Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Bc. Klára Danielová
Changing Images of the Police in Selected Texts by Agatha Christie and Phyllis Dorothy James
Master‟s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt.
2012
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature
I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt., for professional advice she gave me, and the care and kindness she showed when she guided me through writing this thesis. I would also like to thank the employees of the Faculty of Arts Library in general and Ms. Eliška Mrázková, who is in charge of interlibrary loans, in particular. Their help with securing the materials for the thesis was priceless.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1
2 THE ENGLISH POLICE: A BRIEF HISTORY ...... 4
2.1 From the Anglo-Saxons to the Royal Justices ...... 4
2.2 Policing Officials: The Justices, Constables and Watchmen ...... 6
2.3 Trading Justices: Magistrates, Thief-takers, and Bow Street Runners ...... 10
2.4 From 1785 to 1829: Forty-four Years of Partial Reforms ...... 12
2.5 Policing Victorian England: From Raw Lobsters to Beloved Bobbies ...... 15
2.6 The Birth of the Detective ...... 19
2.7 The Bobby in the Wars ...... 21
2.8 Gender in the Police: Police Matrons and Women Police Constables ...... 23
2.9 The Modern Bobby: The End of the Indulgent Tradition ...... 26
2.10 The Police in Literature and Media: An Overview ...... 32
2.11 The Policeman and the Detective in a Detective Story: A Brief History ...... 36
3 GOLDEN-AGE DETECTIVE FICTION AND ITS POLICEMEN ...... 39
3.1 Golden-Age Detective Fiction and Its Principles ...... 39
3.2 The Amateur and the Professional: An Uneasy Relationship ...... 40
3.3 Battle, Japp and Co.: Christie‟s Fictional Policemen ...... 44
3.4 The Realities of Golden-Age Fictional Policing ...... 48
4 SECOND-WAVE DETECTIVE FICTION AND THE POLICE ...... 55
4.1 A Move to Realism and the Disappearance of the Great Detective ...... 55
4.2 The New Image: The Tough Copper and Ethnic and Sexual Minorities ...... 59
4.3 The Myth of the Thick Policeman ...... 66
4.4 Crime and Criticism and a Cry for the Bobby ...... 68
5 CONCLUSION ...... 74
6 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 80
7 RÉSUMÉ ...... 88
8 RESUMÉ ...... 89
1 INTRODUCTION
The key feature of detective fiction is investigation of crime and the character of an investigating officer is thus necessary for the genre. Although most of the best known fictional detectives, for instance Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Peter Whimsey, are amateurs, the professional police add credibility to the detective story and provide it with legal background. Consequently, the police are given more attention in detective fiction than in any other genre.
The police were traditionally considered a male culture, a world inhabited and ruled by men. It is therefore of some interest how this world is pictured by Agatha
Christie and P. D. James, female writers who are traditionally considered the British queens of detective fiction. Since their works span almost the whole twentieth century and also cover the first decade of the twenty-first century, they give the opportunity to analyse the changes in the image of the police and the development of the myth of the
Great Bobby, which is the main aim of this thesis.
The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part is further divided into eleven sub-chapters that deal with the history of the police and their image in media.
First, the earliest forms of policing are described and a few related terms, for example kinship, frankpledge and tithing, are explained. Then the roles of the seventeenth- century justices of the peace, constables and watchmen are examined and after that, one sub-chapter is devoted to trading justices in general and thief-takers and Bow Street
Runners in particular. The pros and cons of the system are presented and the first proposals for the reform are laid out. Then, the passage of the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 and the first decades of the modern police are described, attention is paid to the changes in the perception of the police and their relationship with individual social classes, and the key features of the new force are emphasised. After that, the 1
establishment of the detective branch and the roles of plain-clothes detectives are examined. The remaining sub-chapters are devoted to the police in the twentieth century. First of all, the challenges faced by the policemen during the world wars are analysed, secondly social history of woman police officers is discussed and finally, the role of the police after the Second World War is examined. Most space is given to the changes in the image of the police and their relationship with ethnic minorities, both inside and outside the force. The image of the police in the media, literature and television is the subject of the last chapter.
The second main part opens with a brief discussion of the history of detective fiction and the role the police and detectives play there. The rest is devoted to the police as pictured by Agatha Christie in six of her novels and a few short stories. The texts were chosen according to the space they give to the professional police and according to the year when they were first published, so that more decades could be covered.
Nevertheless, the majority of texts come from the 1920s and 1930s, the so-called
Golden Age of detective fiction.
After a short introduction to the attitude of the Golden-Age detective-fiction writers to the police in general, the relationship between the professional and amateur detectives is described. Then the qualities of two Christie‟s fictional policemen, Battle and Japp, are discussed, and the final part is devoted to the representation of the police as far as their intelligence, competence, manners and morality are concerned.
In the third main part the representation of the police in selected works by P. D.
James is discussed. The novels were chosen again according to the year of their first publication so that they could cover the second half of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first centuries. At the beginning of the chapter, the key concepts of the second wave of detective fiction are explained and contrasted with Golden-Age 2
detective fiction. P. D. James‟s approach to detective fiction is explained then and it is followed by the examination of the new representation of the realities of policing and the character of the detective.
The new approach to sexuality in general and in detective fiction in particular is briefly discussed and developed in connection with the police in detective fiction. The representation of ethnic and sexual minorities in the police is examined and the position of female police officers is analysed in detail. The focus of the next chapter is the stereotypical image of the police as simpletons and the reasons for joining the force.
Finally, the modern image of the police and its consequences are presented.
In the conclusion it is shown that the image of the police has developed in the last century and that the development is reflected in detective fiction. It is proved there that representation of the police in detective fiction reflects contemporary feelings and that the growing criticism of the modern police leads to calls for return to more traditional ways of policing.
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2 THE ENGLISH POLICE: A BRIEF HISTORY
2.1 From the Anglo-Saxons to the Royal Justices
The police in the modern sense of the word were established in England in 1829. Even before, however, there had been military forces, groups and individuals who were responsible for policing. If a community is to prosper, it has to develop means of resolving disputes and consequently, also means of enforcement. These, though, did not develop at the same time and have been gradually changing for centuries.
Enforcement of rules became easier when they began to be put in writing. Writing down the laws came to the British Isles with Christianity and according to Rawlings, it was the “most immediate legal impact of the conversion to Christianity” (10). The laws did not reflect only the Christian-Roman tradition; “the influence of Christianity on the substance of the laws was more gradual and, initially at least, the codes reflected existing custom” (Rawlings 10). The existing custom was based on the blood-feud and the enforcement and settlement were supposed to be a matter for the victims and their kin.
During the Anglo-Saxon period the importance of kinship started to change and the loyalty to the kin began to be replaced by the loyalty to the king. “The Anglo-Saxon codes of law sought to break open the kindred relationship and turn it into mechanism which supported the state under the king rather than competed with it” (Rawlings 11).
The principle of the kinship responding to an offence was retained but the obligation to act was placed on the “community as defined by the law rather than consanguinity,
[which meant that] the right of retaliation began to be conceptualized as an aspect of every person‟s public duty, not as a right of revenge or as a duty owed to the victim through a kindred relationship” (Rawlings 11). The community was still responsible for
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dealing with offenders but their offences ceased to be seen as offences against the victim and started to be considered as offences against the king.
It was the Saxons who introduced a system by which members of a community organised policing. One of the earliest concepts was that of frankpledge, “a private, social obligation in which all adult males were responsible for the good behaviour of others” (Osborne). This private system was then formalised, dividing people into groups of ten, tythings1, “with a tything-man as representative of each; and into larger groups, each of ten tythings, under a “hundred-man” who was responsible to the Shire-reeve, or
Sheriff, of the County” (“History of the Metropolitan Police”). If a man committed a crime, the others from the same tything were responsible for bringing him before court.
If they failed, they were all held responsible for the crime. The stress on responsibility of the community continued and gave rise to the system of the watch and the hue and cry.
During the 13th century there was a succession of royal writs that made it compulsory for “every town, borough and city to set a watch each night during the summer” (Rawlings 16). These writs resulted in the Statue of Winchester of 1285 which ordered boroughs to establish watches of a dozen men (Emsley, EP 9). The task of the night watchman was to arrest any perpetrators or seek those who fled. If the watchman was not able to apprehend the villain himself, he was required to call for help. This call became known as the hue and cry and as Bumgarner explains, it became a crime for an able-bodied citizen to ignore the hue and cry (20). In case the offender was not caught and was believed to escape from the village, the hue and cry had to be passed onto the next community. If the members of the community failed to raise the hue and cry properly or denied to pursue the offender, they were all considered responsible for the
1 Also spelled tithings. 5
crime. Fines were introduced to ensure that the policing duties of the communities were properly seen to. To oblige and to avoid fines, communities began to appoint officers who ensured that appropriate actions were taken.
One of the first officers was the sheriff who was, “among other things, responsible for the custody of offenders handed over to him” (Rawlings 17). Sheriffs were later replaced by coroners who were from “1194 appointed by the crown. [...] One of their tasks was to track the progress of crown pleas and, thereby protect the crown‟s interest in any fines that might be due” (Rawlings 17). Other members of the system of justice were keepers of the peace. They were called in the time of crisis to assist the sheriffs but according to Harding, these crises occurred so frequently that keepers of the peace became appointed permanently. Duties that were later given to the police were carried out by serjeants of the peace: “They undertook to arrest and keep in custody offenders, secure evidence and witnesses, make presentments about offences and offenders to courts, and secure the chattels of felons” (Rawlings 18). There were also lesser officials that overlooked the local matters; and the whole complex system was controlled by the royal justices. “They tried the felons, but, most importantly, they reviewed the system of law enforcement and punished any neglect” (Rawlings 19). This system, based on the community‟s responsibility for its own policing, continued well into the 14th century.
2.2 Policing Officials: The Justices, Constables and Watchmen
The 14th century witnessed a change in the organization of the legal system, a decline of sheriffs‟ power and the rise of justices of the peace. These changes were caused by various social and economic factors. The population rose but economy started to stagnate. The first half of the 14th century was also negatively affected by famine and later by the plague. What followed was a sharp decline in population and a greater 6
mobility of the rest. Village populations became less stable and, consequently, “the policing mechanisms based on kinship and neighbourliness, such as frankpledge and hue, were undermined” (Rawlings 23). The duty of a community to perform its own policing was being replaced by local officials representing the community. The officials that were to ensure that the interests of the crown were properly seen to and that the crown strengthened its position outside the capital were the justices of the peace.
The justices of the peace were members of the local elite, often “lords of the manor and therefore they, or their stewards, presided at the courts leet to which the petty constables brought their presentments” (Emsley, EP 9). They were wealthy or influential men but they were not necessarily members of the higher nobility. They were usually less important lords or members of the landed gentry who were chosen for their moral qualities, fairness and honesty in particular. Commissioning was not free of charge; before the applicant swore an oath he had to pay a fee (“Justices”). Justices‟ duties were diverse and included, for example, pre-trial investigation and setting the bail. They ranged over various judicial and administrative tasks but detection and investigation of the crime itself were not among them. These were still conducted by the victim and, to a certain extent, by constables and watchmen.
The parish constables were men chosen by their neighbours to act as their representatives and to perform various administrative tasks. “Initially these seem to have been military responsibilities” (Rawlings 34) but they were continually being extended and the constables were expected not only to maintain the peace but also “to enforce legislation on church attendance, keeping the Sabbath, drunkenness, swearing and vagrancy, as well as on taxation and military recruitment” (Emsley, EP 12). They were selected by various means depending on the local custom: “In some parishes, for example, constables were changed annually by house rotation; in others the oldest 7
householder who had not yet served was chosen” (Emsley, GBB 18). They were not poor men; they usually came from the higher-strata families. “Constables often had experience in other local government or community roles: they may have well served as overseers of the poor, surveyors of the highways, or church wardens” (Emsley, EP 11).
