seven persons were charged with causing one Kuvarji Jetha to be stabbed by two men at Ahmedabad, in order that the fact of the stabbing might be adduced in evidence against a third party, against whom they bore a grudge; while in the second case three persons were convicted of robbery at Surat on evidence which the Bombay Police proved conclusively to have been manufactured by seven conspirators in Bombay. Two remarkable cases of cheque-forgeries by Parsis on the National and the Hong-Kong and Shanghai banks were committed to the Sessions in 1875.

The growth of intemperance was a noticeable feature of the period. In 1866-67, the Senior Magistrate, Mr. Barton, advocated more drastic restrictions on the sale of liquor, and in 1871 the Bombay Government commented upon the excessive prevalence of drinking, which was the immediate cause of twenty-one deaths in that year. In 1876 drunkenness was reported to have increased greatly among Indian women of the lower classes;[92] a further increase was reported in 1884, when 4,800 persons, including 224 Europeans, were charged with this offence; and in 1886 the total number of cases had risen to nearly 7,000. While the growth of a floating European population, connected with the harbour and shipping, certainly contributed to swell the returns of intemperance, the main causes underlying the increase were the rapid expansion of the textile industry and the growth of the industrial population, which, in the absence of facilities for decent recreation and in consequence of scandalous housing-conditions, was prone to drown its discomforts by resort to the nearest liquor-shop. Not a few of the problems, which still confront the Bombay executive authorities, can be traced back to this period when a large and important industry was suddenly developed by the genius and capacity of a number of Indian merchants, and a huge lower-class population, almost wholly illiterate and lacking moral and physical stamina, was introduced into the restricted area of the Island at a rate which defied all efforts to provide for its proper accommodation.

The growth of routine police-work during these years is apparent from the number of persons placed before the magisterial bench. Between 1874 and 1880 it increased from 21,500 to nearly 28,000, the exceptional number of 33,000, recorded in 1879, being due to the presence of a large body of immigrants, who had fled from the famine of the previous year in the Deccan and remained in Bombay in the hope of improving their condition by stealing. The volume of offences against property likewise expanded and would probably have been greater, but for the chances of steady employment afforded by the opening of new mills and the construction of dock works. Among the most unsatisfactory features of crime recorded during these years were the steady increase in the number of juvenile offenders and the comparatively large number of cases in which children were murdered for the sake of the gold and silver ornaments they were wearing. As Sir Frank Souter remarked, it is practically impossible for the State to provide an effective remedy for this evil, so long as Indian parents persist in a practice which offers overwhelming temptation to the criminal classes. The prosecution of persons for adultery, which is an offence under the Indian Penal Code, was another noteworthy feature of the crime records of the ’seventies. In 1872 nineteen, and in 1873 twenty-three offenders were prosecuted by the police for this offence, and all of them were acquitted. The extreme difficulty in a country like India of proving a criminal charge of this character led doubtless to the abandonment of such prosecutions in all but the rarest cases. A remarkable case of criminal breach of trust, in which no less than 51 separate charges were brought against a Parsi woman, who was convicted on three counts, and a clever theft of silver bars and coin from the Mint by some sepoys of the 10th Regiment N. I., owed their discovery to the detective abilities of the police.

The criminality of Europeans was due to specific causes connected with the growth of the port. As early as 1867 the prevalence of low freights and the difficulty of obtaining employment afloat or ashore led to much distress and crime among European seamen, and the Police were forced to undertake the task of finding work for some of this floating population and of shipping others to Europe. On the opening of the Suez Canal at the end of 1869, the old sailing vessels, in which the trade of the port had up to that date been carried on, yielded place to steamers, which remained only a short time in harbour and discharged and took in cargoes by steam-power. To this change in the shipping-arrangements was ascribed the prosecution in 1871 in the magisterial courts of 812 refractory sailors. A gradual improvement, however, took place in consequence of “the facilities of communication afforded by the telegraph”, whereby “the amount of tonnage required for merchandize to be exported from Bombay to Europe can be regulated to a nicety. There are far fewer ships in the harbour seeking freight, while the crews of the Canal steamers being engaged for short periods and subject to only a brief detention in the port, the causes which produced discontent are not so prevalent as formerly.”[93] Most of the European offenders, as is still the case, belonged to the sea-faring or military classes or to the fluctuating population of vagrants, and it was their conduct, not that of the regular European residents, which caused the proportion of offenders to the whole European population to compare very unfavourably with the proportion in other sects or communities. Much improvement of a permanent character resulted from the opening of the Sailors’ Home by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1876, while from 1888 the police were relieved of the duty of prosecution in many cases by a decision of the magistracy that under the Mercantile Marine Act the police should no longer arrest European seamen summarily, but should leave the commanders of vessels to obtain process from the courts against defaulting members of their crews.

Only on three occasions was the public peace seriously broken during Sir Frank Souter’s tenure of office. The first disturbance occurred in 1872 during the Muharram festival—the annual Muhammadan celebration of the deaths of Hasan and Husein, which up to the year 1912 offered an annual menace to law and order. Writing of this festival in 1885, Sir Frank Souter stated that it was always “a laborious and anxious time for the police, as until recent years it was almost certain to be ushered in by serious disturbances and often bloodshed, arising from the longstanding and at one time bitter feud existing between the Sunni and Shia sects. For many years it was found necessary to place a strong detachment of troops in the City, where they remained during the last two or three days of the Muharram, and it is only within the last few years that the usual requisition at the commencement of the Muharram to hold a party of military in readiness has been discontinued.” By the middle of the ’eighties a better feeling existed between the two sects; but the excitement during the festival was still intense and the congregation in Bombay of Moslems from all parts of Asia rendered the work of the police extremely arduous. Apparently in 1872 the sectarian antagonism developed into open rioting, resulting in serious injury to about sixty people, before Sir Frank Souter gained control of the situation.[94] This outbreak was followed about a month later by a serious affray between two factions of the Parsi community outside the entrance to the Towers of Silence on Gibbs road. The police speedily put an end to the disturbance and arrested fifty persons for rioting, all of whom were subsequently acquitted by the High Court.[95]

These disturbances were trivial by comparison with the Parsi-Muhammadan riots of February, 1874, which ensued upon an ill-timed and improper attack upon the Prophet Muhammad, written and published by a Parsi in a daily newspaper. Shortly after 10 a.m. on the morning of February 13th, a mob of rough Muhammadans gathered outside the Jama Masjid, and after an exhortation by the Mulla began attacking the houses of Parsi residents. Two agiaris (fire-temples) were broken open and desecrated by a band of Sidis, Arabs and Pathans, who then commenced looting Parsi residences and attacking any Parsi whom they met on the road. One of the worst affrays occurred in Dhobi Talao. The Musalman burial-ground lies between the Queen’s road and the Parsi quarter of that section, and an important Parsi fire-temple stands on the Girgaum road, which cuts the section from south to north. Alarmed at the approach of a large Muhammadan funeral procession from the eastern side of the city, the Parsis threw stones at the Muhammadans, who retaliated, and a free fight with bludgeons and staves, in which many persons were injured, was carried on until the police arrived in force. Much damage to person and property was also done in Bhendy Bazar and the Khetwadi section.[96] On the following day the attitude of the Muhammadans was so threatening that the leading Parsis waited in a deputation on the Governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, and begged him to send military aid to the Police, who appeared unable to cope with the situation. Sir Philip Wodehouse refused the request; and when, in revenge for their losses some Parsis attacked a gang of Afghans near the Dadysett Agiari in Hornby road, the Governor summoned the leading Parsis and urged them to keep their co-religionists under better control. The hostility of the two communities, however, defied all efforts at conciliation, and in the end the troops of the garrison had to be called in to assist in the restoration of order.[97] The police eventually charged 106 persons with rioting, of whom 74 were convicted and sentenced to varying periods of imprisonment. During the progress of the riot, while the police were fully occupied in trying to restore order, the criminal classes took advantage of the situation and disposed of a large quantity of stolen property, which was never recovered.[98]

The Parsis were greatly dissatisfied with the attitude of the authorities and subsequently submitted a memorial to the Secretary of State, begging that an enquiry might be held into the rioting and blaming the police for apathy and the Government for not at once sending military assistance. The Governor’s refusal to call out the troops, until the police were on the point of breaking down, was apparently due to his belief that his powers in this direction were restricted. He was subsequently informed by Lord Salisbury that extreme constitutional theories could not safely be imported into India, and that therefore troops might legitimately be used to render a riot impossible.[99] The Secretary of State to this extent endorsed the views of the Parsi community, which felt that it had not been adequately protected.

Both before and after the passing of the Presidency Magistrates Act IV of 1877 the relations between the magistracy and the police were usually harmonious, and the court-work of the latter was much facilitated by the publication in February, 1881, of rules under that Act, designed to secure uniformity of practice in the four magistrates’ courts and the better distribution and conduct of business. The question of delay caused by frequent adjournments to suit the convenience of barristers and pleaders, was also under consideration: and although no rules, however carefully framed, would suffice to prevent entirely the evil of procrastination, some amelioration was effected under the instructions and at the instance of the Bombay Government. The matter acquired added importance from the application to the Bombay courts on January 1st, 1883, of the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code (Act X of 1882), which increased considerably the work of the Presidency Magistrates.

In 1887, the year preceding Sir Frank Souter’s retirement and death, the Acting Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. Crawley Boevey, displayed a rather more critical attitude than had previously been customary towards the work of the police. He commented unfavourably upon the number of minor offences dealt with under the Police Act, and suggested that the Police sought to raise their percentages by charging large numbers of persons, some of whom were respectable residents, with trivial misdemeanours under local Acts, and that they might devote greater attention to the more serious forms of crime. At the same time Mr. Crawley Boevey evinced the strongest objection to the practice, hitherto followed as a precautionary measure by the constabulary, of searching suspicious characters at night; and he actually convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment an Indian constable who had arrested and searched a townsman in this way, under the authority given by section 35 of the old Police Act XIII of 1856. His decision was reversed on appeal by the High Court: but the practice, which had on several occasions led to the discovery of thefts and furnished clues to current investigations, was nevertheless temporarily abandoned, until Mr. Crawley Boevey had left the magisterial bench. It was resumed under Sir F. Souter’s successor with the full concurrence of the Bombay Government, who recognized that the searching between midnight and 4-30 a.m. of wanderers who were unable to give a good account of themselves, was a valuable measure of precaution in both the prevention and detection of crime.

The Commissioner of Police remained responsible for the working of the Fire-Brigade practically up to the date of Sir Frank Souter’s retirement. By 1887, however, the marked expansion of the city and the increase of police-work proper obliged Government to relieve the European police of all fire-brigade duty. The engineers of the Brigade were transferred in that year to the Municipality, and in the following year the whole organization, composed of engineers, firemen, tindals, lascars, coachmen and grooms, became an integral part of the municipal staff under the provisions of the new Municipal Act III of 1888. One of the largest fires dealt with by the Police, prior to the transfer, occurred in 1882, when the Oriental Spinning and Weaving Company’s mill at Colaba, which dated from 1858, was completely destroyed.

The detective branch of the police-force, which was the nucleus of the modern C. I. D., was a creation of this period. Forjett, as has already been mentioned in connection with the events of 1857, had founded this department; but his own powers and activities as a detective resulted in little attention being paid to the plain-clothes men who served under his immediate orders. When Sir Frank Souter succeeded him, the progress of the city in every direction demanded administrative capacity rather than detective ability in the Commissioner; and apart from the fact that no Englishman at the head of the force could hope to emulate Forjett’s personal success as a detective, the increasing volume of routine work would in any case have obliged the holder of the office to delegate the special detection of crime to a picked body of his subordinates. The detective branch first came prominently to notice in 1872, in connexion with the de Ga and False Evidence cases mentioned in an earlier paragraph. At that date the head of the branch was Khan Bahadur Mir Akbar Ali. He was assisted by a more remarkable man, Khan Bahadur Mir Abdul Ali, who eventually succeeded him. Under their auspices the branch attained remarkable efficiency and was instrumental in unravelling many complicated cases of serious crime, such as the murder of the Pathan woman in 1887, and in breaking-up many gangs of thieves and house-breakers. Not the least important of their duties was the constant supply of information to the Commissioner of the state of public feeling in the City, and the exercise of a vigilant and tactful control over the inflammable elements among the masses at such seasons of excitement as the Muharram.

If it is true that a really successful detective is born and not made, Sir Frank Souter must be accounted fortunate in securing the services of two such men as Mir Akbar Ali and Mir Abdul Ali, of whom the latter wielded a degree of control over the badmashes of the City wholly disproportionate to his position as the superintendent of the safed kapadawale or plain-clothes police. Among his ablest assistants at the date of Sir Frank Souter’s retirement were Superintendent Harry Brewin, who was likewise destined to leave his mark upon the criminal administration, Inspector Framji Bhikaji, and Inspector Khan Saheb Roshan Ali Asad Ali. None of these men could be described as highly educated, and the majority of the native officers and constables under their orders were wholly illiterate: but they possessed great natural intelligence and acumen, an extraordinary flair for clues, and indefatigable energy. These qualities enabled them to solve problems, to which at first there seemed to be no clue whatever, and to keep closely in touch by methods of their own with the more disreputable and dangerous section of the urban population. It was for his services as Superintendent of the Detective Branch that Khan Bahadur Mir Abdul Ali was rewarded by Government in 1891 with the title of Sirdar.

From time to time the arrival of distinguished visitors threw an additional strain upon the police; and much of the success of the arrangements on these occasions must be attributed to the energy of the Deputy Commissioners of Police and the European Superintendents of the force. At the commencement of this period the Deputy Commissioner was Mr. Edginton, who had served under Mr. Forjett and shared with him the burdens of 1857. In 1865 he was deputed to England to qualify himself for the office of chief of a steam fire-brigade, then about to be introduced into Bombay, and he is mentioned as acting Commissioner of Police in 1874. During a further period of furlough in 1872, his place was taken by Mr. R. H. Vincent, and in 1884 permanently by Mr. Gell, both of whom were destined subsequently to succeed to the command of the force. Among the occasions demanding special police arrangements were the visit of the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, in 1872, of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1870, of the Prince of Wales in 1875, of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1883, the departure of Lord Ripon in 1884 and the Jubilee celebrations of 1887. The general character of the police administration is well illustrated by the statement of Sir Richard Temple (Governor of Bombay, 1877-80) that “the police, under the able management of Sir Frank Souter, was a really efficient body and popular withal,”[100] and by the words of Mr. C. P. Cooper, Senior Magistrate of Police, in 1875 that “during the time H. R. H. the Prince of Wales was in Bombay (November, 1875), when the City was much crowded with Native Chiefs and their followers, and by people from many parts of India, and when all the officers of the Department were on duty nearly the whole of the day and night, the Magistrates had, if any thing, less work than on ordinary occasions. This result was due to excellent police arrangements.”[101] These eulogies were rendered possible by the hard work of successive Deputy Commissioners and of the non-gazetted officers of the police force.

Apart from the numerical inadequacy of the force, to which reference has already been made, the most vital needs during the later years of Sir Frank Souter’s administration were the provision of police-buildings and the proper housing of the rank and file. In his reports for 1885 and 1886 the Commissioner explained that all except a fractional proportion of the constabulary were living in crowded and insanitary chals, the rent of the rooms which they occupied being much in excess of the monthly house allowance of one rupee, granted at that date to the lower ranks. The absence of sanitary barracks or lines was one of the chief reasons for the high percentage of men in hospital, and, coupled with the arduous duty demanded of a greatly undermanned force, had led directly to a decline in recruitment. The European police were in no better plight. In default of suitable official quarters they were forced to reside in cramped and inconvenient rooms, the owners of which were constantly raising the rents to a figure much higher than the monthly house allowance which the officers drew from the Government treasury. In some cases it was quite impossible for an officer to find accommodation in the area or section to which he was posted, and the discomfort was aggravated by his being obliged, in the absence of a proper police-station, to register complaints and interview parties in a portion of the verandah of his hired quarters. Some relief was afforded by the construction between 1871 and 1881 of the police-stations at Bazar Gate, facing the Victoria Terminus, and at Paidhoni, which commands the entrance to Parel road (Bhendy Bazar): while from 1868 the police were allowed the partial use of the old Maharbaudi building in Girgaum, which served for twenty-five years as the Court of the Second Magistrate.

In 1885 the Bombay Government sanctioned the building of a new Head Police Office opposite the Arthur Crawford market. This work, however, was not commenced till the end of 1894, and the building was not occupied till 1899; and meantime the Commissioner annually urged upon Government the need of adding barracks for the constabulary to the proposed headquarters, on the grounds that the chosen site was far more convenient than that of the old police office (built in 1882) and lines at Byculla, both for keeping in touch with the pulse of the City and for concentrating reinforcements during seasons of popular excitement and disturbance. Further relief for the European police was also secured in 1888 by the completion of the Esplanade Police Court, which superseded an old and unsuitable building in Hornby road, occupied for many years by the courts of the Senior and Third Magistrates. Quarters for a limited number of European police officers were provided on the third floor of the new building, which was opened in May, 1889.

Thus, apart from the task of perfecting arrangements for the prevention and detection of crime on the foundations laid by Sir Frank Souter, the chief problem which his successors inherited was the proper housing of the police force, in a city where overcrowding and insanitation had become a public scandal. The inconvenient and unpleasant conditions in which the police were obliged to perform their daily duties resulted directly from the phenomenal growth of Bombay since the year 1860, and from the inability of the Government to allot sufficient funds for keeping the police administration abreast of the social and commercial development of the city. During his long régime of twenty-four years Sir Frank Souter saw the extension of the B. B. and C. I. Railway to Bombay, the opening of regular communication by rail with the Deccan and Southern Maratha Country, the construction of the Suez Canal and the appearance in Bombay of six or seven European steamship-companies, the feverish prosecution of reclamation of land from the sea, which increased the area of the Island from 18 to 22 square miles, the construction of many new roads and overbridges, the building of great water-works, the projection of drainage schemes, and the lighting of the streets with gas. He witnessed the old divisions of the Island develop into municipal wards and sections; saw the opening of the Prince’s, Victoria and Merewether docks; saw the first tramway lines laid in 1872, and watched the once rural area to the north of the Old Town develop into the busy industrial sections of Tardeo, Nagpada, Byculla, Chinchpugli and Parel. The number of cotton-spinning and weaving mills increased from 10 in 1870 to 70 at the date of his retirement, and the urban population increased pari passu with this expansion of trade and industrial enterprise. Between 1872 and 1881 the population increased from 644,405 to 773,196, and by 1888 it cannot have been much less than 800,000.

Sir Frank Souter relinquished his office on April 30th, 1888, and retired to the Nilgiris in the Madras Presidency, where he died in the following July. Thus ended a remarkable epoch in the annals of the Bombay Police. It says much for the administrative capacity of the Commissioner that, in spite of an inadequate police-force and the difficulties alluded to in a previous paragraph, he was able to cope successfully with crime and maintain the peace of the City unbroken for fourteen years. Frequent references in their reviews of his annual reports show that the Bombay Government fully realized the valuable character of his services, while the confidence which he inspired in the public is proved by the testimony of trained observers like Sir Richard Temple, by the great memorial meeting held in Bombay after his death, at which Sir Dinshaw Petit moved a resolution of condolence with his family, and by the erection of the marble bust which still adorns the council-hall of the Municipal Corporation. His own subordinates, both European and Indian, regretted his departure perhaps more keenly than others, for he occupied towards them an almost patriarchal position. All ranks had learnt by long experience to appreciate his vigour and determination and his even-handed justice, which, while based upon a high standard of efficiency and integrity, was not blind to the many temptations, difficulties and discouragements that beset the daily life of an Indian constable. Realizing how much he had done to advance their interests and secure their welfare during nearly a quarter of a century, the Police Force paid its last tribute of respect to the Commissioner by subscribing the cost of the marble bust by Roscoe Mullins, which stands in front of the main entrance of the present Head Police Office.

The memory of Sir Frank Souter is likely to endure long after the last of the men who served under him has earned his final discharge, for he was gifted with a personality which impressed itself upon the imagination of all those who came in contact with him. More than twenty years after his death, the writer of this book watched an old and grizzled Jemadar turn aside as he left the entrance of the Head Police Office and halt in front of the bust. There he drew himself smartly to attention and gravely saluted the marble simulacrum of the dead Commissioner—an act of respect which illustrated more vividly than any written record the personal qualities which distinguished Sir Frank Souter during his long and successful career in India.

LIEUT.-COLONEL W. H. WILSON

CHAPTER V
Lieut.-Colonel W. H. Wilson
1888-1893

Lieut-Colonel W. H. Wilson, who belonged to the Bombay District Police, succeeded Sir Frank Souter on July 4th, 1888. He had already acted once as Commissioner from October 1885 to May 1886, during his predecessor’s absence on furlough. During the period which intervened between Sir F. Souter’s departure on April 30th and Colonel Wilson’s appointment in July, the duties of the Commissioner devolved upon Mr. H. G. Gell, the Deputy Commissioner. Colonel Wilson held the appointment for five years, during which he was twice absent on leave, once from May to December, 1889, when Colonel Wise was appointed locum tenens, and again for three months in 1890, when his place was filled by Major Humfrey.

Throughout his term of office Colonel Wilson, like his predecessor, was hampered by lack of men. The force at the date of his assumption of control numbered 1621 and cost annually Rs. 505,135. By 1892 there had been a trivial increase to 1634, while the annual cost had risen to Rs. 513,896. This lack of men was undoubtedly responsible for a decline in the prevention and detection of crime, as for example in 1888, when many cases of house-breaking were undetected, and in 1891, when a serious increase of crime against property was recorded in Mahim and other outlying areas. It also resulted in the force being so seriously overworked that the percentage of men admitted to hospital showed a constant tendency to increase. In his report of 1892 Colonel Wilson informed Government that the burden of duty sustained by the rank and file had become almost intolerable, that the men frequently became prematurely aged from overwork, and that many of the superior officers were ill from exposure and lack of rest. The Bombay Government endorsed the Commissioner’s complaints and admitted the urgent need of increasing the Force.[102] A reorganization of the Force, involving a considerable addition to its numbers, had in fact been under consideration for several years; but owing partly to financial stringency and partly to the delay inseparable from all official transactions, the much-needed relief was not granted until August, 1893,[103] by which date Colonel Wilson had left India and Mr. Vincent had taken his place. The former thus had little or no chance of securing any improvement in the criminal work of the divisional police, and on more than one occasion he found his force singularly inadequate to cope with special and emergent duties.

Like Sir Frank Souter, he also found the lack of police-stations and buildings a serious obstacle to efficient administration. Within a few months of assuming office he reported that the building at Byculla, in which he worked, was very inconvenient and too far distant from the business quarters of the City, and he urged the early construction of the proposed Head Police Office on Hornby road. He reiterated his demands in 1890, 1891, and 1892, stating that no real improvement could be effected until that office and additional quarters for the men were constructed. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, accommodation was provided for two European police officers in the Esplanade Police Court, which was occupied for the first time in 1889; while in the last year of his tenure of office, the divisional police secured some extra accommodation by the full use of the old Maharbaudi building, which had proved inconvenient to the public and was therefore vacated in 1893 by the Second Presidency Magistrate in favour of a Government building in Nesbit Lane, Mazagon.[104] In the latter building also accommodation was provided for two European police officers.