They came from the community they represented and, since they were appointed just for a year or two, had to continue living in the community after their appointment terminated. This necessarily meant that they tried to resolve disputes or settle offences without going to the courts or even tolerated less serious crimes. The job was not paid and except for expenses and fees (Rawlings 34), the constables did not receive anything.
As the number of duties the constables were supposed to perform was steadily increasing, and living in the community they had policed might not have been easy, some people started to be reluctant to serve and found themselves substitutes.
Although it was not allowed, some people “preferred either to pay a fine that went towards paying a man to act in their place, or else to hire a substitute themselves who would serve in their stead. Some of the substitutes appear to have served year after year, becoming something of a constable by trade” (Emsley, GBB 19). This became more and more frequent and consequently, “[b]y 1800, constables of the metropolitan parishes may often have been substitutes, but they were more numerous, better supervised [and] better informed” (Emsley, EP 13). The result of hiring substitutes was a gradual professionalization which did not affect only parish constables but also the other policing officials, the watchmen.
As discussed earlier, the tradition of setting night watches had been long. But in contrast to the constables, watchmen did not come from the upper-strata of the society but were usually “local agents of law enforcement who had long been recruited by, and from among, urban dwellers” (Emsley, EP 9). The service was not easy; the work kept 8
the men “out of their beds at night and was often odious, time-consuming and either dangerous or boring” (Rawlings 64). It was considered a duty of a householder to protect his and his neighbour‟s property but by the 18th century many “sought to excuse themselves on grounds of age or health, other preferred to pay a fine rather than serve or to hire a substitute” (Rawlings 64). This situation was reflected by a series of acts that aimed at improvement and professionalization of the service, namely “the Watch Act
1705 which permitted substitutes to be hired”. As Rawlings further explains, under legislation in 1726 and 1737 the obligation to serve was replaced by a duty to pay a rate out of which professional watchmen would be hired” (66). Nevertheless, the problem of individual parishes setting their own watches was not dealt with and “the issue of parochial boundaries” (Rawlings 66) remained unresolved. The system based on individual parishes organizing their own policing began to appear ineffectual and there were first attempts to establish a more general force.
The level of the services the constables and watchmen provided has also been questioned. Traditional histories describe the „Charlies‟, the watches named after
Charles II, during whose reign they were established in the City of London (Wilson), as
“old, decrepit and, like as not drunk or asleep when needed” (Emsley, CSE 220), incompetent and corrupt (Taylor 72). Trevelyan claims that there “was no effective system of police until that begun by Sir Robert Peel in 1830. It was a disgraceful condition of things, and had many evil consequences” (245). Both Emsley and Taylor, however, state that this is generalisation that does not necessarily have roots in reality.
Emsley admits that “many parish constables were as bad and uncommitted to their tasks as the police reformers made out” (CSE 218). On the other hand he explains that neither constables nor watchmen have been subjects of a serious study and their skills and characteristics remain unclear (CSE 219). Taylor emphasises that some parish 9
representatives made attempts to select men of appropriate age and character to serve as constables and that in some parishes there was an element of organisation and coordination (72). Therefore, it can be argued that more that one hundred years before
Peel‟s „Bobbies‟ appeared in the streets there were parishes that were determined to improve the level of policing and hire men who could perform their duties professionally.
2.3 Trading Justices: Magistrates, Thief-takers, and Bow Street Runners
Early-eighteenth-century Englishmen were still expected to pursue offenders themselves, which remained possible in rural areas. “Petty thefts committed by neighbours or servants in a hamlet were relatively easily sniffed out” (Porter, ESEC
156); but in London and other big cities it began to cause problems. As mentioned earlier, duties of constables and watchmen were varied but detection and prevention of crime were not among them. Even if they had been, the number of constables in London and other cities was so low that they could not cope with rising criminality. “In the late eighteenth century, the metropolis, its population nearing one million, had no more than
1,000 officers and 2,000 watchmen. (Paris, by contrast, had 7,000 officers and 6,000
Swiss guards, under greater central control) (Porter, ESEC 156). Authorities relied on private initiatives and, as a result, at the beginning of the eighteenth century English metropolises and London in particular were marked by activities of magistrates, trading justices and professional thief-takers.
Magistrates were not generally admired and are believed to win little trust (Porter,
London 155). The same is true for trading justices who received fees for dealing with petty offences. Emsley claims that they had a reputation for greed and self-enrichment and that their own pocket was their only consideration (CPPP 61). The bad press 10
magistrates and trading justices received resulted in many cases from their connection with thief-takers. Thief-takers appeared when individuals or their families were not able to chase an offender themselves. Since the number of constables was not sufficient, authorities encouraged citizens to establish themselves as thief-takers. Thief-takers were paid by courts for bringing offenders to justice and by individuals for returning stolen goods,2 which proved to be dangerous since some of them were ready to capture anyone who was not able to defend themselves.
All magistrates and thief-takers were not, undoubtedly, greedy entrepreneurs and, for instance, the magistrate court established in Bow Street became the centre of policing in London in the middle of the 18th century: “In 1739 Sir Thomas De Veil [...] had become a magistrate in Winchester and set up a house in Bow Street from where he administered justice” (Emsley, GBB 20). He was then followed by Henry Fielding and his step-brother John, who set up a group of professional thief-takers, the Bow Street
Runners, in 1749 (Porter, ESEC 156). Their activities developed those of trading justices but they were paid “from a variety of clandestine government and administrative resources” (Emsley, GBB 20), and also for their administration of justice.
They were in charge of roads and “patrolled the highways and streets within the parish of Bow Street” (“Police”). The Fielding brothers and their Runners did not become famous only for their tracking down of offenders. They are remembered for their innovative and more professional approach to policing and detection and, for instance, for Finnane they represent the major police experiment of the eighteenth century (50).
Their main argument was that “crime control could be achieved by a bureaucratic detective system that was national in its outlook, that possessed sufficient legal and financial resources and that utilized skills not available to the ordinary person”
2 Forty pounds for every apprehended highwayman (Porter, ESEC 156). 11
(Rawlings 96). They came up with several suggestions that were later developed by the new police. Henry Fielding understood the importance of communication and worked out a plan for information exchange. He wanted the Bow Street Office to become a place where information about crimes and offenders from various districts was gathered and processed. He succeeded and from 1773 a newspaper Hue and Cry began to be circulated.
Other proposals were not well received because they suggested what was seen as professional paid police. These proposals met with a strong opposition of regional authorities who were not willing to reorganize the existing system of policing and of people fearing the government intrusion and creation of an army-like force similar to that of France and other countries on the continent.
2.4 From 1785 to 1829: Forty-four Years of Partial Reforms
The idea of establishing the armed and regular police was inimical to most eighteenth and nineteenth-century Englishmen. Every suggestion of establishing a national police force in England met with resistance. It was caused by the belief that Great Britain was
“the land of liberty” (Emsley, GBB 33) and that police would bring oppression known from continental Europe. “Police institutions were regarded with suspicion as the kinds of instruments with which the princes of Continental Europe kept their unfortunate subjects in thrall” (Emsley, GBB 13). Although the English were aware that the existing system of policing was far from perfect, they did not want to create a force similar to those on the continent: The “eighteenth-century English observers admired the apparent efficiency of French policing [but] they recoiled not only from the apparent intrusive behaviour of plain-clothes police spies but also from the military structure of the
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national force that patrolled the principal rural roads, the Maréchaussée” (Emsley,
GBB 33). However, calling out the army was not unknown in England.
Although the English opposed the creation of a standing army of policemen, they were accustomed to an army intervention. When it was necessary to deal with mobs and when it came to riots like the Gordon Riots in 1780, neither parish constables nor
Runners were able to cope and, subsequently, the army had to be called. It was after the
Gordon Riots and their harsh suppression that Lord Shelburne complained that “the police of Westminster was an imperfect, inadequate, and wretched system ... a fit object of reformation” (Porter, London 153). There were, actually, attempts at reformation as early as 1785, however, they were not successful.
In 1785 Pitt‟s government introduced the Police Bill. In the bill Pitt proposed “the establishment of a centrally controlled police for the entire metropolis” (Emsley, EP 20).
Nevertheless, it met with a strong opposition from various parties: The City of London did not want to lose its independence, and the distrust of organised police was still overwhelming. Then in 1789 the former Lord Provost of Glasgow, Patrick Colquhoun, became a magistrate in London. In 1796 he wrote Treatise on the Police of the
Metropolis, in which he began to use the word „police‟ in a relatively modern sense
(Emsley, CPPP 105). He pictured a set of police districts with professional officers with salaries and clearly defined duties.3 He saw the weaknesses of rewarding thief-takers by results and pointed out the problems of smuggling and theft on the Thames. He suggested the armed river police and “by 26 June 1798, it was announced that a river police to be called the Marine Police Institution was to be formed immediately, with its
3 Ideas that were later to a certain extent adopted by Robert Peel when he made proposals for the new police. 13
base at Wapping” (Wade 20). There were 50 officers (Paterson) who were responsible for detection and prevention of crime and protection of merchants on the river Thames.
The river police was not the only force that emerged in England at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1792 the inhabitants of Hoxton founded a “military association for the protection of their persons and properties against the attacks of ruffians” (Porter,
ES 156) whereas some towns witnessed formation of societies for the prosecution of criminals. Members of these societies, usually urban employers, “contributed a fixed payment to a common pool. The money was available to pay the cost of prosecuting a crime committed against any member” (Friedman). In this way they minimised the expenses necessary for bringing an offender before court, which was expensive and which might have exceeded the value of goods stolen or destroyed.
During the 44 years that elapsed between Pitt‟s unsuccessful proposal and before the British Parliament passed the Metropolitan Police Act, the attitude to centralised policing did not profoundly change, but the advocate of the 1829 Act, Sir Robert Peel, could prepare the ground for it and skilfully persuaded the opponents. Peel was influenced by Colquhoun‟s ideas and suggested the creation of a centralised police force. When he became the Home Secretary in 1822, he immediately set up a committee that was to investigate the state of policing in the metropolis. The results of the investigation showed that albeit centralization of police was needed, the fears of government intrusion and concerns about Englishman‟s liberties prevailed
(Rawlings 114). Another inquiry, initiated in 1828, however, brought a different result and a year later the Metropolitan Police Act was passed.
To support the passage of the bill, Peel argued that the parochial system of policing is inefficient and that “while parish boundaries confined officers they did not confine criminals” (Rawlings 114). He tried to persuade the members of Parliament that 14
the costs needed for establishing the new force would not be higher that those required for the existing system and that this reform might encourage other reforms of the penal code.
Peel‟s success may be put down to the fact that he skilfully avoided controversial issues, disputes with the authorities of the City in particular. Although he promoted integration of police forces, the City was excluded from his proposal. He was well aware of the fact that the representatives of the City would never support an act that would limit their independence and ancient rights. He also managed to persuade the
Members that the Metropolitan Police would not have any links with London‟s local government and the Commissioners would be responsible to the Home Secretary who would exercise only a broad authority over them (Miller 33). Having muted the opposition, he guided the bill through Parliament, and on 29 September 1829 first
„Bobbies‟ started patrolling London streets.
2.5 Policing Victorian England: From Raw Lobsters to Beloved Bobbies
The founding fathers of the new force, the Home Secretary Robert Peel and the first two
Metropolitan Police Commissioners, Colonel Charles Rowan and solicitor Richard
Mayne, laid out the principles by which the new police were to be defined. They emphasized the preventive function of the police and the fact that the existence of the force depended on the public‟s approval (“Principles”). According to Emsley, the policemen were to be “civil and obliging to all people, of every rank and class ... and cautious not to interfere unnecessarily, in order to make a display of authority”
(GBB 42). The police were to be completely different from forces on the continent and were not to carry guns and to be associated with any government. The idea of an
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unarmed, non-political policeman was revolutionary at that time (Emsley, CSE 225) and became one of the defining characteristic of the new force.