The capabilities of the detective police were tested by several serious crimes. The first, known as the Dadar Triple Murder, occurred in 1888 and aroused considerable public interest. Two Parsi women and a little boy, residing in Lady Jamshedji road, were brutally murdered by a Hindu servant, who was in due course traced, tried and executed. In 1890 the murder of a Hindu youth at Clerk Road was successfully detected, and this was followed in 1891 by the Khambekar Street poisoning case, in which a respectable and wealthy family of Memons were killed by a dissolute son of the house. The police investigation, which ended in the trial and conviction of the murderer, was greatly obstructed by the collateral relatives of the family, who made every effort to render the enquiry abortive and were actively assisted by the whole Memon community.

These crimes, however, were cast into the shade by the famous Rajabai Tower case, which caused great public agitation. On April 25th, 1891, two Parsi girls, Pherozebai and Bacchubai, aged respectively 16 and 20 years, were found lying at the foot of the Rajabai Clock Tower, in circumstances and under conditions which indicated that they had been thrown from above. When discovered, one of the girls was dead, and the other so seriously injured that she expired within a few minutes. Suspicion fell upon a Parsi named Manekji and certain other persons: but the latter were released shortly after arrest, as there was no evidence that they were in any way concerned in the death of the two girls. The Coroner’s jury, after nineteen sittings, gave a verdict that Bacchubai had thrown herself from the tower in consequence of an attempted outrage upon her by some person or persons unknown, and that Manekji was privy to the attempted outrage; and further that Pherozebai had been thrown from the tower by Manekji, in order to prevent her giving information of the attempt to outrage herself and her friend. Manekji was tried by the High Court on a charge of murder and was acquitted. Various rumours were afloat as to the identity of the chief actors in the crime, among those suspected being a young Muhammadan belonging to a leading Bombay family. No further clue was ever obtained, and to this day the true facts are shrouded in mystery.

The police dealt successfully with an important case of forgery, in which counterfeit stamps of the value of one rupee were very cleverly forged by a man who had previously served in the Trigonometrical Survey Department of the Government of India and was afterwards proved to have belonged to a gang of expert forgers in Poona. The collapse of a newly-built house prompted Superintendent Brewin to make a lengthy and careful inquiry into all the details of construction, which ended successfully in the prosecution and punishment of the two jerry-builders who erected it. House-collapses are not unknown in Bombay, particularly during the monsoon, when the weight of the wet tiles causes the posts of wooden-frame dwellings to give way; but so far as is known, the case quoted is the only instance on record of a builder being prosecuted and punished under the criminal law for causing loss of life by careless or defective construction. The Sirdar Abdul Ali was equally successful in unravelling an important case of illicit traffic in arms and ammunition carried on by a gang of Pathans with certain transfrontier outlaws—a matter in which the Government of India at that date (1888) took considerable interest.

The offence of gambling in various forms occupied the attention of the police to a greater degree than before, and the prevalence of rain-gambling led to a test prosecution in the magisterial courts. This form of wagering used to take place during the monsoon at Paidhoni, where a house would be rented at a high price for the four months of the rains by a group of Indian capitalists. There were two forms of Barsat ka satta or rain-gambling, known familiarly as Calcutta mori and Lakdi satta. In the former case wagers were laid as to whether the rain would percolate in a fixed time through a specially prepared box filled with sand, the bankers settling the rates or odds by the appearance and direction of the clouds. In the latter case, winnings or losses depended on whether the rainfall during a fixed period of time was sufficient to fill the gutter of a roof and overflow. The gambling took place usually between 6 a.m. and 12 noon, and again between 6 p.m. and midnight, the rates varying according to the appearance of the sky and the time left before the period open for the booking of bets expired. The practice, which was very popular, was responsible for so much loss that in 1888 two of the principal promoters of rain-gambling were prosecuted by the order of Government. The Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. Cooper, who tried the case, decided that rain-gambling was not an offence under the Gambling Act, as then existing, and his decision was upheld on appeal by the High Court. Consequently Colonel Wilson applied for the necessary amendment of the Bombay Gambling Act, and this was in due course effected by the Legislature. Since that date rain-gambling has been unknown in Bombay.

In 1890 and 1891 the police made continual raids on gambling-houses, and in 1893 were obliged to adopt special measures against a form of bagatelle, known as Eki beki, which had a wide vogue in the City. The Public Prosecutor himself visited one of the more notorious resorts in order to acquaint himself thoroughly with the system, which in consequence of continuous action by the police was for the time being practically stamped out of existence. Bombay, however, has always been addicted to gambling, whether it be in the form of the well-known teji-mundi contracts, the ank satta or opium-gambling, or the ordinary gambling with dice and cards: and notwithstanding that the police at intervals pay special attention to the vice and secure some improvement, the evil reappears and rapidly increases, directly vigilance is relaxed. The promoters of gambling are adepts in the art of misleading the authorities: they rarely use the same room on two successive occasions; they have elaborated a vocabulary of warning-calls; and they employ spies and watchmen to keep them posted in all the movements of the police. Some of the latter have probably at times accepted hush-money and presents to turn a blind eye on the gamblers’ movements: for otherwise it is difficult to understand why men, who are widely known to have been organizing gambling reunions for years, should have successfully evaded the law and in some cases have accumulated a considerable fortune in the process.

Two matters of a novel character engaged the attention of the divisional police during Colonel Wilson’s régime. The first was a series of balloon ascents, which drew immense crowds of spectators. The earliest ascents were performed in the opening months of 1889 from the grounds of old Government House, Parel, by a Mr. Spencer, who successfully descended with a parachute. He was followed in 1891 by Mr. and Mrs. Van Tassell, who, except on one occasion when the lady’s parachute did not open immediately, carried out their performances without a hitch. This form of public amusement, however, came to a sudden and unhappy conclusion on December 10th, 1891, when Lieutenant Mansfield, R. N., essayed an ascent. When he had reached a height of about 1000 feet, the balloon suddenly burst, and he fell headlong to earth and was killed in full view of a large crowd of spectators. Since that date and up to the outbreak of the War in 1914, the only aerial spectacle offered to the Bombay public was a much-advertised aeroplane flight from the Oval. This venture was a fiasco. The aeroplane would only rise a few feet from the ground, and at that elevation collided violently with the iron railing of the B. B. and C. I. railway and was wrecked.

The second event, which evoked much comment, was a strike by the employés of eleven cotton-spinning mills as a protest against a reduction in wages. So far as can be gathered from official records, this was the first strike of any magnitude that occurred in the industrial area, and seems to have been the earliest effort of the labour-population to test their powers of combination. The police had to be concentrated in the affected area, in order to guard mill-property and quell possible disorder: but the mill-workers at this date were quite unorganized and no disturbance occurred. The action of these mill-hands, however, carried the germ of the disorders which have since caused periodical damage to the industry and have interfered frequently with the normal duties of the police force.

It is convenient at this point to refer to the problem of European prostitution, which has repeatedly formed the subject of comment in more recent years. Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the foreign prostitute from eastern Europe was practically unknown in Bombay, and such immorality as existed was confined to women of Eurasian or Indian parentage. Once, however, the large European shipping-companies had established regular steamer-communication with India, and Port Said had become a port of call and an asylum for the riff-raff of Europe, the Jew procurer and “white-slave” trafficker gradually included India within the orbit of a trade, which was characterized by a fairly regular demand and by large and easily earned profits. The Foreigners Act III of 1864, under the provisions of which the Bombay Police arrange for the deportation of foreign pimps, as well as of prostitutes whose conduct demands their expulsion, was apparently not used frequently before the last decade of the nineteenth century, except against troublesome Pathans and Arabs, belonging respectively to the transfrontier region or to the territory of Indian Princes. But the immigration of foreign women must have begun tentatively during the régime of Sir Frank Souter and continued to expand under the auspices of the international procurer, until by the last years of the nineteenth century these unfortunates had secured a strong foothold in certain houses situated in Tardeo, Grant road and other streets of the Byculla ward.

The growth of the European population, resulting from the expansion of the trade of the port, and an increasing disinclination on the part of Government and society to countenance the old system of liaisons with Indian women, may have induced the authorities to regard the establishment of the European brothel and the presence of the European prostitute as deplorable but necessary evils. Provided that the women were kept under reasonable control and the police were sufficiently vigilant to ensure the non-occurrence of open scandals, no direct steps were taken to abolish a feature of urban life which struck occasional travellers and others as inexpressibly shocking. To the peripatetic procurer, who visited Bombay at frequent intervals in order to relieve the women of their savings and ascertain the demand for fresh arrivals, the Police showed no mercy; and the regular use which they made of the Foreigners Act towards the close of the last century indicates that by that date Bombay (like Calcutta and Madras) had become a regular halting-point in the procurer’s disgraceful itinerary from Europe to the Far East.

It must be remembered that the number of European professional prostitutes in India has never been large, and the worst features of the traffic, as understood in Europe, are fortunately absent. That is to say, the women of this class who find their way to the brothels of the Grant Road neighbourhood and to the less secluded rooms in and around the notorious Cursetji Suklaji street, which used to be known on this account as safed gali or “white lane”, are not decoyed thither by force or fraud. The women usually arrive unaccompanied and of their own choice, and they are well over the age of majority before they first set foot on the Bombay bandar. Their treatment in the brothel is not bad and they are not subjected to cruelty. The “mistress” of the brothel, who is herself a time-expired prostitute and has sometimes paid a heavy sum to her predecessor for the good-will of the house, feeds and houses the women in return for 50 per cent of their daily earnings; and as her own livelihood and capital are at stake, she is usually careful to see that nothing occurs to give the house a bad name among her clientèle or to warrant punitive action on the part of the police. The “mistress” acts in fact as a buffer between the women of her house and the male visitor, protecting the general interests and health of the former and safeguarding the latter from theft and robbery by the women, who are usually drawn from the lower strata of the population of eastern Europe and who would, in the absence of such control, be liable to thieve and quarrel, and would also commence visiting places of public resort, such as the race-course, restaurants etc., and walking the streets of the European quarter.

European women of this class are found only in the chief maritime cities of India—Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Karachi and Rangoon, the only places in India which contain a considerable miscellaneous European population. Their total number is not large. Some of them doubtless were originally victims of the “white-slave” trafficker; but their first initiation to the life happened several years before they found their way to India, with funds advanced to them by the pimp or, as they style him in their jargon, “the fancy-man” who first led them astray. There have been instances in Bombay of these women contriving to accumulate sufficient savings in the course of ten or twelve years’ continuous prostitution to enable them either to purchase the good-will of a recognized brothel or to return to their own country and settle down there in comparative respectability. One or two, with their savings behind them, have been able to find a husband who was prepared to turn a blind eye to their past. Thus has lower middle-class respectability been secured at the price of years of flaming immorality. But such cases are rare. These women as a class are wasteful and improvident, and are prone to spend all their earnings on their personal tastes and adornment. Most of them also, as remarked above, have become acquainted early in their career with a procurer, usually a Jew of low type, who swoops down at intervals from Europe upon the brothel in which they happen to be serving and there relieves them of such money as they may have saved after paying the recognized 50 per cent to the “mistress” of the house.

During Colonel Wilson’s Commissionership little mention is made of action by the police against the foreign procurer. The latter was probably not so much in evidence as he was at a later date. The opening years of the twentieth century witnessed a change, however, in this respect, and a short time before the outbreak of the Great War, the Government of India made a special enquiry into the scope and character of European prostitution in India, in consequence of the submission to the Imperial Legislature of a private Bill designed to suppress the evil. The report on the subject submitted at that date (1913) by the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, was directly responsible for a decision to give the police wider powers of control over the casual visits of European procurers—a decision which was carried into effect after the close of the War by strengthening the provisions of the local Police Act and the Foreigners Act. In 1921 the Government of India was represented at an International Conference on the Traffic in Women and Children, held at Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations; and shortly afterwards India became a signatory of the International Convention of 1910, by which all the States concerned bind themselves to carry out certain measures designed to check and ultimately to abolish the traffic.

There is little else to chronicle concerning the work of the police under Colonel Wilson. The arrangements for the visits of the late Prince Albert Victor and the Cesarewitch in 1890 were carried through without a hitch, despite the acknowledged inadequacy of the force. The annual Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca brought to Bombay yearly about 8000 pilgrims, whose passports and steamer-tickets were supplied by Messrs. Thomas Cook and Sons, the general supervision of the pilgrims and their embarkation at the docks being performed by the Protector of Pilgrims and a small staff, in collaboration with the Port Health officer. The period was remarkable for the establishment of several temperance movements in various parts of the City, which were declared in 1891 to have imposed a check upon wholesale drunkenness. No diminution, however, of the volume of crime against property was recorded, despite the activities of the Detective Branch and the action taken by the divisional police against receivers of stolen property, of whom 80 were convicted in 1889 and 64 in the following year. The property annually recovered by the police in cases of theft and house-breaking amounted to about 50 per cent of the value stolen, the paucity of the constabulary being the chief reason for the non-detection of constant thefts and burglaries which occurred in Mahim and other outlying areas. Considering how greatly he was handicapped by lack of numbers, ill-health among the rank and file, and the absence of proper accommodation for both officers and men, Colonel Wilson’s administration may be said to have been fairly successful. Fortunately he was spared the task of dealing with any serious outbreak of disorder, such as occurred during the early days of his successor’s term of office.

CHAPTER VI
Mr. R. H. Vincent, C.I.E.
1893-1898

When Colonel Wilson left Bombay for England in April, 1893, his place was taken by Mr. R. H. Vincent, who had previously acted as Deputy Commissioner for a few months in 1872. A foreigner by birth, Mr. Vincent had served in his youth in the Foreign Legion of Garibaldi’s army. He came subsequently to India and obtained an appointment in the Bombay District Police, in which his linguistic faculties and general capacity soon marked him out for promotion. He was appointed Acting Commissioner in April and was confirmed in the appointment shortly afterwards, when Colonel Wilson sent in his papers. His five years of office were remarkable for two grave outbreaks of disorder, one of them being the most serious riot that ever occurred in Bombay, for the outbreak of plague, which threw an enormous extra strain upon the police-force, and thirdly for the initiation by political agitators of the public Ganpati festivals, which supplied a direct incitement to sedition and disorder.

Mr. R. H. VINCENT

A reorganization of the police-force was finally sanctioned by Government in an order of August 28th, 1893, in consequence whereof the strength of the force at the close of that year was reported to be 1831, exclusive of 99 harbour police paid for by the Port Trustees. The extra number of men, coupled with revised rates of pay and allowances, brought the annual cost of the force to Rs. 518,078. A further addition to the force was sanctioned at the beginning of 1894, the net increase of men enlisted during that year being 287, of whom five were Europeans, fourteen were native officers, and fifty-three were mounted police. The armed police were augmented by 66 men and the unarmed by 140, including 15 European and 11 Indian officers. The mounted police were placed under the command of an Inspector named Sheehy, specially recruited from a British cavalry regiment. In consequence of these additions, the Commissioner at the close of 1894 was in command of a total force (exclusive of the harbour police) of 2111, costing annually Rs. 710,528. The harbour police were also increased to 114 in 1895.

Excluding a small body of seven constables recruited in 1896 for special duty under the Glanders and Farcy Act, the sanctioned strength and cost of the force remained unaltered during the last three years of Mr. Vincent’s term of office. The number, though more adequate than in Colonel Wilson’s time, was yet barely sufficient to cope with all the duties imposed upon the force, while the advent of the plague and other events aggravated the strain. During the decade following upon Mr. Vincent’s retirement appeals for more men were followed by spasmodic additions to the force until the publication in 1905 of the report of the Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon. This resulted in a thorough scrutiny of the various police administrations and led in the case of Bombay to the preparation of a new and radical scheme of reform.

In the matter of crime, the period of Mr. Vincent’s Commissionership was remarkable for several murders, fifteen of which occurred in the year 1893. One of the most sensational crimes was the “double murder” at Walkeshwar in April 1897, when a Bhattia merchant and his sister were killed in a house near the temple by a gang of six men, all of whom were traced and arrested by the police after a protracted and difficult investigation. Five of the culprits were eventually hanged. The police were also successful in 1893 in breaking up two gangs of dhatura-poisoners, who had robbed a large number of people. In 1895 Superintendent Brewin, with the help of the Sirdar Abdul Ali and his detectives, successfully unravelled a case of poisoning, perpetrated with the object of defrauding the Sun Life Assurance Company. A Goanese named Fonseca insured the life of a friend, Duarte, with the company and shortly afterwards administered to him a dose of arsenic, which he had obtained from a European employed in Stephens’ stables, who used the poison for killing rats. Prior to insuring Duarte’s life, Fonseca had him medically examined by two Indian Christian doctors of Portuguese descent, well-known in Bombay, who made a very perfunctory examination. Subsequently, when Fonseca asked them to certify the cause of Duarte’s death, they acted even more negligently and gave a certificate of death from natural causes without any inquiry. Certain facts, however, aroused the suspicions of the manager of the Assurance Company; the police were called in; and in due course Fonseca was tried and convicted of murder.

The records of 1893 mention the arrest and conviction of a leading member of the famous Sonari Toli or Golden Gang of swindlers, which for some time made a lucrative livelihood by fleecing the more credulous section of the public. But in the case of ordinary theft and robbery the police were less successful in recovering stolen property than in previous years, the percentage of recovery for the five years ending in 1894 being only 48 and declining to 35 in 1898. Much of this crime was committed by professional bad characters and members of criminal tribes belonging to the Deccan and other parts of the Bombay Presidency. The prevalence of robbery and theft was viewed with such dissatisfaction by the Bombay Government that in 1894 they urged the Commissioner to make use of the provisions of chapter VIII of the Criminal Procedure Code, which had been applied with much success in up-country districts. Unfortunately the Bombay magistracy required as a rule far more direct evidence of bad livelihood than was procurable by the urban police, and any regular use of that chapter of the Code was therefore declared by the Commissioner to be impracticable.

The court-work of the police under the local Act was indirectly affected by the closing of the opium-dens of the City in 1893. This was one result of the appointment in that year of a Parliamentary Commission to inquire into the extent of opium consumption in India, its effects on the physique of the people, and the suggestion that the sale of the drug should be prohibited except for medicinal purposes. In consequence of the anti-opium agitation in England, the consumption of opium was from that date permitted only on a small scale in one or two “clubs” in the City, frequented by the lower classes. The opponents of the practice did not foresee that opium-smoking cannot be entirely abolished by laws and regulations, and that the stoppage of supplies of the drug merely results in the public seeking other more disastrous forms of self-indulgence. In Bombay the closing of the opium-shops led directly to a great increase of drunkenness,[105] and a few years later to the far more pernicious and degrading habit of cocaine-eating. The experience of most Bombay police-officers is that the smoking of opium does not per se incite men to commit crime, and when practised in moderation it does not prevent a man from performing his daily work. Cocaine on the other hand destroys its victims body and soul, and the confirmed cocaine-eater usually develops into a criminal, even if he was not one previously.

The practice of affixing bars to the ground-floor rooms in Duncan road, Falkland road and neighbouring lanes, occupied by the lowest class of Indian prostitutes, is usually supposed to have been introduced during the period of Mr. Vincent’s Commissionership. Strangers who visit Bombay, as well as respectable European and Indian residents, are apt to be shocked by the sight of these Mhar, Dhed and other low-caste women sitting behind bars, like caged animals, in rooms opening directly on the street. It is not, however, generally known that the bars were put up, not for the purpose of what has been styled “exhibitionism”, but in order to save the woman from being overwhelmed by a low-class male rabble, ready for violence on the smallest provocation. Before the women barred the front of their squalid rooms, there were constant scenes of disorder, resulting occasionally in injuries to the occupants; and it was on the advice of the police that about this date the women had the bars affixed, which oblige their low-class clientèle to form a queue outside and enable the women to admit one customer at a time. Considering that a prostitute of this class charges only 4 annas for her favours and lives in great squalor, it is not surprising that venereal disease is extremely common, and that the offering of four annas to Venus ends generally in a further expenditure of one or two rupees on quack remedies.

As regards regular police-work, Mr. Vincent made an attempt in 1894 to improve the regulation of traffic on public thoroughfares. This was necessitated by the steady increase of the number of public and private conveyances, the former having risen from 5392 in 1884 to 8301 in 1894, and the latter at the same dates from 2674 to 5416. On the other hand the width of the roads had, with here and there occasional setbacks, remained constant for twenty years, and the majority of the streets were totally inadequate for the increased volume of daily traffic. The Commissioner’s efforts to control traffic more effectively did result in a decrease of street-accidents, but they failed at the same time to meet with “the approval of the entire native community”. Therein lies one of the chief obstacles to efficient traffic-regulation in Bombay. The ordinary Indian constable, though more able and alert than he used to be, is still a poor performer as a regulator of traffic. He is not likely to improve, so long as Indians persist in using the roads in the manner of their forefathers in rural towns and villages, and so long as he is doubtful of the support of the magistracy in cases where he prosecutes foot-passengers and cab-drivers for neglect of his orders and of the rule of the road. Apart also from the possibility of the constable not being supported by the bench, as he usually is in England, the great delays which are liable to occur in the hearing of these trivial cases, through the procrastination of pleaders for the defence, act as a direct discouragement to prosecutions. A real and permanent improvement in traffic conditions cannot be secured, until the Indian public develops “a traffic conscience” and insists upon the relinquishment of ancient and haphazard methods of progression inherited from past centuries.

In the same year (1894) the Commissioner reported that, in accordance with the orders of Government, he had introduced the Bertillon system of anthropometry at the Head Police Office, but he expressed a doubt whether results commensurate with the cost of working would be obtained. The following year he stated definitely that the system was a failure, but was urged by Government to persevere with it. The system, nevertheless, was doomed, and in 1896 was superseded by the far more accurate and successful finger-print system which was introduced into India by Mr. (afterwards Sir Edward) Henry, the Inspector-General of Police in Bengal. Although the Bertillon system was not finally abolished till the end of 1899, Mr. Vincent was able to report in 1898 that a finger-print bureau had been established, that two police officers had been deputed to Poona to learn from Mr. Henry himself the details of the system of criminal identification, and that by the end of the year 300 finger-impressions had been recorded. This was the origin of the Bombay City Finger-Print bureau, which by steadily augmenting its own record of criminals and by interchange of slips with the larger Presidency bureau at Poona, has compiled a very useful reference-work for investigating officers.