The policemen were also to be easily recognizable in the street so that they could not be suspected of being the government‟s spies. The officers were from the start clad in dark blue uniforms consisting of a “high-collared frock-coat, with 8 large brass buttons, leather belt, blue trousers, top hat, gloves and a strong baton” (Rosenthal). The officers carried a whistle to summon help and a truncheon tucked into a special pocket, and at night they also carried a bull‟s eye lantern. Originally, they were supposed to wear red but that was decided against as it resembled red coats of the army. The uniform earned the force two nicknames, “Peel‟s Raw Lobsters” comparing the colour to the military uniforms which were already known as lobsters (“The Formation”), and “Peel‟s
Blue Devils”.
Peel hoped that the new force might reduce the crime rates in London; four days before the first policemen started on their beats, The Times expressed people‟s expectations of the new police to relieve the metropolis of crime altogether: “Officers and police constables should endeavour to distinguish themselves by such vigilance as may render it impossible for any one to commit a crime within that portion of the town under their charge” (“New”). And although the expectations were great, the outlook for the first officers was not very good.
The first years of the police were characterized by an enormous turnover of recruits, which was the consequence of several factors: The salary was low, only twenty-one shillings a week for a constable (Emsley, EB 116); the discipline was harsh, the beats were long,4 and for many joining the police was only a way how to establish themselves in the town or pass a period of unemployment. Since they had to face
4 According to Taylor, 14 hours a day, seven days a week were not uncommon (92). 16
adverse conditions, isolation, and strict discipline, “many men signed up only to resign within weeks of joining, while even larger numbers left within the first 12 months of service” (Taylor 89). The first Bobbies were usually recruited from the working class;
“the ideal police recruit was an agricultural labourer who was seen to have the necessary physical strength and the appropriate mental qualities of stoicism and defence” (Taylor 89); but the recruits actually came from a wide range of trades from blacksmiths, through potters to textile workers. High turnovers resulted from the fact that the recruits often returned to their original trades because the policeman‟s job was a new occupation without any prestige attached; and that the training was minimal and the beat work required strict self-discipline.
Those who were not able to conform to high standards found themselves dismissed. In the first years dismissals ran very high: In the first year of existence of the
East Riding constabulary, 42 were dismissed, which equals the size of the whole force.
This was an extreme case but even in Staffordshire, which was a more typical example, one third of the recruits was dismissed (Taylor 94), and many of these resulted from drunkenness, neglect of duty or sexual misconduct (Taylor 95). Police officers were required not to drink and smoke in public, and they had to pay attention to their appearance. During the early years, they had to wear the uniform even when they were off duty (Taylor 93). Private lives of the officers also had to be beyond reproach. They had to be seen in church, avoid debts and lead exemplary family lives. In some forces the choice of the future wife had to be approved and the women were forbidden to work. “Once married, domestic respectability was expected. As well as being not allowed to work, constables‟ wives in many forces were not allowed to keep pigs, fowls and even dogs” (Taylor 94). Constables could not keep a cow, they were not allowed to take in a lodger or sell products from their gardens and until 1887 they could not vote 17
(Emsley, CSE 238). Consequently, as mentioned above, as soon as the conditions in their original trades improved, the recruits left the police. This made it very difficult to establish a force of experienced men and win respect of the public.
By the end of the century the attitude to policing as a career had, nevertheless, changed. Although the wages were not exceptionally high, in contrast to work in industry, they were regular. Those who stayed could hope for a pension and also for promotion. Since the very beginning, the idea was to fill the ranks „from below‟
(Wade 33) and many recruits found the possibility of climbing the promotional ladder appealing. As the body of long-term officers grew, they could provide better advice to those considering the same occupation and, consequently, numbers of misinformed recruits resigning within weeks after joining considerably declined.
There were also other benefits that came with the job. Some forces offered subsidized housing, cheap coal or helped with water and gas bills; other provided the uniforms or even boots (Taylor 99). Canteens and rest-rooms began to emerge, as well as sports clubs and police bands. The policemen began to see themselves as belonging to a distinctive culture and their job as a craft of its own right.
The perception of the police by the public also changed. In the early years they were seen as a military force that was sent by the government to control the working class and to impose an alien moral code on them. It was the policeman who was blamed for destroying lifestyle and past-times of the working class: “closing down fairs and markets, preventing cockfights, tightening controls over drinking” (Rawlings 143). To the poor “the coming of the new police only meant a greater chance of being arrested for „drunkenness‟, „loitering‟, „common assault‟ [or] „vagrancy‟ (Ignatieff 27). But as much as they resented this intrusion, they could hope for the help when they became
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victims of an attack or theft, which they experienced more often than other social classes.
The middle and upper classes that were initially concerned about their rights and liberties soon saw the advantages of the policeman‟s presence in the streets and admired his efforts to instil decency and order in the working class. Their hostility faded and
“within 25 years of his first manifestation, the English „Bobby‟ was becoming, in the perception of the propertied and respectable classes of Victorian society, a pillar of the constitutional and legal structure of that society” (Emsley, EP 64). The popularity of the police reached its peak after the Great Exhibition of 1851 when the Bobbies were admired for the gentility and politeness with which they oversaw the whole event. On the other hand, the police attracted fierce criticism for their apparent brutality with which they handled the Chartists‟ demonstrations (Emsley, GBB 53) and the failure of the Jack the Ripper case. Generally the support of the police broadened and the unarmed, non-military policeman became the nation‟s favourite. It was, after all, the
English police that was at the end of the nineteenth century described by some commentators as the best police in the world.
2.6 The Birth of the Detective
The first Commissioners Rowan and Mayne were reluctant to form a group of plain- clothes specialists who might resemble the dreaded spies known from the continent. The uniformed police had to “concentrate on dealing with petty crime, public relations, maintaining their image and cultivating intensive local knowledge” (Wade 33), and their primary task was prevention, not detection of crime. The establishment of professional detectives began to appear as necessary especially after a series of violent murders that
“made it plain that something more than a constable with a note-book and truncheon 19
was needed” (Wade 36). As a result, in 1842 a small group of plain-clothes detectives was established.
The branch was headed by Nicholas Pearce; it however remained small and over the first twenty-five years it increased just from eight men to fifteen (Emsley, CSE 237).
In 1878 the detective branch was transformed into the Criminal Investigation
Department (CID) under the command of Howard Vincent who expanded it to 800 men in the mid 1880s (Emsley, CSE 237). In 1883 Vincent set up the Special Irish Branch which, as the Special Branch, would become the first specialized squad originating from the CID (“CID”).
The first decades of the detective branch were marked by their frequent tours to the regions where the creation of detective branches was patchy. Since then, there has been the point of contention between the Scotland Yard man and the local police, who disapproved of other forces taking over their cases, especially as they did not have any command of the detectives. As the Scotland Yard became the centre of innovation and forensics, the demand for the Scotland-Yard man even increased.
The detectives were soon required to work on complicated murder cases, robberies and in the second half of the century also on cases of embezzlement and corporate fraud. In contrast to the uniformed policemen the detectives worked against white- collar, very clever villains (Wade 52). The detectives were required to perform surveillance and plain-clothes observations and it became necessary for them to participate in criminal networks (Wade 61). Since the very beginning, the plain-clothes detectives were not very popular with uniformed officers, the reasons being detectives‟ higher salaries, superior status and greater working flexibility (Rawlings 176). As the differences in their work enlarged, more training and expertise was necessary for the detectives and the gap between the uniformed and plain-clothes policemen widened. 20
The origins of the private detective, a figure so celebrated in popular fiction, were not so bright. According to Wade, the private detective appeared when it became possible to obtain a divorce without a private act of parliament in the mid-Victorian period (58). Nonetheless, it was necessary to produce evidence of adultery and it became the work of most private detectives to secure it. Their work, although widely sought for, was considered insulting and the private detective a person “whose mere existence leaves an exceptionally offensive taste in the mouth” (Wade 58). Professional detectives worked in the CID and the Special Branch and the private eyes remained the divorce-men well until the twentieth century.
2.7 The Bobby in the Wars
In the first decade of the twentieth century the policemen continued with their duties, of which prevention of crime was the priority. As the number of industrial protests and strikes increased before the First World War, so did increase the importance of the policeman as the protector of the peace. The confrontations between employers and their employees witnessed the policemen to be deployed to “prevent intimidation and violence” (Emsley, EP 115), which usually resulted in protecting the blacklegs.
During the war the policemen had to face other challenges, increasing workload and decreasing wages in particular. “In 1914 the police forces of England and Wales amounted to just over 53,000 men, and most of these were of military age. [...] By the end of the first year of the world war about one man in five had gone from the provincial forces to the military, and the depletion of the Metropolitan Police was even greater” (Emsley, EP 121). The police forces then sought help at other forces and a chief constable of one force temporarily took command of another force. Other forces called
21
in special constables from the pre-war period.5 As the number of officers leaving the forces for the front increased, the remaining officers had to serve more hours. The weekly rest day was cancelled in 1914; at the end of 1915 the officers were allowed to have one rest day in a fortnight (Klein). Some of those who were not recruited for the war service left the force for financial reasons. “A London policeman‟s wage was comparable to that of an agricultural worker or unskilled labourer. The cost of living had more than doubled during the First World War, but police had received a pay rise of only 3 shillings since 1914” (Stratton). By contrast, the industry was thriving during the war and the wages were growing. Consequently, some policemen left their work and put more strain on the remaining members.
This situation prepared the ideal ground for the Police Union and also the police strikes of 1918 and 1919. “Faced with poverty and deteriorating labour conditions, the police were inspired by the militancy of other workers” (Jones) and in August 1918 went out on strike. Although the strike was confined to London and took just a week, the police were promised a pay rise, widows‟ pensions and war bonuses (Emsley,
EP 132). The idea of a police union was disliked by many and politicians began to look for ways by which the police might be prevented from belonging to a union. This incited other protests and the police went out on a strike again. Although this strike spread to other parts of the country, it did not win such support as the 1918 strike. Most policemen were satisfied with the pay rise they had received and did not join the protest.
Those who did were all dismissed (Emsley, EP 135) and the police have not struck since then.
5 Under the 1831 Act local authorities were allowed to “appoint Special Constables for the purpose of preserving the Peace should they consider existing police numbers inadequate for doing so” (“History of the Specials”). This Act still provides the basis of contemporary legislation. 22
In the inter-war period, the police returned to the Victorian and Edwardian tradition (Emsley, GBB 203). They still patrolled their strictly designated beats, dealt with petty thefts, drunkenness and indecent behaviour. With the growing number of motor vehicles they found themselves more often involved with the propertied classes, but they remained preoccupied with the working class and the poor. The economic crisis of the 1930s brought a wave of industrial disorder and hunger marches; and the police were again deployed to keep peace in the streets. The decade before the Second World
War was characterized by fear of subversion and communism, and the police were encouraged by the Home Office to crack down on potential offenders.
At the outburst of the war more women and military reservists were called to service. Despite the provision, the “police numbers fell during the war, from 57,000 in
1940 to 43,000 four years later” (Emsley, GBB 232). The reduced ranks had to deal with increasing criminality, thefts and car accidents connected with the blackouts in particular, and helping with clearing the streets after air raids; they looked for men who deserted or avoided conscription and enforced wartime restrictions. During the war more women became involved in policing and in contrast to the First World War, they were not about to leave when the war ended.
2.8 Gender in the Police: Police Matrons and Women Police Constables
The police were established as a male organization and many years had elapsed before first women were allowed to join the ranks. In all periods it is young men who are most frequently in conflict with the police (Emsley, GBB 132) but there have always been women committing offences and crimes and they then had to face the problems of being held in police cells guarded solely by men.
23
As early as in 1834 a woman detained overnight in a police cell accused the police officer in charge of rape. Although the woman did not proceed with the accusation and the officer did not stand the trial, both he and his superintendent were dismissed from the force (Emsley, GBB 44). Consequently, women in police cells started to be supervised by police matrons. The police matrons were usually wives of the station sergeants and the task of supervising female prisoners was regarded as their duty. In
1883 the Metropolitan Police appointed a female visitor who attended to female convicts and six years later, fourteen more women started looking after female prisoners at the police courts (“The Women Police: Introduction”). They were neither sworn in as police officers nor were they employed by the police and until the beginning of the First
World War their appointment remained ad hoc.
At the end of the Victorian era feminists started pointing to the deficiencies of the existing system of policing women but it was only the outbreak of the Great War that finally brought some changes to it. The beginning of the war was marked by explosion of „khaki fever‟, “the excitement that young girls and women were believed to experience at the presence of soldiers” (“The Women Police: The First World War and
Women Patrols”), and by fears about women‟s morality. The concerns over behaviour of women, who left their homes and went to work and of those who concentrated around military camps, expedited establishment of women patrols.
Women patrols were organised by two groups, the Women Police Volunteers and the Voluntary Women Patrols (VWP). The former was founded by Margaret Damer
Dawson and in 1915 became the Women Police Service (WPS), the later was organised by the National Union of Women Workers (Emsley, EP 127). The tasks of both of these groups involved moral guidance of women and patrolling in the vicinity of army camps and in munitions factories (Mason) but they differed in their approaches and political 24
and social affiliation of their members. The WPS recruited most of its members among feminists and militant suffragettes. Its aim was to engage women in regular policing and it managed to sign a contract with the Ministry of Munitions to supervise women working in the munitions factories (Emsley, GBB 180). Members of the VWP, on the other hand, mostly came from the middle class and some of them held anti-suffragette views (Emsley, GBB 180). It was due to their less militant outlook that their leader,
Sophia Stanley, was encouraged by the Home Office to organize the new women‟s department of the Metropolitan Police after the war had finished.
In 1918 the Women Police were formed with Sophia Stanley as its Superintendent supervising 100 female police officers. They were not, nonetheless, given the same powers as their male colleagues, they were not sworn in as constables, and they did not receive pensions upon retirement. In the 1920s the public sector suffered from several severe cuts in funding and the women police was abolished; but in 1923 fifty officers were re-sworn and given the full power of arrest (“The Women Police: The First
Women Police Officers”). In 1928 an order was issued according to which a policewoman or a police matron were required to be present whenever a male officer questioned a woman over sexual or other intimate matters (Emsley, GBB 210). Despite the fact, before the Second World War there were women officers to be found only in 45 out of 183 forces in England and some of them were not attested as constables. Some male colleagues opposed to the idea of female officers and although most of the women came from higher social strata than the policemen (Emsley, GBB 211), they were seen as inferior, mannish and denying their femininity.
The female officers continued to perform tasks relating to women and children and during the Second World War they took on most of administrative work from their male colleagues. The number of female police officers increased considerably during 25
the war, from 282 in 1940 to 418 in 1945 (Emsley, GBB 245). Recruitment of women continued after the war and in 1963 there were 3,000 women police officers, comprising about 3.5 per cent of the police force (Emsley, EP 158). The status of women police officers also improved considerably and in 1947 the Police Federation accepted them as members. Women slowly began to work in more areas than with women and children and after the amalgamation of forces under the 1964 Police Act they began to be found in Criminal Investigation and Traffic Departments, Special Branch and Drugs Squad. In accordance with the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act the prefix WPC was dropped (Mason) and no distinctions in recruitment and deployment based on gender were allowed.
Nevertheless, police work remained to be seen as a male profession and according to
Emsley, many women still faced resentment, hostility or sexual harassment, and were considered by some either lesbian or nymphomaniac, but not normal (GBB 271). In
1995 Pauline Clare was appointed as the first chief constable and although discrepancies in numbers of women in various squads remain (Emsley, GBB 273), the overall status of women police officers has improved considerably and they have been placed on a more equal footing with their male colleagues.
2.9 The Modern Bobby: The End of the Indulgent Tradition
The decade after the Second World War could be described as the Golden Age of policing. Only in this decade was it possible for the character of the police film The
Blue Lamp and the series Dixon of Dock Green, PC George Dixon, to become the nation‟s hero.
The English took pride in their honest policemen and their relationship was seen as best in history. The relationship of the propertied classes with the police had been generally good for several decades, but it was only the advancement of the economical 26
and social status of the poor and the working class that actually helped to improve their relationship with the police (Reiner 762). This period of national pride, however, ended with the decade and the police have never enjoyed such reputation since.
In the years following the questioning of the police as an institution increased, especially by those at the receiving end (Reiner 762): the young, males, and economically marginal. These groups began to loose confidence in the police and their relationship with them considerably deteriorated. This change of general sentiment may be, according to Emsley, explained by development of both the structure of the police and the nature of the society. The Police Act of 1964 strengthened the links between the
Home Secretary and local police authorities who were from now on “responsible for maintaining and „adequate and efficient‟ police force” (EP 174). The Home Secretary could decide about retirement of Chief Constables based on inefficiency and was also given power to amalgamate forces.
Amalgamation of forces into larger groups was quickly put into practice and the number of forces dropped from the 1955 figure of 125 to forty-three (Hall 46). Although the number of forces was decreasing, the government did not wish to include the idea of the national police force in the 1964 Act (Reynolds 319,) as for some the idea was still unthinkable. Another important change in the structure of the force was the growing number of forces with specialised functions and the spread of technological devices.
Policemen in cars began to be common as well as their usage of radios and telephones.
The Unit Beat System was developed, which involved “a foot policeman with 24-hour responsibility for his area, a patrol car covering two such areas, and a collator analysing the information collected by the patrols” (Emsley, EP 176). The Bobby, who was traditionally pictured as unarmed, carrying only the traditional truncheon, began to carry guns more frequently. The truncheons are still the only weapon on routine patrols but 27
“the number of occasion in which firearms are issued to the police has escalated inexorably. [...] The number of occasion when guns are fired by the police remains small, and the rules are tight. Nonetheless, the traditional unarmed image of the British bobby has faded” (Reiner 680). According to Hall, the changes made the friendly Bobby who lovingly patrolled his beat look like a professional cop who is more car-bound than patrol-bound (46) and whose contact with the people in the area is minimal.
As already suggested, the loss of confidence in the police was a result of multiple factors. In the early 1970s there was a series of corruption scandals connected with the
Metropolitan Police and according to Reiner it is “undoubtedly true that those scandals damaged severely the image of the police as disciplined law enforcers” (678). Poor education and low training standards also contributed to the disputes of police legitimacy and it was only after a considerable pay rise and rising unemployment that university graduates started joining the police in greater numbers (Reiner 678). The rising wages of the police were interpreted as evidence of their involvement with the government. Whereas the public sector employees “found their pay, their numbers and their resources squeezed, the police enjoyed the opposite experience” (Emsley, EP 182).
Margaret Thatcher‟s government was pro-police and the public saw the “Maggie‟s boys” as tools of the government (Graef 74).6 For policemen traditionally regarded as above party politics it was another setback.
The police were criticised for harshness with which they intervened in riots and protests, and alarm was raised after a series of incidents during which individuals died as a result of police action or in custody (Emsley, EP 180). In connection with the miners‟ strike of 1984-85 there were serious concerns over centralization of the police since their actions began to be directed by the National Reporting Centre. The police
6 The words belong to a PC quoted in Graef. 28
were further criticised for their actions against young people, and for cracking down on housing estate disorders and teenagers‟ joy riding (Reiner 678). If the youth happened to be black, the probability of problems with the police considerably increased.
Numbers of black immigrants were growing since the end of the Second World
War. When the economical situation in Britain deteriorated, the black were among the first to lose their jobs, and began to be seen as a burden on the welfare state. According to Hall, “as race relations have worsened in the country generally [...], so the police in the black communities have come, progressively, to perceive the black population as a potential threat to „law and order‟” (45). As a result, the black youth were treated with more suspicion and were more likely to find themselves stopped, questioned and searched than the white.
The problematic relationship with minorities is reflected also by the slow acceptance of officers from ethnic minorities into the force. Although it became difficult to fill the vacancies after the Second World War, the police were reluctant to admit applicants from colonies who were looking for work in the Mother Country. At the beginning of the 1960s “1 per cent of the population was black [but] there was not a single black policeman” (Emsley, EP 178). There was a black officer at the beginning of
Queen Victoria‟s reign and two black officers were appointed in the West Midlands in
1966 (Emsley, GBB 263). But only in 1967 Norwell Roberts became the first black policeman in the Metropolitan Police. He was used by the Met representatives as evidence of their relaxed attitude to race, and at the same time he was a victim of abuse on the part of his colleagues: “I had buttons ripped off my uniform, matchsticks stuck in the keyhole of my car, half crowns scratched down the side of the car. I had my tyres slashed. And my car was relocated to double yellow lines, where it was towed away to the car compound. I also had cups of tea thrown in my face” (Verkaik). Nevertheless, 29
officers from the Afro-Caribbean, African and Asian communities did not challenge only the problems with their colleagues. They had to face difficulties with the public, both black and white, and in black communities were seen as traitors who joined the
„other side‟ (Emsley, GBB 264). There were attempts at improvement but the problems continued and the 1999 Macpherson‟s report condemned the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist (Emsley, GBB 267), and unable to treat the white and the black equally.
The relationship of the police with the young, unemployed and working class had been problematic since the establishment of the force. In the second half of the twentieth century the police, however, started loosing support of the middle class. It was not only the result of police actions but also of the cultural development in the society as a whole. According to Reiner, the roots of the dissatisfaction lie in the growth of the middle-class protests connected with the Vietnam War and marginal deviance, involving drug-taking and homosexuality (684). Emsley adds that the increasing number of cars and the need for the police to supervise the traffic caused other clashes with the middle class (EP 171). The 1960s witnessed a general tendency to question authority, a decline in deference and, consequently, loosing confidence in the enforcers of law.
In 1983 the Metropolitan Police Commissioner commissioned a report on the
Metropolitan Police which showed the police as “bigoted, racist, sexist, bored, dishonest and often drunk” (Sked 353). This unflattering image is endorsed by Paxman who says that the police‟s picture involves hard drinking, fast cars and general incompetence
(139). On the other hand, there were voices saying that most of the above mentioned problems could be solved if the Bobby was put back on the beat and returned to traditional patrolling. For Paxman it is not the demand “of a people estranged from their police” (139) and it serves as evidence of continuing support of the police. 30
According to Reiner, it is a result of several factors: It arises from the changes in the police culture, abandonment of the white macho model and wider recruiting from among ethnic minorities (685). The police continue their policy of openness with the media and there has been a succession of books and articles showing the problems of policing and the police officers (Emsley, EP 187). The training recruits began to be instructed in dangers of racism and sexism and there were several waves of recruitment among the Black communities (Emsley, EP 188). The police officers receive better education and training and they have showed greater willingness to look into police malpractice. At the beginning of 1989 the Metropolitan Police started the Plus
Programme whose purpose was “to improve the corporate image and quality of the service of the Metropolitan Police” (“Time Line”), and published the “Statement of Our
Common Purpose and Values”:
The purpose of the Metropolitan Police Service is to uphold the law fairly
and firmly; to prevent crime; to pursue and bring to justice those who break
the law; to keep The Queen‟s Peace to protect, help and reassure people in
London; and to be seen to do all this with integrity, common sense and sound
judgement.
We must be compassionate, courteous and patient, acting without fear or
favour or prejudice to the rights of others.
We need to be professional, calm and restrained in the face of violence and
apply only that force which is necessary to accomplish our lawful duty.
We must strive to reduce the fears of the public and, so far as we can, to
reflect their priorities in the action we take. We must respond to well-
founded criticism with a willingness to change.
31
It seems that the indulgent tradition of a calm and gentle policeman still has it appeal and despite the development of technology and wider usage of cars and fire arms, it is considered by the police representatives as the right path to follow.