The rapid extension of the scope of police work and the need of dealing more quickly and effectively with various classes of offences had for some time impressed upon the local authorities the need for a new police law. The old Act XLVIII of 1860, under which the police worked in the days of Mr. Forjett, had been followed by three successive Town Police Acts, Nos. I of 1872, II of 1879 and IV of 1882. But the provisions of these Acts needed amendment and consolidation to meet the altered conditions of later years; and the Commissioner was justified in saying, as he did in 1898, that the police were “working at a disadvantage and were hampered in many ways” by the want of a comprehensive and intelligible City Police Act, which would enable them to deal effectively with the investigation of crime and the arrest and detention of offenders and with the special offences peculiar to a large city. He expressed a hope that the new City Police Bill, which had been under the consideration of Government for several years, would be enacted without further delay. Four years were still to elapse before this hope was fulfilled by the passing of Bombay Act IV of 1902. In the meanwhile the police, as well as the magistrates,[106] had to perform their respective duties as best they could under the old law. Such success as the police achieved in dealing with crime and other evils was due largely to the energy and experience of the older Divisional Superintendents, such as Messrs. Crummy,[107] Ingram, Grennan, McDermott, Sweeney, Nolan and Brewin, of the Sirdar Mir Abdul Ali, and of tried Indian inspectors like Rao Saheb Tatya Lakshman, Khan Saheb Roshan Ali and Khan Saheb (afterwards Khan Bahadur) Sheikh Ibrahim Sheikh Imam.

KHAN BAHADUR SHEIKH IBRAHIM SHEIKH IMAM

Joined the Force, 1864—Retired, 1911.

Mr. Vincent’s term of office was marked by the first outbreak of plague in the later months of 1896. When the disease first assumed epidemic form, there was a wild panic among all classes, and people fled in crowds from the city, leaving their homes unoccupied and unprotected. This led for the time being to a large increase of offences against property, committed by professional bad characters who took immediate advantage of the general exodus. The decrease of police cases in 1897 was due solely to the fact that the constant demands upon the force for duties connected with plague-inspection and segregation etc., left them no leisure to deal with the criminal classes, who throughout the early days of the epidemic indulged in an orgy of theft and house-breaking. It was estimated in February, 1897, that 400,000 inhabitants had fled from the city, most of whom left their houses entirely unprotected. The Bombay Government was faced with “a difficult and delicate problem—the extent to which it was possible in view of Indian prejudices and convictions to put into force the scientific counsels of perfection pressed upon them by their medical advisers. The doctors drew up plans for house-to-house visitation, disinfection, isolation hospitals, segregation-camps, and inoculation, all of which were intensely distasteful to the Indian population with their caste regulations and their jealousy of any infringement of privacy in their home life.”[108]

The police were constantly requisitioned to assist in one way or another the official attempts to stamp out the epidemic, and considering the extra strain thrown upon them by the various plague-preventive measures, it is surprising that they managed to cope as effectively as they did with their regular duties. In 1897 Mr. Rand of the Indian Civil Service and Lieutenant Ayerst, who had been engaged on plague-work, were assassinated at Poona. In connexion with the inquiry which followed Superintendent Brewin was summoned from Bombay and placed on special duty in Poona. In the following year occurred the plague-riots, to which reference will be made in a later paragraph. The difficulties which confronted the police during the first two or three years of the plague epidemic were aggravated by the unscrupulous campaign against the Government’s precautionary measures conducted by the native Press, and the expedient then adopted of strengthening the law against seditious publications merely served to intensify popular feeling. It was not till after 1898 that the Indian Government, recognizing the genuineness and sincerity of the public opposition to plague-restrictions, abandoned their more stringent rules in favour of milder methods.

In one direction only—the annual pilgrimage to the Hedjaz—may the plague be said to have brought any relief to the overworked police-force. The arrangements made by Messrs. Thomas Cook and Sons for shipping the pilgrims were discontinued about 1892, and in 1893 the Police Commissioner, acting through his pilgrim department and with the aid of the divisional and harbour police, shepherded the large number of 13,500 pilgrims to the embarkation sheds. Approximately the same number sailed in 1895. Directly the plague, however, had firmly established its hold upon Bombay, the annual exodus of pilgrims was prohibited, in response partly to international requirements, and during the remainder of Mr. Vincent’s term of office the Haj traffic practically ceased. A few pilgrims from Central Asia (1300 in 1898) and other distant regions found their way yearly to Bombay, in the hope of proceeding to Mecca: but they were sent back every year to their homes, until the restrictions were removed and the traffic was re-opened.

Upon the health of the police force the plague naturally exercised a disastrous effect. A fairly high percentage of sickness was recorded in 1895 and was ascribed chiefly to overcrowding in squalid tenements. The appearance of plague in the last quarter of 1896 raised the death-roll of that year to 50 and increased the number of admissions to hospital by nearly 300. The experience of 1897 was worse. Eighty-two men died, of whom fifty-two were plague-victims: recruiting for the force entirely ceased. More than 3,000 admissions to hospital were recorded, some of the constables being obliged to undergo treatment there three or four times during the year. To make up in some degree for the deficit, the Commissioner was obliged to take men from the Ramoshi force, which supplies night-guards to shops and offices and is paid by the employers. Many of these semi-official watchmen also succumbed. Several years elapsed before the police-force recovered from the effects of the early years of the plague, when the loss of physical power of resistance to the disease, engendered by continuous overwork, was aggravated by the lack of commodious and sanitary lines and barracks. Those who, like the author, can recall the panic which prevailed in those years, and who day by day and night after night saw the sky above the Queen’s road crimson with the glow of the funeral-pyres in the Hindu burning-ground, will not grudge a tribute of praise to the Indian constables who went about their work unflinchingly, while men were dying around them in hundreds and their own caste-fellows in the factories and the docks were flying from the scourge to their homes in the Deccan and the Konkan.

In 1893 occurred numerous strikes of mill-hands, which interfered to some extent with the ordinary work of the police and caused loss to the textile industry. But these outbreaks were trivial by comparison with the grave Hindu-Muhammadan riots, which broke out on August 11th in that year and afforded startling evidence of the deep sectarian antagonism which underlies the apparently calm surface of Indian social life and may at any moment burst forth in fury. The predisposing cause of the disturbance must be sought in the rioting which had occurred earlier in the year at Prabhas Patan in Kathiawar during the celebration of the Muharram, when a Muhammadan mob had destroyed temples and murdered several Hindus. For a fortnight or more before the outbreak of violence in Bombay, agitators had been at work among the more fanatical elements of the population and were assisted by leading Hindus, who convened large mass-meetings to denounce the authors of the outrages at Prabhas Patan. This agitation aroused intense irritation, which was aggravated by the persistent demand of the Hindus that the killing of cows, and even of sheep and goats, should be prohibited by Government. The Moslem population became fairly persuaded that the Hindus had the sympathy of the authorities and that their religion was in danger. They determined to rise en masse in its defence.

Shortly after midday on Friday, August 11th, a large Muhammadan congregation emerged from the Jama Masjid and amid cries of Din, Din (“the Faith”) commenced to attack an important Hindu temple in Hanuman Lane. The more respectable Moslem worshippers took no part in this attempt to desecrate the temple and held aloof from all violence. But the low-class mob, which was constantly reinforced, took control of the neighbourhood for the time being. Mr. Vincent had foreseen the possibility of an attack upon the Hanuman Lane temple and had kept a large proportion of his force on duty up to 3 a.m. on Friday morning—a precaution which resulted in postponing the rising of the mob for a few hours. When the disturbance began, all but a small body of European and Indian police had been withdrawn for a much-needed rest, and it fell to the lot of these few men to hold the rioters in check, until the arrival of reinforcements drove the mob from the temple. Meanwhile the spirit of revenge spread rapidly, and within a short time the whole of Parel, Kamathipura, Grant road, Mazagon and Tank Bandar were given over to mob-law.

The tumult was enormous. The Muhammadans attacked every Hindu they met; the Hindus retaliated; and then both sides rounded on the police. Stones and lathis (iron-shod bamboo cudgels) were the rioters’ chief weapons, and they were used with murderous effect. Little care was taken by the Muhammadans to confine their attacks to the enemies of the Faith. Peaceful wayfarers were brutally assaulted; tram-cars and carriages were murderously stoned; post-office vans were attacked; messengers carrying money were savagely beaten and openly robbed. The crowds, raging from street to street, demolished Hindu temples, and dragged out and desecrated the idols in the most obscene and shameful manner. The Chilli-chors or Musalman drivers of public conveyances, most of whom hail from the Palanpur State in Kathiawar, stormed the Hindu quarter of Kumbharwada, while the Julhais or Muhammadan weavers from upper India attacked the Pardeshi Hindu milk-merchants and set fire to the milch-cattle stables in Agripada. All business was perforce suspended and the whole city was thrown into the greatest consternation.

Noting the rapid spread of the disorder, Mr. Vincent applied early for military assistance with a view to restricting the area of rioting. At 4 p.m. two companies of the Marine Battalion under Colonel Shortland marched into the City and were followed in quick succession by the 10th Regiment N. I. under Colonel Forjett, son of Mr. Charles Forjett, by the Royal Lancashires under Colonel Ryley, and by a battery of Artillery. The Bombay Volunteer Artillery under Major Roughton and the Bombay Light Horse under Lieutenant Cuffe were also called out. The Government sent reinforcements of British and Indian troops from Poona, and detachments of armed police were also drafted into Bombay from Thana and other districts. The troops, which numbered three thousand with two guns, were under the orders of General Budgen. Eighteen European citizens were appointed Special Magistrates to assist the Presidency Magistrates, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Webb, who were on duty in the streets night and day. The Municipal Commissioner, Mr. H. A. Acworth, and the Health Officer, Dr. Weir, made strenuous efforts to prevent the interruption of the sanitary service of the city, which in some wards temporarily broke down, and of the daily supply of food to the markets. One serious feature of the early part of the disturbance was the refusal of the butchers at Bandora to slaughter any cattle, and it needed prompt and tactful action on the part of Mr. Douglas Bennett, superintendent of municipal markets, to overcome their contumacy.

The troops were posted in various parts of the city and were forced to open fire on several occasions owing to the defiant attitude of the mob, which was being constantly reinforced. A notable instance occurred at the well-known Sulliman Chauki in Grant road, where a detachment of native infantry was so furiously attacked that it had to fire several times to avoid being overwhelmed by the rioters. Despite these measures, the rioting and looting continued on August 12th in all parts of the city, and many murders and assaults occurred also on the 13th. From the evening of the latter date, however, tranquillity gradually supervened, and eventually the efforts of the authorities, aided by the prominent men of both communities, effected a reconciliation between the excited belligerents.

The effects of the outbreak were for the time being serious. All business in the City was suspended for nearly ten days, and fifty thousand people, chiefly women and children, fled from Bombay to their homes up-country. About one hundred persons were killed, and nearly 800 were wounded, during the progress of the rioting, while the loss of property was enormous. The damage done to Hindu temples and Moslem mosques amounted respectively to Rs. 51,300 and Rs. 23,200, exclusive of the property stolen from them, which was estimated to be worth nearly 2 lakhs of rupees. During and for a few days after the disturbances, when the police were fully occupied in efforts to restore order and in prosecuting fifteen hundred persons arrested during the rioting, a great many cases of robbery, house-trespass and theft occurred, which, though registered by the police, could not be investigated and were never brought to court.

The second serious outbreak occurred in the last year of Mr. Vincent’s term of office, and was due directly to the hostility of the public to the measures adopted by Government for combating the plague. The Julhais, or Jolahas, professional hand-weavers from the United Provinces, who have for many years formed a colony in the streets and lanes adjoining Ripon road, compose one of the most ignorant and fanatical sections of Muhammadans. The trouble commenced on March 9, 1898, with an attempt by a party of plague-searchers to remove a sufferer from a Julhai house in Ripon cross road. The Julhais in a body took alarm, seized their lathis and any weapon that came to hand, and attacked a body of police who had been sent to keep order and protect the plague-authorities. The position rapidly became serious; and as the mob refused to disperse and showed signs of increasing violence, the third Presidency Magistrate, Mr. P. H. Dastur, who had been summoned to the spot and had himself been slightly wounded by a stone, ordered the police to fire. This served for the moment to disperse the Julhai mob. But in a very short time the disorder spread to Bellasis, Duncan, Babula Tank, Grant, Parel, Falkland and Foras roads, where many Hindus were celebrating the last day of the annual Holi festival by idling and drinking. The rioters tried to set fire to the plague hospitals; murdered two English soldiers of the Shropshire Regiment in Grant road; burned down the gallows-screen near the jail; and tried to destroy the fire-brigade station in Babula Tank road. On this occasion also the Muhammadan butchers at the Bandora slaughter-house refused to do their work, but were eventually forced to remain on duty by Mr. Douglas Bennett, who hurried to Bandora with a small body of native infantry and taught the refractory a sound lesson. An unpleasant feature of the rioting was the attacks by the mob on isolated Europeans, several of whom were protected in the pluckiest manner by Indians of the lower classes. The outbreak was quickly quelled by military, naval and volunteer forces, who were wisely called out on the first sign of trouble. By the following day peace was restored. The casualties were officially stated to be 19 killed and 42 wounded, and the police arrested 247 persons for rioting, of whom 205 were convicted and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment.

The Hindu-Muhammadan riots of 1893 were directly responsible for the establishment in Western India of the annual public celebrations in honour of the Hindu god Ganpati, which subsequently developed into one of the chief features of the anti-British revolutionary movement in India.[109] The riots left behind them a bitter legacy of sectarian rancour, which Bal Gangadhar Tilak utilized for broadening his new anti-British movement, by enlisting in its support the ancient Hindu antagonism to Islam. “He not only convoked popular meetings in which his fiery eloquence denounced the Muhammadans as the sworn foes of Hinduism, but he started an organization known as the “Anti-Cow-Killing Society,” which was intended and regarded as a direct provocation to the Muhammadans, who, like ourselves, think it no sacrilege to eat beef.” As his propaganda grew, assuming steadily a more anti-British character, Tilak decided to invest it with a definitely religious sanction, by placing it under the special patronage of the elephant-headed god Ganesh or Ganpati. In order to widen the breach between Hindus and Muhammadans, he and his co-agitators determined to organize annual festivals in honour of the god on the lines which had become familiar in the annual Muhammadan celebration of the Muharram. Their object was to make the procession, in which the god is borne to his final resting-place in the water, as offensive as possible to Moslem feelings by imitating closely the Muharram procession, when the tazias and tabuts, representing the tombs of the martyrs at Kerbela, are immersed in the river or sea.

Accordingly, on the approach of the Ganpati festival in September, 1894, Tilak and his party inaugurated a Sarvajanik Ganpati or public Ganpati celebration, providing for the worship of the god in places accessible to the public (it had till then been a domestic ceremony), and arranging that the images of Ganpati should have their melas or groups of attendants, like the Musalman tolis attending upon the tabuts. The members of these melas were trained in the art of fencing with sticks and other physical exercises. During the ten days of the festival, bands of young Hindus gave theatrical performances and sang religious songs, in which the legends of Hindu mythology were skilfully exploited to arouse hatred of the “foreigner,” the word mlenccha or “foreigner” being applied equally to Europeans and Muhammadans. As the movement grew, leaflets were circulated, urging the Marathas to rebel as Shivaji did, and declaring that a religious outbreak should be the first step towards the overthrow of an alien power. As may be imagined, these Ganpati processions, which took place on the tenth day of the festival, were productive of much tumult and were well calculated to promote affrays with the Muhammadans and the police. A striking instance occurred in Poona, where a mela of 70 Hindus deliberately outraged Moslem sentiment by playing music and brawling outside a mosque during the hour of prayer.

These celebrations helped to intensify Tilak’s seditious propaganda; and although they are barely mentioned in the annual reports of the Police Commissioner, they had become firmly established in Bombay and other places by the date of Mr. Vincent’s retirement, and were destined to impose a heavy burden of extra work on the police-force for several years to come. At the present date the public celebration of the Ganesh Chaturthi still takes place and necessitates special traffic arrangements, when the crowds pour out of the city to immerse the clay-images of the god in Back Bay. But the more disturbing political features of the festival have gradually disappeared. This change may be held to date roughly from Tilak’s second trial for sedition and conviction in 1908, which dealt a severe blow to the seditious side of the movement. A few melas appeared in the following years; but the strength of the movement was broken by the incarceration of the leader of the Extremists and by judicious action on the part of the divisional and detective police.

This brief record of the period 1893 to 1898 will suffice to show that any improvement in the prevention and detection of crime, which might have been expected to follow on the increase in the numbers of the police force, was largely discounted by outbreaks of disorder and by the prevalence of a disastrous epidemic. With his police constantly being summoned to assist in plague-operations of a difficult character, and being forced in consequence of overwork and illness to seek constant treatment in hospital, the Commissioner was scarcely able to insist upon a standard of police-work suitable to normal times. In spite, however, of these difficulties and of additional work of a novel character arising out of the gradual spread of the anti-British revolutionary movement, the Bombay police under Mr. Vincent’s control contrived to achieve reasonable success in their dealings with the criminal elements of the population, and set an example of adherence to duty under very trying conditions which earned more than once the express approbation of the Bombay Government.

Mr. HARTLEY KENNEDY

[Photograph taken 20 years after retirement]

CHAPTER VII
Mr. Hartley Kennedy, C.S.I.
1899-1901

When Mr. Vincent left India at the end of 1898, to spend the remainder of his days in Switzerland, he was succeeded by Mr. Hartley Kennedy of the Bombay District Police. Mr. Kennedy took charge of the Commissioner’s office on January 9th, 1899. Like his predecessor, he had to reckon with the continued presence of plague, and also with the effect upon the urban police administration of severe famine in various districts of the Presidency. These natural disasters synchronized with a severe slump in the Bombay textile industry, due chiefly to over-production and the consequent glutting of the China market, which at that date absorbed the bulk of the Bombay mill-products. According to a leading mill-owner, the industry in 1899 was in a most critical position; nearly all the mills were closed on three days in the week, and some had altogether ceased working. A strike of mill-hands was threatened, which the Police were called upon, and managed, to settle before it came to a head. The position of affairs in 1901 was very little better.

The police were thus faced with an abnormal volume of crime resulting from disease, starvation and unemployment. In 1899 two real dacoities of the type common in up-country districts, perpetrated probably by Pardesis from Northern India, occurred in the suburbs and obliged the Commissioner to establish night-patrols of mounted and foot police in the north of the Island. The following year witnessed a marked increase of crime against property, resulting from high prices and unemployment. Famine-conditions were responsible for an abnormal number of cases of exposure of infants in 1899 and for many instances of robbery by means of dhatura poisoning in 1900. But, apart from these temporary symptoms of economic disorder, the last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a steady increase of cases of all kinds under the Indian Penal Code and miscellaneous laws. Cases under the Police Act would probably have shown a similar upward tendency, but for the fact that prosecutions were purposely avoided, in deference to the reluctance of the Presidency Magistrates to convict offenders on the sole evidence of police witnesses. It has always been difficult to find private persons willing to appear in court and give evidence in such matters.

As in most parts of India, the number of false complaints brought to the police was considerable, many of these cases falling within the category of “maliciously false”. The Commissioner estimated the proportion of false to true cases in 1900 at one in 375. The false complaint, supported by false evidence, has been a feature of the criminal administration of India from early days and adequately explains the reason why Europeans have always clung so strenuously to the right, secured to them by the criminal law, of being tried by a jury containing a majority of their own countrymen. It is the only safeguard they possess against false prosecution and illegal conviction. Some such protection for the European minority is essential in a country, where the administration of justice by Indian courts has not reached so high and detached a level as it has in England.

The year 1901 was prolific of murders, twenty-one cases being investigated by the police. Among the chief causes célèbres was the murder in the streets by followers of H. H. the Aga Khan of certain Khojas belonging to the Asna Ashariya section, which had announced its determination to secede from the main body of Khojas. The precise reason for the murders is unknown. They may have been decided upon by one of the factions as a protest against the constant absences of H. H. the Aga Khan, or on the other hand may have been intended by the party which supported His Highness as a celebration of his safe return from abroad. Faction feeling in the community was at the time running high, and the more fanatical of the Aga Khan’s followers were incensed with those Khojas who were disinclined to subscribe blindly to the opinions on communal matters held by the more conservative section. His Highness himself, who happened to be in Europe on one of his periodical visits, had no knowledge whatever of the murder-plot; otherwise his influence would certainly have been directed towards restraining the fury of his Ismailia followers. He himself was much perturbed by the tragedy and gave Mr. Kennedy every assistance in the enquiry which followed. The three victims were stabbed to death in the streets, almost at the moment of his arrival, and the police found their time fully occupied in trying to calm the passions thus aroused. The murders produced such rancour between the Ismailia and the Asna Ashariya Khojas that, for many years afterwards, the police were obliged to prohibit the funerals of the latter passing through the recognized Khoja quarters to their separate grave-yard in Mazagon. It was not until 1913 that the Commissioner found himself justified in relaxing the more stringent precautions, owing to the passage of time and the prevalence of a better feeling between the two sections of Khojas. The knives, with which the murders were committed, were preserved for many years in one of the lockers in the inner room of the Commissioner’s office, and were handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department as an exhibit for the museum, when that branch was reorganized in 1910.

Most of the crime in respect of property was, as usual, committed by Mhar and Mang robbers from the Deccan, by the Wagris or gipsy tribes, by professional thieves and beggars from Kathiawar, and by north-country Hindus and Pathans. Bombay has a large floating population of these wanderers, who visit the city for criminal purposes, and, having attained their object, travel to other parts of India, where all trace of them is frequently lost. Among cases of special importance were the prosecutions of two licensed dealers in arms and ammunition in 1899, a “golden gang” or swindling case in which a respectable Indian firm was cheated of Rs. 63,000, and which was successfully investigated by Inspector (afterwards Superintendent) Sloane, and the conviction for sedition of the editor of a vernacular newspaper, the Gurakhi, which, as an organ of the revolutionary party in Western India, had indulged in violent anti-British propaganda. The effect of plague and famine conditions upon the activities of the police was apparent in the returns of recovery of stolen property; and their normal duty of watch and ward suffered also to some extent from the imposition of such emergent tasks as the registration, accommodation, feeding and repatriation of a large number of war-refugees who arrived from the Transvaal in 1899. The restrictions upon the Haj traffic continued; but this did not absolve the police from the task of “shepherding” large numbers of returning pilgrims—the backwash of former pilgrimages—or of repatriating hundreds of poor and illiterate Moslems, who, knowing nothing of the stoppage of the traffic, arrived every year in Bombay in the hope of being allowed to embark for Jeddah.

The total strength of the police-force remained unaltered during Mr. Kennedy’s term of office. Including the constables attached to the Veterinary Department, the force numbered 2118. The annual cost, however, had increased in 1900 to Rs. 792,959, in consequence of extra allowances and contingencies. These charges were met partly from imperial, partly from provincial, and partly from municipal and other revenues. The municipal contribution was recovered under section 62 of Bombay Act III of 1888, and continued to be so till 1907, when under the provisions of Bombay Act III of that year the Government became responsible for the whole cost of the force. Besides the police-force proper, the Commissioner recruited and controlled a force of 1048 Ramoshis or night-watchmen, whose wages, as previously mentioned, were recovered from the individuals and firms employing their services. The Ramoshis as a class were not very satisfactory; and though nominally under the supervision of the police-officers of the division or section in which their post lay, there was really no one to see whether they kept awake at night and really did their duty. Had there been any proper and comprehensive beat-system for the divisional constabulary, such as there is in London, the existence of a Ramoshi force would have been quite unnecessary: but the total number of police-constables was never sufficient to admit of the introduction of such a system.