2.10 The Police in Literature and Media: An Overview
The media have been paying much attention to the police since their birth in 1829, and even before they had relished depicting the watchmen and the constables, their deficiencies in particular. The tradition of picturing the constables as decrepit drunkards has been long and dates back to Shakespeare.
As Aylmer reminds, constables often appear as comic characters in Shakespeare‟s plays, for example Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing, Elbow in Measure for
Measure and Dull in Love‟s Labour‟s Lost (29). According to Evans, they all are
“depicted as naive, prosaic men [who] are sublimely unaware of their blunders, intent upon fulfilling their offices even when they are not really sure just what those offices are” (427). The characters are also well known for their problems with the language and for their malapropisms, for which the police officers remained a laughing matter 300 hundred years later.
Emsley reminds that the essence of comic characters endured and became a part of the image of the modern Bobby. The Police Review run a Dogberry column for many years in which it published stories of police officers speaking of police dogs as „a great detergent towards crime‟, and similar jokes (GBB 10). The old police had a reputation for corruption and lasciviousness (Hurl-Eamon 469) and the new police were portrayed in the same way. According to Emsley, “corruption and suspect behaviour was often a part of the popular image of the policeman, particularly among the working class [and] the early Bobby was also often portrayed in hot pursuit of female cooks and servant 32
girls” (GBB 9). Policemen were mocked in popular press but in the mid-century the middle-class started developing another image, the image of a loyal servant
(Taylor 101), which helped the reputation of the police in the eyes of the public and the policemen themselves. According to Emsley the humour about the police began to get softer and the police were actually becoming “the national favourites” (EB 120). In
1883 The Times described the policeman as a friend of the people who look at him as an excellent person and whose relationship would be destroyed if the police were to carry guns (Emsley, EB 121”). This could be seen as the beginning of the indulgent tradition that determined the Bobby‟s image for the following century.
As far as literature was concerned, the detective attracted more attention than the uniformed policeman, which consequently affected the relationship between the two branches. The detective was seen, in contrast to the uniformed constable, as a mysterious character and began to appear in plays, for example The Ticket-of-Leave
Man, novels, and newspaper stories (Rawlings 170). As Rawlings reminds, Charles
Dickens was fascinated by detectives and based one of his characters, Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, on Detective Inspector Charles Field (170). According to Pittard,
Inspector Bucket is the first literary detective and the one responsible for the image of a detective standing between the respectable society and the criminal underworld. The public became fascinated by the world the detectives moved in, the detectives were celebrated for their successes and the breakthroughs were given a lot of attention in the press. “From the 1880s especially a succession of detective police officers published thrilling memoirs describing the cases that they had solved during their careers and emphasizing the dangers as well as their skills, effectiveness, and dedication” (Emsley,
CPPP 208). The uniformed policemen responsible for prevention of crime could hardly, unless something went wrong, arouse such interest. 33
As mentioned earlier, the relationship between the press and the detectives worsened at the time of Jack the Ripper killings. The detectives, desperate not to cause panic among the public, developed a tight-lipped approach and did not impart any news to the journalist, which caused them a negative publicity in return (Wade 79). At this time the fictional detectives began to be humiliated by the amateurs and their intelligence and efficiency started to be questioned. According to Emsley “a certain lack of intellectual capacity [became] a continuing feature both of humour about the police and of the „indulgent tradition‟” (EB 125) and still in the inter-war period “on the whole, policemen are portrayed in a favourable light by novelists, except perhaps as regards their intelligence” (EB 126), as is shown later.
The Bobby was not a central character in early films but his time came in 1950 in the form of PC George Dixon in the film The Blue Lamp. Although he was shot in the film, he featured the television series Dixon of Dock Green which ran from 1956 to
1974 (Loader 1). To Loader Dixon represents a “paragon of virtue, integrity and, dedication to duty [and] all that was best about the „upstanding citizen in uniform‟” (5).
He has become the perfect Bobby, the national hero and the representative of the 1950s, the gold age of policing, and also the benchmark to measure the realism of later police series.
In the decades that followed, the public‟s view of the police changed and so did their representation in media. The gentle Bobby was replaced by a tough copper, who did not lead an exemplary family life, drank and fought, like the characters of the TV series Z Cars. It ran from 1962 to 1978 and presented the public with the new view of policing. According to Emsley the shift was not only the result of changes in policing and the views of the public, but also of the influence of American films and series that were presenting tougher style of policing (EB 130). Set in a fictional town north of 34
Liverpool, the Z Cars replaces the Bobby on the beat with cops driving fast cars, bullying suspects, coaxing confessions and beating their wives (Millington, “Z Cars”), and brought publicity to the reorganization of the beat system and to the development of
Unit Beat Policing7 (Emsley, GBB 250). The toughness of the characters of Z Cars was brought to a new level with the 1970s series The Sweeney.
The series provoked controversy and fears of the public‟s image of the police, as it showed the police bending rules and involved careless driving and fist fights
(Millington, “The Sweeney”). In the article Millington further explains that the series realistically reflects the atmosphere of the period, imprisonment of a Flying Squad officer for corruption, increasing bureaucracy, mugging, shift to the political right and breakdown of the post-war social consensus.
The issue of mugging and the problematic relationship with the black community was overlooked for some time and appeared in literature, for example in Samuel
Selvon‟s The Lonely Londoners or Colin MacInnes‟s City of Spades, rather than in films. In the late 1970s the police slowly started recruiting members from ethnic minorities and their fortunes were followed in the BBC series Black in Blue (“John
Pettman”). Women police officers appeared on screens in 1980s in The Gentle Touch and the BBC Series, Juliet Bravo (Angelini). They consider the difficulties of women police officers, problems with combining the career and sexism and discrimination respectively.
Although the beat Bobby George Dixon remains one of the most popular television police officers, more attention has been paid to detectives whose work involve more action and more opportunities for drama. And nowhere were the detectives given so much space as in the genre of detective fiction.
7 Discussed in chapter 3.3. 35
2.11 The Policeman and the Detective in a Detective Story: A Brief History
Literary works including some of the ingredients of detective fiction, for instance a puzzle and a crime, have been written for centuries. According to P. D. James, traces of the genre can be found in pieces as diverse as the Bible, Mrs. Radcliffe‟s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Jane Austen‟s Emma (“Introduction”). These texts, however, do not primarily consider the investigation and detection and for Julian Symons “those who search for fragments of detection in the Bible and Herodotus are looking only for puzzles” (23). Besides, Pittard doubts whether crime literature published before 1800, which pictured the villain as a sympathetic character, can be seen as detective fiction, and for some it remains a question whether it is possible to speak about detective fiction before formal police and detective departments had been established (Symons 23).
Consequently, it is generally accepted that the first real detective fiction story was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 when he published “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue” (Collins). In this and the four stories that followed Poe introduced the basic features of detective fiction, for instance the locked-room mystery, the wrongly suspected person and the least suspected person as the culprit (Marling), which, in
Symons‟s terms, makes him “the undisputed father of the detective story” (33). He also created an amateur detective, Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, who helps the baffled police and by reasoning and careful consideration of details comes to the solution of the mystery. Poe also started the tradition of a slow-witted companion to the brilliant detective who tells the story and asks the questions an average reader might want to ask.
This pattern was then repeated for another one hundred years.
It has been widely discussed which book should be given the title of the first detective novel. P. D. James and others argue that this title belongs to The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (TDF 23) published in 1868. In this novel Collins laid down the basic 36
principles of the detective novels and created one of the first professional detectives,
Sergeant Cuff (James, TDF 25). This character, similarly to Dickens‟s Inspector Bucket, was based on a real-life Scotland-Yard detective, Inspector Whicher, “the Prince of
Detectives” (Symons 52). Whicher‟s successful career suffered serious drawbacks after he failed in two cases and according to Symons, Collins might have had his rehabilitation in mind when he created his character (52). Dickens and Collins represent the trend of celebrating the police and the detectives in particular. Literature celebrating the criminal almost disappeared and the sympathetic criminal hero and a stupid policeman continued to be found almost exclusively in the penny dreadful (Symons 46).
However, at the end of the century the Great (amateur) Detective robbed the police of some of their fame.
The greatest of the Great Detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle‟s Sherlock Holmes, is notorious for his disregard and contempt for the police. According to Rennison, it may result from the fact that the late 1870s were stigmatized by a great scandal in the
Detective Department and the Trial of the Detectives in which corruption and a complex fraud were investigated (40). By the end of the trial most of the older officers had left the force but it took Holmes some time to “shake off the belief that the force was manned almost exclusively by the incompetent, the unimaginative and the potentially corrupt” (Rennison 41). Consequently, Holmes is more than sceptical about Inspector
Lestrade‟s skills. Holmes accuses Lestrade of a complete lack of imagination, initiative and reason but on the other hand he acknowledges his tenacity (Rennison 42). Lestrade is aware of his inferiority and the contrast between his “plodding intelligence and
Holmes‟s genius” (Rennison 42), and their relationship suffers from resulting distance and Lestrade‟s patronizing attitude to Holmes. It is only later, as Rennison concludes, when their relationship can be described as friendship. 37
The appeal of the Great Detective lies in his assumed superiority. He is the embodiment of the superior man and the hero who saves the society from evil. He is the romantic knight whose superiority must not be threatened by intelligence greater than his, less so from a police officer. Nevertheless, the confidence in police work was growing during the nineteenth century and the official detectives were generally held in respect, by the middle class in particular. The detective story reflects this trend and although it may depict some slow-witted constables, “the professional detective […] no longer appears in fiction as the corrupt oppressor, but as the protector of the innocent”
(Symons 58). According to Symons, this view is later challenged by the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, by Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler in particular
(58), but it is supported by the representation of the police in the detective story of the
Golden Age, as is shown in the following chapters.
38
3 GOLDEN-AGE DETECTIVE FICTION AND ITS POLICEMEN
3.1 Golden-Age Detective Fiction and Its Principles
The Golden Age of detective fiction, which roughly corresponds to the period between the two world wars or, according to Sally Munt, to the period from the first novel of
Agatha Christie (1920) and the last novel by Dorothy L. Sayers (1937) (Munt 6), witnessed canonization of women crime writers, growing popularity of the genre and both its development and standardization of rules and principles.
Golden-Age detective fiction was escapist literature that was supposed to help
“escape from the monotony of modern life” (Trodd 134). But it also played a major role in healing the nation wounded in the First World War and in reassuring the English that the world was an orderly place where evil could be beaten and peace restored. For Munt it is the “literature of convalescence: the bloodless, detached, dispassionate, domestic murder […] which soothed and reassured” (8). Golden Age crime writers usually turn a blind eye to social problems, unemployment, increasing costs of living and the forthcoming economic crisis. “In the British stories the General Strike of 1926 never took place, trade unions did not exist, and when sympathy was expressed for the poor it was not for the unemployed but for those struggling on a fixed inherited income”
(Symons 108). Most writers were not interested in criticizing the outer world; they sought to entertain and puzzle their readers (James, TDF 23). Although most of the stories are concerned with at least one violent death, they are stories of entertainment and in the end “all will be well – except of course for the murderer, but he deserves all that‟s coming to him” (James, TDF 66). The reader is not supposed to muse over the actual ending, which meant hanging then, but to enjoy the restoration of peace and order.
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Though the peaceful rural setting of most Golden Age detective stories may seem fantastic to the modern reader, P. D. James emphasizes that for the middle-class writers it was the reality. In her view, England of the Golden Age was a “cohesive world, overwhelmingly white and united by a common belief in a religious and moral code
[…] and buttressed by social and political institutions which, […], attracted general allegiance. […] It was an ordered society in which virtue was regarded as normal, crime an aberration, and in which there was small sympathy for the criminal” (TDF 70). The established institutions might have been criticised and the attitude to the criminal system and the police may have seemed ambiguous, yet their role and importance were not seriously questioned. Obtuse policemen were contrasted with the brilliant private detectives and from time to time they were ridiculed, but never despised. Or were they?
3.2 The Amateur and the Professional: An Uneasy Relationship
According to P. D. James, Christie and other Golden-Age female crime writers would not have classified themselves as social historians or “as having a prime responsibility either to portray contemporary mores or to criticise the age in which [they] worked,
[but] it is perhaps this detachment of purpose which makes these writers so reliable as historians of their age” (TDF 97). Despite their fairly realistic description of the society,
Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham continued in the tradition of
Arthur Conan Doyle and made their Great Detectives, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple,
Peter Wimsey, and Albert Campion, amateurs. According to Anthea Trodd, the belief in existence of supreme intelligence and a perfect individual gave comfort and reassurance and was a part of the post-war therapy.
The character of the law enforcement officer is, however, vital to the story. In
Golden-Age detective fiction they are rarely the main characters but they contribute to 40
its credibility and ensure that the perpetrators will be brought to the court of law. Agatha
Christie‟s “conception of the British police [,] is conservative and stereotypic: she reflects attitudes and expectations of the role of the police that have been projected in the pages of the various novelists who preceded her and in the real life practices of the police in Britain” (Maida 145). She continued in the tradition which was founded by
Vidocq and Poe who “bred distrust for the police [and from whom] came the need for the righteous amateur sleuth and the rivalry between the successful amateur and the less admirable professional” (Maida 146). The need for foregrounding the amateur consequently influences the portrayal of the professional police.
According to James Zemboy, “in many of the earlier Christie novels the police were just plain failures” (198). The level of stupidity of the police officers is, nonetheless, closely connected to the character of the investigating person and if the investigator happens to be a professional detective, as is the case of The Clocks [1963], the police are presented in better light, which may also reflect the different period in which the novel appeared. On the other hand, although “the British were less disparaging in their treatment of the police [than the French], still the amateur sleuth usually had to cope with police jealousy and resistance” (Maida 146) and, consequently the sleuth gives as hard as he gets and ridicules the official police whenever he gets the chance.
Christie at one point admits that the amateurs “make out that Scotland Yard are all boots and brainless” (CT 146), which is what is generally expected of them to do.
Hercule Poirot is a former professional policeman but in Christie‟s novels he plays the role of the great amateur detective who is expected to overshadow the police and he is thus famous for his disparaging comments on the police. He believes that “the police
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[…] may be trusted to deal with a straightforward robbery” (Christie, HP 804)8 but he would not turn to them with anything more sophisticated. When it comes to a man of method, a man who “might bring intelligence, talent, a careful calculation of detail to the task [Poirot does not] see why he should not be successful in baffling the police force” (HP 42)9. Method and reasoning are reserved for Poirot who approaches problems “with an exact science, a mathematical precision, which seems, alas, only too rare in the new generation of detectives” (HP 42)10 and practically missing in the professional detectives in detective fiction.
Poirot‟s attitude is the reflection of the popular stereotype picturing the detective as hard working but intellectually lacking. Inspector Miller investigating the disappearance of Mr Davenhaim in the eponymous short story is believed to be “a smart chap. […] He won‟t overlook a footprint, or a cigar-ash, or a crumb even. He‟s got eyes that see everything” but so has the London sparrow, according to Poirot (Christie,
HP 42)11. The ferret-style of police work is often ridiculed and Poirot‟s praise of “the result of the labours of the hard-working and lynx-eyed Inspector Miller” (HP 46)12 is only ironical. Poirot admits that as far as routine inquiries are concerned, the police make them better than he does and he reproaches Hastings for making him run about like a dog (Christie, ABC 109) instead of reflecting.
Although Poirot is absolutely positive that he is better than the police (Christie,
ABC 78) and sees the police as “not so greatly gifted by the good God, the Inspector,
McNeil, for instance” (Christie, HP 115)13, he hardly ever judges them too harshly nor does he criticise them in public or when talking to clients. When a client believes in
8 “The Girdle of Hyppolita” [1940] 9 “The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim” [1923] 10 “The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim” [1923] 11 [1923] 12 “The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim” [1923] 13 “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery” [1923] 42
Inspector McNeil‟s abilities, Poirot agrees politely, although his view is the exact opposite (HP 114)1. Moreover, he is sometimes willing to concede that “the police are doing all they can” (HP 7)14 and he can appreciate good work. When looking for the murderer in The ABC Murders, Poirot reminds Hastings that “the police are doing everything reasonably possible. [He concedes that] the good Inspector Crome may have the irritating manner, but he is a very able police officer” (152). Christie apparently sticks to her social class and background and although she ridicules the police, she believes in the institution as such.
If the police lose as far as intelligence is concerned, they win in the field of organisation and resources. As has already been mentioned15, Scotland Yard became the centre of forensic science in the nineteenth century and no amateur detective could equal them, which is realistically reflected in Christie‟s work. Poirot claims it is possible to solve a crime by reflection only but in some cases he considers the field work necessary and even recommends a client should consult the police because they “have far more resources at their disposal than I [Poirot] have” (Christie, HP 705)16. Poirot goes to Scotland Yard when he needs to consult the official records and identify thieves by the means of fingerprints (HP 26)17. And he does not only use the resources. When he goes to France to investigate the disappearance of the prime minister, he finds it satisfactory that he is to be accompanied by a Military officer and a CID man who are going to assist him in every possible way (HP 100)18. As far as routine detection work is concerned, “the police have all the means at their disposal for that kind of inquiry” and
Poirot thus trusts the police that “if anything is to be discovered on those lines have no
14 “The Affair at the Victory Ball” [1923] 15 Chapter 2.6 16 “The Arcadian Deer” [1940] 17 “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan” [1923] 18 “The Kidnapped Prime Minister” [1923] 43
fear but that they will discover it” (Christie, ABC 52). He is similarly optimistic about the ability of the police to identify someone: “In that kind of thing the police are excellent. They have their criminal records, they can advertise the man‟s picture, they have access to a list of missing persons, there is scientific examination of the dead man‟s clothing, and so on and so on. Oh, yes, there are a hundred other ways and means at their disposal” (Christie, Clocks 112). Poirot readily admits that “Scotland Yard and local police of the various counties were indefatigable in following up the smallest clues” (Christie, ABC 108) and believes, as the public at that time did, in the hard and never-ending work of the men in blue.
This belief reflects the reality of the Golden Age; the cooperation, both amiable and restrained, between the professional and the amateur is, however, a relic from the nineteenth-century detective fiction and does not have roots in reality. Sherlock Holmes is regularly visited by Lestrade who seeks his help and Japp often consults Hercule
Poirot, but “in real life there were never any brilliant private detectives to whom
Scotland Yard turned when they failed and the Yard‟s Criminal Investigation
Department (CID) had a remarkable clear-up rate […]. Indeed, the most famous real-life detectives of the 20th century, such as Walter Dew (1863-1947) and Robert Fabian
(1901-78), were Scotland Yard inspectors” (Rubinstein). That, however, was not what the readers of the Golden-Age detective fiction wanted to read. In the healing process in the inter-war period they needed to believe in supreme intelligence that could solve all problems and prevent a conflict that could threaten the fragile atmosphere of the time.
3.3 Battle, Japp and Co.: Christie’s Fictional Policemen
If Christie leaves the reality behind when she creates her brilliant amateur sleuths, she manages to create two realistic police officers, Scotland-Yard Inspectors Battle and 44
Japp. They belong to Christie‟s most famous characters, and not only due to their serial appearance, but also due to their realistic and humanised portrayals.
Inspector Battle is first introduced in The Secret of Chimneys [1925] where he successfully solves a murder mystery, a theft of a priceless jewel, and identifies an infamous crook. He may thus serve as an example of a highly competent officer who refutes Zemboy‟s view that “the police got rather poor treatment by Agatha Christie in her earlier stories” (198) and who promotes trust in the official detectives.
Battle conforms to the stereotypical image of a policeman by his seemingly slow thinking and leisurely movements. But that is just a mask which hides a mentally alert detective, waiting for an unwary criminal. Battle is introduced as an astute officer with whom “it would not do to make any slip” (Christie, SC 91). He may seem apathetic and detached, “with no expression whatsoever on his square placid face” (SC 153) but “in the tradition of Dickens‟ Inspector Bucket, Battle moves quietly but decisively”
(Maida 155). In the words of Anthony Cade, a suspect in The Secret of Chimneys,
“when the moment comes, you‟re [Battle] always there” (151). He is also, rather in the tradition of the Great Detectives, in the habit of being always right (SC 207). His unemotional demeanour may seduce others into thinking poorly of him (SC 183), but faced with his results they are forced to change their opinion radically.
In Cards on the Table [1936], Battle is given more attention and his character is further developed, although his qualities do not change much. He has become superintendent and has been “supposed to be Scotland Yard‟s best representative”
(Christie, CT 13) and “one of the big noises at Scotland Yard” (CT 14). His countenance does not change, he is square and wooden with an unemotional eye (CT 27), and although he always looks “rather stupid” (CT 13) and “may look wooden, he is not wooden in the head” (CT 99). Battle plays the role of a typical police officer, slow, dull, 45
conscientious, and absolutely unimaginative. His style is that of “a straightforward, honest, zealous officer doing his duty in the most laborious manner […] No frills. No fancy work. Just honest perspiration” (CT 67). But his stolidity is just a pose that makes the suspects careless. Battle is no fool and those who fall into the trap may be caught by surprise.
The most realistic picture of Superintendent Battle is offered in a later novel,
Towards Zero [1944]. In the beginning the readers are reminded of Battle‟s wooden appearance, expressionless face and the lack of brilliance since “he was, definitely, not a brilliant man” (Christie, Zero 16). This time, however, he confesses that the pose of a heavy-handed policeman is a pose only and that he likes “doing what‟s expected of
[him]” (Zero 125). But what distinguishes this novel from others and what makes Battle stand out in the crowd of fictional police officers is the development of his background and his family life. Battle is shown as a married man with five children, the youngest of whom, Sylvia, is accused of stealing from her schoolmates. She is a weak girl who confesses to a crime she did not commit, but her father knows her character and manages to prove his daughter‟s innocence and point to the real culprit. The reader knows the Battle family is going to spend summer holidays in Brighton and that Battle cannot join them because he is called to duty. Subsequently, Battle joins his nephew,
Inspector Leach, whom he later helps to solve a case. Battle is presented as a sensitive father and uncle, which adds to his credibility as a character and moves both him and the novel towards modern detective fiction.
Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard is also introduced early in Christie‟s work; in the
1923 short story “The Affair at the Victory Ball” he is already described as an old friend
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of Poirot and Hastings (Christie, HP 2)19. That, however, does not prevent Poirot from criticising the detective and pointing to his “lamentable lack of method” (HP 2)20. All in all, Poirot has a good opinion of Japp‟s abilities (HP 2)21 but in the early short stories the inspector is not given much space to prove it. His character plays the role of a stereotypical police officer, slow to think (HP 6)22, half-witted (HP 50)23 and a laughing matter for the brilliant amateur (HP 52)24. He sneers at the word psychology and believes in hard work and no tricks:
The good inspector believes in matter in motion […]. He travels, he
measures footprints, he collects mud and cigarette-ash! He is extremely
busy! He is zealous beyond words! And if I [Poirot] mentioned
psychology to him […], he would smile! Japp is the younger generation
knocking on the door. […] They are so busy knocking that they do not
notice that the door is open. (HP 60).25
The early Japp may seem as a stock and “cardboard” character, a baffled police man in the tradition of Lestrade, whom he resembles both by his behaviour and ferret-like face, but Christie was prepared for the eventual development of this character and let
Hastings reveal that Japp was “supposed to be one of the smartest of Scotland Yard‟s officers” (Christie, HP 102)26. In the 1930s novels, Death in the Air [1935] and The
ABC Murders [1936], Japp has matured and become a competent leader. When he starts investigation of the death aboard an airliner, he is just “after rather a big bug in the smuggling line” (Christie, DA 14). He organises his team effectively and starts
19 [1923] 20 “The Affair at the Victory Ball” [1923] 21 “The Affair at the Victory Ball” [1923] 22 “The Affair at the Victory Ball” [1923] 23 “The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim” [1923] 24 “The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim” [1923] 25 “The Plymouth Express” [1923] 26 “The Kidnapped Prime Minister” [1923] 47
preliminary interviews of the suspects quickly and efficiently. Due to his professionalism, cold politeness and severity he gains results quickly, he is in control of his colleagues and suspects and according to Patricia Maida, in Death in the Air “Japp makes his debut as a fully developed persona” (168). He does not only rise in rank and reputation, but he is also more developed as a character.