For administrative purposes, Bombay was composed in 1899 of the eleven police divisions mentioned below, which were sub-divided into sections or areas controlled by a “police-station”. The staff of a station comprised usually an European inspector and sub-inspector and a number of subordinate native officers (jemadar, havildar, naik) and constables.

Housing-accommodation was provided for only about one-tenth of the force. The Head Police Office at Crawford Market, which Colonel Wilson had so often asked for, was completed and occupied in 1899, and lines for 120 men had been built on the western boundary of the parade-ground adjacent to the Gokuldas Tejpal hospital. Stabling for twenty horses of the mounted police was also built, the main body of the mounted police being accommodated in the old Government House Bodyguard lines at Byculla. With the exception of the 200 men or so, who occupied the old police-lines in Byculla and the newly-erected quarters in the compound of the Head Police Office, the whole force was living in hired rooms of an undesirable and insanitary type in various parts of the city. The monthly house-allowance paid to constables barely sufficed to pay the rents of their squalid rooms, while in the case of the European officers it was quite insufficient to secure proper accommodation. The difficulty was acute in the A. division (Fort and Colaba), where suitable residential accommodation was extremely limited and fetched a high rent. To anyone, like the author of this book, who has seen the very unsuitable quarters in which most of the European and Indian police were obliged to reside at the beginning of the present century, it will always be a matter of surprise that the force accomplished as much as it did and that the death-roll among both Europeans and Indians was not far heavier. Even the comparatively modern buildings at Bazar Gate and Paidhoni left much to be desired in the way of reasonable space and ordinary comfort. The occupants of the Paidhoni station, which mounts guard over a crowded lower-class neighbourhood, possessed the additional disadvantage of an atmosphere heavy with the smells and miasmata of an Eastern city. It says much for the dura ilia of the British soldiers recruited for the Bombay police force that so many of them were able to live and carry on their work in these conditions without a permanent loss of health.

The reiterated complaints of successive Commissioners had impressed upon the Bombay Government the need for the proper housing of the force. But their wishes were dependent upon the state of the provincial exchequer, which after several years of plague and a series of disastrous famines was quite unable to provide money for police-accommodation schemes. A solution of the difficulty was, however, secured by the passing of Act IV of 1898 (City Improvement Trust Act), under the provisions of which the newly-constituted Trust could be called upon by the Government to build quarters and barracks for the police in various parts of the Island. By 1901 the Government had already formulated their first demands, and the engineers of the Trust were preparing plans and schemes for police stations, quarters and lines, in Colaba, Princess Street (a new street-scheme of the Trust), Nagpada and Agripada and in other crowded localities. These buildings took many years to complete, and some of them in the northern suburbs had not been commenced in 1916. But the first step towards a comprehensive solution of the grave problem of police-accommodation was taken during Mr. Kennedy’s régime, when the City Improvement Trust assumed the task which the Government with the best will in the world, found themselves quite unable to fulfil.

Though his period of office was not long, Mr. Kennedy left his mark upon the police administration, and there are persons still alive who remember the energy and activity with which he tackled some of the evils of urban life. He was a sworn foe of gambling in any form, and had barely gripped the reins of office ere he commenced an offensive against the bagatelle-players, the cardsharpers and the dice-gamblers of the lower quarters. The divisional police learned to their cost that it did not pay to wink at gaming, and that the Commissioner, working through private agents of his own, possessed an uncomfortably accurate knowledge of what was going on in various quarters of the city. The performances of one of his chief informers are still within the recollection of the oldest members of the force and of some of the superannuated gamblers of the old B. and C. divisions. The immediate result of Mr. Kennedy’s action was a large increase of cases under the Gambling Act, sixty prosecutions being launched in the year 1900 alone. The effect of these prosecutions, however, was minimised by the Magistrates’ practice of imposing merely a fine on conviction. Such fines acted as very little deterrent to men who dealt week by week with comparatively large sums of money. In the case of the most inveterate gamblers a short term of imprisonment would probably have had a more salutary effect.

Another problem, which occupied Mr. Kennedy’s attention, was that of the beggars who infest Bombay. They comprised not only the thousands of able-bodied religious mendicants, who form an integral feature of Hinduism and are largely protected from official action by the religious atmosphere surrounding them, but also the still larger class of professional beggars of every sect, who descend on the city like locusts from the rural districts and do not hesitate, as opportunity occurs, to commit crime. In 1899 Mr. Kennedy raised the question of the best method of dealing with the latter class, and pointed out that daily prosecution, followed by the imposition of a small fine, failed entirely to effect any amelioration of the evil. He therefore decided on more drastic measures. In 1900 he deported 9,000 beggars to the territories of Indian Princes and 10,000 to various districts in British India. This wholesale expulsion caused a temporary improvement in the condition of the streets. But such deportations, to be really effective, must be carried on ruthlessly year by year; and methods would have to be adopted to penalise beggars of an undesirable type, who dared to return after deportation. Mr. Kennedy’s action was not pursued by his successors, and the beggar-nuisance consequently continued unabated. In 1920 it had become so intolerable that a special committee of Government and Municipal representatives was appointed to study the problem in all its bearings and devise measures for its solution.

In the matter of the immoral traffic in women Mr. Kennedy displayed equal activity and achieved more success. The foreign pimp and procurer, who swooped down at intervals upon Bombay to acquaint himself with the demand for fresh women and to relieve the European prostitutes of their earnings, met with no mercy at his hands. He used the provisions of the Aliens Act freely against them, deporting 30 of them in 1900 and 37 in 1901. Officers of the detective branch were entrusted specially with the duty of watching the European brothels, meeting the steamers of foreign shipping-companies, and marking down every Jewish trafficker who showed his nose in Bombay. It is only quite recently that the Indian Government, in response to domestic and international opinion, have strengthened the provisions of the Foreigners Act, in order to give the police in Bombay and other large maritime cities more effective control over these disreputable and degraded persons: and as a result of the pressure of public opinion, endorsed by the League of Nations, the activities of the international trafficker are more restricted and more easily controlled than they were at the close of the nineteenth century. It is much to Mr. Kennedy’s credit that, working with the unamended Act, he was able in two years to secure a definite reduction in the number of professional traffickers visiting Bombay.

He paid constant attention also to the offence of kidnapping or procuring minor Indian girls for immoral purposes. It is well known that both Hindu and Muhammadan recruits for the prostitutes’ profession are obtained from among the illegitimate children of courtesans, or from among female children adopted by prostitutes, or thirdly, by purchase from agents who travel throughout Gujarat, Central India, Rajputana and other districts, picking up superfluous and unwanted girls of tender age for a small sum, sometimes as little as Rs. 5 or Rs. 6, and then selling them at a profit to brothel-keepers in the large cities and towns. Leaving out of consideration the custom, prevalent among Maratha Kunbis and Mhars, of dedicating their female children to the god Khandoba, which in practice condemns the girls to a life of prostitution, and the customs of degraded nomadic tribes like the Kolhatis, Dombars, Harnis, Berads and Mang Garudas, who habitually prostitute their girls, it may be said that among the lower social strata in India female life is held very cheap. A daughter is apt to be regarded rather as a domestic calamity, owing largely to the heavy expense usually involved in getting her married. Cases therefore often occur of young girls being abandoned by their relatives, who are unable to provide the funds required for their regular betrothal; and these little derelicts sometimes drift into brothels, where they are fed, clothed and taught singing and dancing until they reach puberty, when the brothel-keeper arranges to sell their first favours for a round sum to some well-to-do libertine. Muhammadan prostitutes, who are numerous throughout India and range from the inmate of the low-class brothel to the wealthy courtesan, who earns a high fee for her singing, occupies well-furnished quarters, and drives in her own motor-car or carriage, are recruited in the same way. In one case, which occurred a few years ago, a lower class Moplah of the Malabar coast, having borrowed money at a high rate of interest to provide dowries for his two elder daughters and being unable to raise any further sum for his third daughter’s betrothal, sold her outright to a Bombay brothel-keeper for Rs. 40. The girl was about eight years of age when she entered the brothel, and by the age of thirteen she was helping to support her worthless father and two young brothers out of her earnings as a prostitute.

Mr. Kennedy also pointed out to Government that year by year “scores of young girls,” belonging chiefly to Gujarat and Kathiawar, were either picked off the streets by native pimps of both sexes or were, as mentioned above, brought down from rural areas by regular traffickers and sold to the local brothel-keepers for sums ranging from Rs. 10 to Rs. 50. In many cases the police rescued these waifs and restored them to their homes: but they could not make much headway against a system which had attained such large proportions. Moreover, in addition to the difficulty of tracing the girls’ relatives in a country like India, their task was not rendered easier by the absence of any strong public opinion against such practices, and by the non-existence of properly organized orphanages and homes. In several instances girls were discovered prostituting themselves under compulsion from a male “bully” or female brothel-keeper; and in such cases, as well as in cases of kidnapping, every effort was made by the police, under Mr. Kennedy’s orders, to arrest the offenders and bring them to trial. Wherever it was impossible to secure the conviction of an offender under the Indian Penal Code, Mr. Kennedy had resort to the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Procedure Code. Here he met with more success than his predecessor, who, as already mentioned, complained that the Magistrates required evidence under that chapter which it was extremely difficult to procure. Mr. Kennedy found in Chapter VIII, C. P. C. an invaluable weapon against “bullies” and other bad characters of the same type, whom it was inexpedient or impossible to charge with an offence under the Penal Code; and the Magistrates showed no objection whatever to supporting the action of the police in such cases. Thus for three years a very wholesome check was placed upon this deplorable traffic, at a time when there was little articulate Indian opinion to support the activity of the Commissioner. It was not till twelve or thirteen years later that the Indian Government was invited to consider Bills introduced by non-official Indian members of the Legislature, designed to check or suppress both the immigration of European unfortunates and the swadeshi traffic in minor Indian girls.

Mr. Kennedy’s personal activities during the earlier months of his Commissionership were to some extent reminiscent of the methods of Mr. Forjett. He is said to have sometimes assumed a disguise—the full-dress of an Arab or the burka or covering of a Musalman pardah-nashin,—and thus attired to have wandered about the city after nightfall in company with one of his agents. He would pay surprise visits in this way to various police-stations and chaukis, in order to discover at first hand what sort of work his European and native officers were doing; and all ranks learned to fear the consequences of their negligence or other shortcomings being discovered by the Commissioner and performed their duties with greater caution and zeal. He made himself feared by the evil-doer and the lazy, who tried occasionally to forestall him by obtaining previous information of his nocturnal visitations. They met, however, with little success; the Commissioner was more than a match for them. These constant surprise visits during 1899 and 1900 enabled him to keep his finger on the pulse of the city and to checkmate the criminal on several occasions. During the greater part of his term of office, however, an injury to one of his ankles, which produced a limp, practically deprived him of the power to pass unnoticed in disguise. The lower classes thenceforth knew him as Langada Kandi Saheb, i.e. ‘the lame Mr. Kennedy’, and he is thus spoken of to this day by the old law-breakers and disreputables who recollect his efforts to bring them to book.