Japp grows older and more reliable, but he remains “fond of his joke” (Christie,
DA 15) and is still rather quick in judging people. He is an expert on generalizations and in some cases, especially when foreigners are concerned, tends to think stereotypically.
First he suspects Mr. Clancy, the detective fiction writer, then the French archaeologists, the Duponts: “They‟re a reedy-looking couple, and that battered old suitcase of theirs is fairly plastered with out-landish foreign labels. Shouldn‟t be surprised if they‟d been to
Borneo or South America or wherever it is” (DA 18). He still snorts “at the word
„psychology‟ which he disliked and distrusted” (DA 43), but he becomes a more respected detective and gains a promotion and respect. At the end of the investigation, even Poirot is forced to admit that Japp “deserves as much credit as I [Poirot] do. He has done wonders” (DA 156). Christie endows Japp with the stereotypical qualities of an Englishman, suspicion to everything foreign and imperfect academic knowledge, but on the other hand, also with kindness, patience and good temper. She humanises him and thus makes him stand out in the crowd of stereotypical Golden-Age sleuths.
3.4 The Realities of Golden-Age Fictional Policing
It is generally agreed that British Golden-Age crime fiction writers treated the police kindly and with a due amount of respect. Their predominantly right-wing and conservative attitudes ensured that well-established institutions, such as the police, would not be pictured disparagingly. 48
According to Julian Symons, the Golden-Age writers saw all policemen as good
(130) and it would be unthinkable for them to “have created a policeman who beat up suspects […]. Acknowledging that such things happened, they would have thought it undesirable to write about them, because the police were the representatives of established society, and so ought not to be shown behaving badly” (109). Christie shares
Symons‟s view and shows the police in a favourable light. That does not mean, however, that she spares them her humour and irony or that she avoids voicing some of the popular complaints.
Most negative remarks addressed to the police concern their intelligence or rather the lack of it. As discussed earlier, jokes about policemen had softened by the end of the nineteenth century but the image of empty-headed officers lingered well to the twentieth century. Consequently, the force is described as “our poor thick-headed British police”
(Christie, ABC 13); it is questioned where the police would be if most criminals were not fools themselves (Christie, Zero 122), and it is pointed out that there are many crimes that not only remain unsolved but even pass unnoticed by the police (Christie,
CT 18), and in “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan”, “the police were well known to be of a stupidity incredible” (Christie, HP 18)27. This last view is, however, a view of a maid, who also happens to be French, and as discussed above, the working class tended to be the most critical of the police institution.
If the police are not criticised for their ignorance, they are scolded for the intrusion their work necessarily involves. The police destroy privacy of every single person mixed up with an investigation and those thus afflicted accuse the police of unnecessary curiosity. In Death in the Air, Inspector Japp is described as pestilential
(99) and as “that dreadful inspector man […] badgering me [Lady Horbury] with
27 “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan” [1923] 49
questions” (118); the whole force is then characterised as follows: “Nosey, that‟s what those fellows are. Can‟t mind their own business” (110). Some characters tune the criticism down and permit the police “had been polite, quite pleasant, in fact but [still] the ceaseless questions, that quiet deliberate probing and sifting of every fact was the sort of thing that wore hardly on the nerves” (Christie, Zero 164). Characters are aware and often reminded of the duty to assist the police with their investigations (Christie,
Zero 145) and although they are not eager to fulfil this duty, they do not dare not oblige.
“One doesn‟t refuse to let the police in. They‟d take a very poor view of it if you did”
(Christie, Clocks 169). Complaints about intrusiveness of the police, in contrast to concerns over their intelligence, are voiced by members of middle and upper classes. As has been discussed above, these classes saw the importance of the organised police and could appreciate their work, but remained worried about their own privacy and rights.
As will be shown later, this has not changed so far.
It may seem that the police are severely criticised by Christie‟s characters but their complaints are never too harsh. “Christie may treat her policemen with humour or satire, with deference or compassion; but basically she builds respect for them”
(Maida 168). She reminds her readers that idiotic police are just a figment of writer‟s imagination (Christie, CT 55) and lets Inspector Japp complain about the nature of the representation of the police in fiction: “These detective writers, always making the police out to be fools, and getting their procedure all wrong. Why, if I were to say the things to my super that their inspectors say to superintendents, I should be thrown out of the force to-morrow on my ear” (Christie, DA 23). Christie also draws attention to some of the problems the police had to face, being under the scrutiny of the public and of those in higher ranks in particular. Japp grumbles about the constant debates about the procedures of the police and how ready some people are to have “a question asked in 50
the House about the brutal methods of the police” (DA 17). The professional police officers are members of a hierarchical society, in which they have to satisfy a superintendent, a chief constable and the rest of it (Christie, DA 47) and in contrast to the amateur they “have to act on evidence – not on what we feel and think” (Christie,
Zero 179). In comparison to amateur sleuths the police are tightly bound by the rules and in the Golden Age of detective fiction they abide by them.
In the Golden Age, “police forces were not yet integrated into the forty-two large forces of today, and major cities and their county were separately policed” (James,
TDF 147). When the local force could not cope with the case, either because of its complexity or of the lack of equipment, Scotland Yard officers were called in. This must have given opportunities for rivalry and competitiveness but Christie shows respect and acceptance of the superiority of the Metropolitan Police. Inspector Glen in The ABC
Murders readily agrees to call in Scotland Yard when he realises it was not a local crime
(44) and a grieved mother of a victim becomes hopeful when she hears that a Scotland-
Yard officers are going to take part in the investigation (66). Local policemen were selected from the community as it was believed that intimate knowledge of the area and its inhabitants helped the policemen solve problems. It paid off in cases of petty thefts and other minor crimes but it did not help to build respect for the constables. The unknown, by mystery surrounded detectives from London, were much easier to respect and admire.
The job of a police officer was considered rather a working-class or at least, not gentlemanly occupation. When announcing the police, Mrs. Head in The Clocks says:
“„A couple of gentlemen to see you.‟ […] „Leastways,‟ she added, „they aren‟t really gentlemen – it‟s the police‟” (50). If due respect is not always shown to senior officers, the junior officers are overlooked completely. “Miss Waterhouse looked at him 51
[Sergeant Lamb] in some surprise, as though not aware before that he had an entity of his own and was anything other than a necessary appendage to Inspector Hardcastle”
(Clocks 55). The idea that a sergeant could come with his own thought was too fanciful.
Although the police are not considered gentlemen-like and despite being frequently ridiculed, they are pictured as nice, attentive and polite. A Bobby patrolling a street in The ABC Murders tries the doors of shops to check whether they are properly shut (23) and is consequently praised for his conscientiousness. Battle assures the headmistress in Towards Zero of discreetness of the local police (22) and in The Secret of Chimneys it is admitted that the police do much more than the public can imagine
(144). It is believed that hard systematic work can bear fruit and that if there is something to be found, the police will find it. “The police of both countries are at work.
It‟s only a matter of time before they come on the truth,” (Christie, DA 79) says Lord
Horbury and expresses the opinion of many people of the similar status and also that of the middle class.
In Christie, the police are sometimes described as foolish or inept, but they are never corrupt nor members of the mafia or other criminal organisations. In
Herzoslovakia, on the other hand, “it‟s just a question of bribing high enough – and finding the right man – probably the Chief of Police” but “thank God our [British] police force isn‟t like that” (Christie, HP 759)28. This attitude is in sharp contrast to the
American school of hard boiled detectives who fight against bent coppers and the mafia infiltrated into the force. The image of corruption connected with watchmen and thief- takers did not apply to the Bobby who was believed to be helpful, reliable and honest.
Christie offers a different perspective as regards the French police. Their military- like discipline and close connection with the central government did not add to their
28 “The Stymphalean Birds” [1940] 52
popularity among the French and among the British the “gendarme evokes a bitter prejudice [because they] consider the French policeman a political figure comparable to a spy” (Maida 145). Julian Symons emphasises the connection between the French police and the state and corruption associated with the first chief of the Surrete, Eugene
Francois Vidocq, and in his view it was virtually impossible for the French to make their policemen fictional heroes (55). According to Christie‟s Lord Caterham “the French police are up to all sorts of dodges. Put india-rubber bands round your arm, and then reconstruct the crime and make you jump, and it‟s registered on a thermometer”
(Christie, SC 200). Christie‟s sense of humour and irony is easy to spot here but it is, however, closely linked with the representation of the image connected with the French police. Later Christie softens her criticism and connects the fright of the police with the social class: “The police – it is always a word frightening to that class [working class].
It embroils them in they know not what. It is the same everywhere, in every country”
(DA 68). In Britain the working class also had a more problematic relationship with the police than other classes. The middle and upper classes saw the Bobby and the detective as positive characters, and P. D. James remembers that “as an eight-year-old [I was] told by my father that if ever I was alone and afraid or in difficulties I should find a policeman” (TDF 147), which confirms that during the Golden Age of detective fiction the police were generally seen as friendly, courteous and helpful.
The relationship to women police officers was, however, considerably worse, according to Christie. Her fictional writer, Mrs. Oliver, constantly complains about the lack of women in the police and strongly believes that “if a woman were the head of
Scotland Yard” (Christie, CT 12) everything would be different and better. And although
Christie‟s heroines are frequently strong and independent young women, who from time to time perform some detection work, they are not members of the professional police. 53
Women had a very limited role in policing at that time and that role was performed outside the criminal investigation department. They were confined to taking care of children and women arrested or being interrogated; they assisted women victims, dealt with women offenders and patrolled places of amusement to safeguard women against indecency (Natarajan 26). In Christie‟s work police women are described as silly
(Clocks 187) and “dreadful […] in funny hats who bother people in parks” (CT 18). The latter is uttered by Mrs. Oliver who is a firm believer in woman‟s intuition (CT 12) but who wants to see women in leading positions, “at the head of things [because] women know about crime” (CT 18). But another three decades had to pass before women were allowed to enter the criminal investigation departments and other specialised departments.
As has already been stated, the image of the professional police consulting their cases with an amateur detective was not realistic and was a part of the tradition of detective fiction and of its role in the therapeutic process following the First World War.
The Second World War changed everything. The extent to which it changed detective fiction and the representation of the police force is explored in the following chapters.
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4 SECOND-WAVE DETECTIVE FICTION AND THE POLICE
4.1 A Move to Realism and the Disappearance of the Great Detective
Detective fiction published after the Second World War and since the beginning of the sixties in particular, has been described as the second-wave detective fiction. Although
Agatha Christie kept writing well into the seventies, she remained, with a few exceptions,29 faithful to the Golden-Age style of detective fiction. Women writers who are now considered the second-wave English queens of crime, P. D. James and Ruth
Rendell (Munt 20), reacted to the changes brought by the war and created a very different style of crime literature and consequently a new type of the detective.
The Golden-Age detective fiction writers concentrated on the puzzle and the plot.
“Readers of the 1930s expected that the puzzle would be both dominant and ingenious and that the murderer in his villainy would exhibit almost superhuman cunning and skill” (James, TDF 91). As a result, Golden-Age writers had their victims dispatched by licking poisoned stamps, being battered to death by church bells, poisoned by cat claws and found dead in locked and barred rooms (James, TDF 65). P. D. James points out that because of the need for more and more bizarre ways of murder, some of them could not possibly work in practice. This, nevertheless, did not trouble the contemporary reader who was not interested in “the swift bash to the skull followed by sixty thousand words of psychological insight” (TDF 92). Julian Symons notices that already by “1950 there were few drawings of the grounds and the house, […] stories based on the elucidation of alibis through time-tables had vanished, nobody was dealing in unknown poisons, and methods of murder had become noticeably less bizarre” (160). The writers had set on the way of realism and psychology.