Short as was his tenure of the Commissioner’s appointment, Mr. Kennedy managed to inspire the unworthy, whether belonging to the police-force or to the lower-class urban population, with a wholesome fear of retribution; and he spared no effort to tighten up the divisional police administration to discover by personal inquiry the character of his subordinates, and to place a check upon immorality. The discipline which he inculcated in the police force was evident at the census of 1901, when, in response to the request of the census authorities for assistance in enumerating the large cosmopolitan population of the city, he placed his European police officers in charge of the census-sections, directed the Sirdar Mir Abdul Ali to secure the co-operation of the leaders of the various sections and castes among the lower classes, and made the divisional police responsible on the actual night of the census for counting the large army of homeless and wandering people, who are a permanent feature of the capital of Western India. Mr. Lovat Fraser, then editor of the Times of India, wrote a graphic account in his paper of this “Counting by Candle-light”, and paid a tribute to the thoroughness of the census organization. The author of this book, who happened to be in charge of the urban census, under the orders of the Provincial Superintendent, Mr. R. E. Enthoven, can testify truly that his plans for the enumeration could not have been successful without the active assistance of a police-force inspired by its chief with a high standard of efficiency.

CHAPTER VIII
Mr. H. G. Gell, M.V.O.
1902-1909

When Mr. Kennedy left Bombay on furlough preparatory to retirement, his place was taken by Mr. Herbert G. Gell, who had held the substantive appointment of Deputy Commissioner since 1884, and on three occasions had acted for short periods as Commissioner. “Jel Saheb,” as the Indian constables called him, was thus no stranger to the police-force or to Bombay, when he took charge of the Commissioner’s office. So far as personal popularity with all classes was concerned, the Government could not have made a happier selection. In his younger days Mr. Gell had been a good cricketer and the best racket-player in Bombay; and while this counted in his favour chiefly with his own countrymen, his genial address and straight-forwardness commended themselves equally to Europeans and Indians. During his term of office, which lasted a little more than seven years, he was granted furlough twice—in 1904 when Mr. Michael Kennedy, afterwards Inspector-General of Police, Bombay Presidency, carried on his duties, and again in 1906 when Mr. W. L. B. Souter, a son of Sir Frank Souter, acted as locum tenens. During Mr. Gell’s first year of office, the Deputy Commissioner’s post was filled by Superintendent J. Crummy, a good police officer of the old type, who joined the force as a constable in 1866 and finally retired from the service in 1903. He was succeeded by Mr. R. P. Lambert (1903-1905), Mr. Reinold, who died prematurely, and Mr. R. M. Phillips (1905-09), all of whom belonged to the Imperial Indian Police service.

Mr. H. G. GELL

The years of Mr. Gell’s administration were fraught with anxiety and difficulties of various kinds. Social and semi-political events like the festivities in connexion with the Coronation of King Edward VII and the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1903, the arrival of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905, and the visit of the Amir Habibullah of Afghanistan in 1907, imposed much extra work upon the force. On the whole, however, they probably caused the Commissioner less real anxiety than the Muharram riots of 1904, the Bombay Postal strike of 1906, the mill-hand strikes of 1907 and 1908, the serious Tilak riots of 1908, and last but not least the strike of the Bombay Indian constabulary in 1907. Besides these symptoms of local discontent, the Commissioner and his somewhat old-fashioned detective agency had to grapple with a constantly growing stream of enquiries, reports and references, arising out of the spread of the dangerous Indian revolutionary movement, which was partly fostered and directed by men of extreme views living in France and America.

The baneful activities of Krishnavarma and the India House in London, of the brothers Savarkar, of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the Deccan, and of the anarchists of Bengal, had many ramifications in India, and, coupled with the malignant incitements to sedition disseminated by certain vernacular newspapers, imposed a large burden of confidential and secret work upon the various provincial and urban police-forces. Some of these were but poorly equipped to cope with this secret menace to the State. Bombay from its proximity to the Deccan, which was the focus of intrigue in western India, and from its position as the chief port of arrival from Europe, had an important part to play in the official struggle against the revolutionary movement. The difficulties which beset Mr. Gell’s administration resulted largely from the fact that he was working with a machine designed for dealing mainly with ordinary urban crime against person and property, and numerically inadequate even for that purpose. A thorough reorganization in respect of personnel, numbers and pay was required to render the Bombay police force capable of dealing effectively with the problems of the early years of the twentieth century.

The total numbers of the force in 1902 were 2,126 and the annual cost Rs. 773,580. The numbers remained practically stationary during Mr. Gell’s régime, despite a great expansion of the residential area and a steady increase of population during the first decade of the present century. The prolonged visitation of the plague led many of the richer Indian merchants to forsake their old family-houses in the crowded and low-lying parts of the city and to seek a new domicile on Malabar and Cumballa hills, which had previously been occupied almost wholly by European residents. Many of the less well-to-do citizens sought new quarters in the empty areas (the F and G divisions) in the north of the Island. The Commissioner drew the attention of Government in 1903 to the alterations which were taking place in Mahim, Sion, Matunga, Naigaon and adjacent parts, and emphasized the consequent need of more police for watch and ward. His view was corroborated by the census taken by the Municipal Health authorities in 1906, which showed that the total population of Bombay had increased by more than 200,000 since 1901, the increase being general over all sections of the City and Island. In the light of these facts a revision of the police establishment was obviously necessary, and but for two events of primary importance it would probably have taken the form of spasmodic increments to the existing strength and small enhancements in the salaries and allowances of the constabulary.

The first important event was the publication in 1905 of the report of the Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon and presided over by Sir Andrew Frazer. Of the Indian police service generally the report was highly condemnatory, declaring it to be ‘far from efficient ... defective in training and organization ... inadequately supervised ... and generally regarded as corrupt and oppressive.’ Though these strictures referred chiefly to the district police forces of the various provinces, it was admitted that the police organization of the large cities required considerable overhauling. The Commissioners of Police in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were therefore instructed to submit proposals for a thorough reorganization, based mutatis mutandis upon the broad lines laid down by the Police Commission. Owing to pressure of work and other reasons Mr. Gell did not submit his proposals for reform for more than two years after the publication of the report of Sir A. Frazer’s Commission, and when they eventually reached the Bombay Government, the latter found it impossible to accept them. Moreover, circumstances connected with the outbreak and handling of the Tilak riots of July, 1908, led Government to believe that the police force needed a far more comprehensive reorganization than was contemplated by the Commissioner.

In September, 1908, therefore, the Governor, Sir George Clarke, (afterwards Lord Sydenham) appointed a special committee of three officials—Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Morison of the Indian Civil Service, Mr. S. M. Edwardes, also a member of the I. C. S., and Mr. Pheroze H. Dastur, 2nd Presidency Magistrate—to scrutinize Mr. Gell’s proposals, to take any evidence that might seem necessary, and finally to submit detailed proposals for the numerical strength, pay and duties of the various branches of the Police force. This committee held several meetings in September and October, examined the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and other members of the force, as well as certain leading citizens, and submitted its report at the end of October, 1908. The policy and proposals therein advocated met with the approval of the Bombay Government; but the further step of introducing the changes in the constitution of the force thereby involved, was not undertaken until after Mr. Gell’s departure on leave in 1909. The broad details of the scheme eventually sanctioned in September, 1910, can be explained more suitably in the next chapter, which deals with the administration of Mr. Gell’s successor. The facts mentioned above show the reason why the actual numbers of the force at the date of Mr. Gell’s departure were practically the same as they had been in 1902.

The second event of importance was the police strike, which obliged the Bombay Government to introduce revised rates of pay for the constabulary in advance of the general reorganization of the force. Rents in the city and the cost of living had been steadily rising since 1900, and the Indian police-constables, in common with other low-paid servants of Government, found the burden of supporting themselves and their families almost intolerable. The majority of them were Konkani Marathas—the large class which supplies the bulk of the mill-labour and the menial staff in public and private offices, and they could not remain unaffected by the general demand for higher wages which was being made at this time to all employers of labour. Their superior officers had assured them more than once that their appeals were being favourably considered and that some concessions would be granted, while the open sympathy with their circumstances and their difficulties shown by Mr. Souter, when acting as Commissioner in 1906, inspired them with the idea that their claim to increased pay was absolutely unquestioned and deserved instant confirmation by Government. They were also affected to some extent by the constant and often bitter criticism of the authorities, which appeared in the native Press, and by the incitements of professional agitators who urged them to follow the lead of the postmen, who went on strike in 1906, and adopt more overt measures to secure their demands. The unrest thus created culminated in a strike of a large proportion of the constabulary in 1907. Refusing to don their uniforms and report themselves for duty until Government assented to their request for higher pay, the men assembled in a body on the Esplanade maidan, where they were addressed by the chief agitators in their own ranks. The Commissioner was left to carry out the routine-work of the force with the help of the European police, a certain number of constables who remained loyal, and the comparatively useless body of Ramoshis. In brief, the police administration was practically at a standstill.

By resorting to a strike, the men had rendered themselves individually liable to prosecution; and when the strike was declared, Mr. Gell, with the approval of Government, caused some of the ringleaders to be arrested. But the Bombay Government was aware that their resort to illegitimate action was the outcome of a real grievance, which could only be redressed by enhancing the pay of the various grades. Consequently, of the men arrested, only two were subsequently placed before the Courts and sentenced to pay a nominal fine; and they and others were afterwards reinstated in the force. Simultaneously the Government sanctioned the long-delayed increase in the pay of the constables and native officers. The old fourth-grade constable on Rs. 10 per mensem disappeared for ever, the monthly pay of the lowest rank being fixed at Rs. 12 and of the three upper ranks at Rs. 13, Rs. 14, and Rs. 15. The pay of the havildars was also augmented. The announcement of the new rates put an end to the impasse caused by the men’s defection, and within a few days the force was again working with full vigour.

It was unfortunate that the concessions in respect of pay and allowances should have had the appearance of being extorted from the authorities by methods which, often objectionable in the case of private employees, are deplorable in the case of men appointed to be guardians of the public peace. The Bombay Government was not so much to blame for procrastination as might at first appear. They were perfectly prepared to grant the required increments of salary to the lower ranks of the force: but they wished to treat the revision of salaries as part and parcel of the general reorganization, rendered necessary by the Report of the Police Commission and by the increase of work resulting from the growth of the City. They had instructed the Commissioner to formulate proposals for reorganization, which had not been submitted at the date of the strike, and which, when they eventually received them in 1908, they found themselves unable to approve without further enquiry by an independent committee. The responsibility for the delay in granting relief to the constabulary cannot therefore be assigned wholly to the Bombay Government. A more rapid effort to prepare without delay a comprehensive scheme of reform might have helped to prevent the occurrence of an episode, which did not redound to the credit of the force.

The result of the revision of the pay of native officers and constables, secured in the manner described above, was an increase of the annual cost of the force from Rs. 773,000 odd in 1902 to Rs. 975,000 in 1908. These charges fell wholly upon the Provincial Government, in accordance with the provisions of the Bombay Police Charges Act of 1907. Since 1872 the cost of the force had been borne partly by Government and partly by the Bombay Municipality under Act III of 1872 and the subsequent Act III of 1888. The arrangement did not prove wholly satisfactory, and the Municipal Corporation evinced a tendency to deprecate increased expenditure on a department over which it had no direct control. After much discussion, therefore, between the Bombay Government and the Corporation’s representatives, Bombay Act III of 1907 was passed by the legislature. Under this enactment the Government was pledged to pay the whole charges of the police-force, and the Municipal Corporation was bound in return to shoulder the cost of primary education and, within certain limits, the cost of medical relief in the City. This arrangement in no wise absolved the Bombay Port Trust from its liability to pay a moiety of the charges of the harbour police and the entire cost of the police employed in the docks. On the other hand it enabled the Government to sanction, without the intervention or concurrence of the Corporation, such additional expenditure as might be involved in a thorough scheme of reorganization. When the latter scheme had been introduced by Mr. Gell’s successor, the improvement and standardization of the uniform of the European officers of the force and the abolition of the old municipal helmet-badges followed naturally upon the settlement of the changes embodied in the Act.