29 For example, Murder on the Orient Express [1934], Ten Little Niggers [1939], Five Little Pigs [1942], Destination Unknown [1954], Endless Night [1967], Nemesis [1971], to name just a few. 55
Modern writers did not just want to entertain their readers with an ingenious murder mystery; they wanted to provide a novel combining “popular entertainment with a study of people and problems” (Symons 160). Since the writers started to ask “Why rather than How” (Symons 161), the psyche of the criminals and their family background began to get more attention. Characters have become more developed; writers have become more realistic in their treatment of crime, more precise in their dealing with the detection of crime and crime fiction has become closer to general fiction than ever before (James, TDF 146). Crime has remained at the heart of a detective novel but stopped to be its only ingredient.
Novels by P. D. James comply with some of the rules of the Golden Age and some critics, consequently, place them alongside novels by Christie, Sayers and Allingham
(Hubly). Erlene Hubly, however, argues that James departs from this tradition and her novels should be regarded as representatives of the second-wave crime fiction.
According to Hubly, “stressing neither plot nor detective, James‟s novels are concerned not just with a puzzle-murder but with the „corrosive, destructive aspect of crime,‟ the way it shatters the lives of all it touches, [which is the theme that takes James] beyond the mystery novel into the realm of general popular fiction.” Moreover, James demonstrates in her novels that the world is not an orderly place where everything can be explained by reason and where after a short aberration the order can be restored.
James takes the advantage of a close setting with a limited number of suspects, but she uses it “as a means of examining reality” (Hubly). She does not pretend that everything is all right with the society, nor does she believe it is going to be so in foreseeable future.
In her “Introduction” P. D. James explains that the “carefully researched television plays and documentaries on the police have made the public far more knowledgeable. 56
They are unlikely to be convinced today by the unrealities of the Golden Age.” In order to create a realistic detective novel and convince the readers, modern detective fiction writers, including P. D. James, give more space to detailed description of the setting and characters, and the same applies to the picture of the police and of the realities of their work.
Agatha Christie does not pretend that all detection work is done by the official investigator or the amateur detective: “There was a police surgeon, a police photographer, fingerprint men. They moved efficiently, each occupied with his own routine” (Clocks 14); “the photographs had been taken, and measurements recorded”
(Zero 113). She does not, however, go into greater detail and generally all the forensic work is done by “general practitioners who, at the request of the detective, do the postmortem on their examination table after evening surgery and next morning are able to give the detective a more precise description of precisely how the victim died than a modern forensic laboratory would be able to do offer after a fortnight‟s intensive work”
(James, “Introduction”). James‟s police are to a greater extent dependent on the team of professionals and the description of their work becomes elaborate:
The room was overcrowded but the experts in death, investigating
officers, finger print officers, photographer and scene-of-crime searchers,
were adept at keeping out of each other‟s way […] hands sheathed in
gloves […]. Now those hands poured the remnants of the tea into a
collecting flask, stoppered, sealed and labelled it, gently eased the cup and
saucer into a plastic bag; scraped a sample of blood from the marble limb
and placed it in the specially prepared tube; took up the limb itself,
touching it only with the tips of the fingers and lowered it into a sterile
box. (SS 185). 57
James‟s detectives have deep knowledge of pathology (James, PP 177) and visit the victims‟ postmortem of which the reader is given a detailed account (James, OS 275).
James informs her readers about the lookout and equipment of police stations, including the “stainless-steel bath trolley for the reception and hosing-down of drowned bodies”
(OS 269), notice boards, computers, and telephones necessary for police work; and she also mentions the work of Met‟s Press Bureau that is “responsible for setting up press conferences and for liaison with the media” (OS 270). James also refers to the history of the police and in Original Sin the team is stationed at the Wapping Police Station, “the oldest police station in the United Kingdom, [since] the River Police were established in
1798, thirty-one years before the Met” (270), as discussed in chapter 1.4.
Besides putting more emphasis on research and scientific details, P. D. James, as a modern detective-fiction writer, introduces a much more realistic detective. The idea of the superman became highly unpopular during the war (Symons 160) and the idea of an eccentric bachelor helping the professional police when they are at loss began to appear exceedingly ridiculous (Symons 155). “Because of the growing importance of realism
[...], in part arising from the comparative reality of television series, the professional detective has largely taken over from the amateur. What we have are realistic portrayals of human beings undertaking a difficult, sometimes dangerous, and often disagreeable job, beset with the anxieties common to humanity” (James, TDF 146). Reading public knew that the only person to be called to investigate a violent death is the professional detective who is assisted by a team of experts, not an elderly gentleman with nothing better to do.
Since P. D. James was aiming at as much realism as possible (James, TDF 125), she had no choice than to make her detective Adam Dalgliesh a professional policeman.
James admits that if she had started writing later, she would have made her detective a 58
woman “but this was not an option at the time when women were not active in the detective force” (James, TDF 124). Dalgliesh is a realistic character, a Scotland-Yard detective, promoted to commander in the course of James‟s writing, with fully- developed private and professional history; however, he retains some of the eccentricities typical of the Great Detectives, he is a successful poet, obsessed with
English language (James, SN 56) and very critical of his colleagues‟ imperfections. He is therefore, similarly to Hercule Poirot earlier, purposefully excluded from this study.
4.2 The New Image: The Tough Copper and Ethnic and Sexual Minorities
Besides the differences in rendering the realities of policing and the character of the detective, another striking difference between the first and second wave of detective fiction lies in their relationship with established institutions, including the police. The modern readers know that “the police are not invariably more virtuous and honest than the society from which they are recruited, and that corruption can stalk the corridors of power and lie at the very heart of government and the criminal justice system” (James,
TDF 156). “It could no longer be assumed that policemen were by definition honest, or that they would never work over a suspect” (Symons 166). According to P. D. James, the public knows that “things can go wrong, that the innocent can be harried, the guilty get off, that the police are not always as scrupulous as they pretend to be” (James,
DD 392). The policemen are no longer pictured as silly but firm pillars of justice, institutions rather than men, but as human beings, flesh and blood, with all their foibles, desires and needs.
James‟s police officers are not cardboard personae but fully-developed characters with detailed personal history and both private and work relationships. Inspector Daniel
Aaron is not an anonymous member of Dalgliesh‟s team in Original Sin, nor is he a 59
happily married man with cosy home, wife and children. He has a mortgaged flat with
“kitchen sink full of unwashed dishes, a bathroom whose door had to be pushed against the weight of a heap of dirty and malodorous towels, unmade beds and clothes strewn over the bedroom” (365). His girlfriend leaves him with the mortgage, a flat whose furniture he dislikes, outrageous telephone bill and a lawyer‟s bill that he has to pay in instalments.
Inspector John Massingham has got separate rooms in his parents‟ house where he can conduct his love affairs in privacy and at the same time enjoy the service of his parents‟ staff who cook, wash and clean for him (James, TD 171), but after the death of his mother he has to endure his father‟s solitude and demands for attention. Inspector
Kate Miskin takes out the highest possible mortgage to be able to afford a two-bedroom flat which remained unfurnished until she saved “the money to buy the austere, well- designed modern furniture she liked; the sofa and two easy chairs in real leather, the dining table and four chairs in polished elm, the fitted bookcase […] and professionally designed kitchen which held only minimum of necessary utensils” (TD 155). The flat is a symbol of achievement and success, a realistic dream of a realistic character.
James‟s detectives are not always nice and courteous to the interrogated and the times when the detective was believed to treat “all the suspects with the gentlemanly politeness” (James, “Introduction”) belong to the past. The modern detectives are over- worked men and women who may easily lose their temper and who, although they never come near the harsh methods frequently presented in American detective fiction, can make the suspect very uncomfortable. Julian Symons emphasises that British writers were slower to treat the police in the brutal way of the hard-boiled school (167), but they had their suspicions. Sergeant Robert Buckley joins the police because he recognizes in himself “a streak of sadism which found a certain mild satisfaction in the 60
pain of others without necessarily needing actively to inflict it” (James, SS 181).
Sergeant Oliphant is tactless, quick to antagonise witnesses (James, DD 348) and crude bordering on insolent, which, however, brings results (DD 352). Chief Inspector
Rickards has no evidence that Oliphant is a bully, but in Rickards‟s view he looks like one: “He was six feet of disciplined flesh and muscle, dark and conveniently handsome
[…]. He drank too much […] and in all, he represented all the qualities in a young detective which Rickards disliked: aggression, only controlled because control was prudent, a frank relish for power, [and] too much sexual assurance” (DD 212). Christie‟s policemen did not display aggression and longing for power and, above all, did not have sexual life of any kind. Or if they did, it took place in conventional marriages and it was never discussed.
During the cultural revolution of the 1960s it became understood that sex played a crucial part in everybody‟s life. Attitude to sexuality relaxed considerably at that time, sex became inseparable from mainstream fiction and subsequently detective fiction also became more sexually explicit (James, TDF 146). William Rubinstein indicates that once it became acceptable to write about sex, it became too tempting for detective- fiction writers to leave overt depictions of sex out of the detective novels because it sold well. For P. D. James sex is not a marketing strategy. She understands that if her stories and characters are to be considered realistic, sex must be included. She is never too explicit or vulgar and she portrays sex as a natural part of life of all her characters, including the police officers.
Whereas Christie‟s Sergeant O‟Connor, nicknamed by his colleagues „The
Maidservant‟s Prayer‟, takes a young maid out for dinner where he gently extracts all information from her, pays for the meal and courteously leaves (CT 103), James‟s
Sergeant Masterson has sex with a suspect in his car (SN 224) and a long-term 61
relationship with a married woman (SN 227). Kate Miskin is single but sees the necessity of having a lover, “intelligent, personable, available when needed, skilful in bed and undemanding out of it” (James, OS 154). Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is understood to be “dangerously close to love” but with no expectations that his love affair with a young actress could last (Lighthouse 23). James‟s policemen are not womanisers, neither are they unnecessarily promiscuous but still, to write about their sexual lives to such an extent as James does would have been unthinkable for Christie and other Golden-Age writers. It would have been similarly unimaginable to create a policemen who would not be white, male and protestant or Roman Catholic. Yet,
James‟s characters are both male and female and of various social, ethnic and religious backgrounds.
In the first half of the twentieth century ethnic minorities were not represented in the police force and consequently, they do not appear as detectives in detective fiction of that period. This situation started to change, though very slowly, in the second half of the last century, and according to Julian Symons, in the late sixties no publisher and only a few readers would have found it shocking that a detective might be a Negro or a
Jew (167). Although it stopped to be shocking for the reader, the relationship between the majority and the police officers coming from ethnic or religious minorities continued to be problematic30.
Daniel Aaron in Original Sin is a non-practicing Jew but despite this fact he is called a “Jew-boy”. He confesses that he “wasn‟t meant to hear, of course, he [John
Massingham] would have thought that was rather bad form, insulting a chap to his face.
[…] His actual words were „our clever little Jew boy‟, but somehow I [Aaron] don‟t think it was meant as a compliment” (368), and he believes that his religious
30 Further information in chapter 2.9 62
background may hamper his chances of promotion (369). The situation of ethnic minorities was even more complex. Macpherson‟s report that condemned the police as a racist institution brought forth greater awareness of the racial problem both in and outside the force. As a result, ethnic minorities were to be involved in regular training in the police and the police were to reflect “the cultural and ethnic mix of the communities they serve” (“The Macpherson”). According to Bethan Loftus, two broad opposing perspectives on minority relationships subsequently emerged. The first is characterized by resentment towards the demands on diversity terrain, and is expressed primarily by white, heterosexual, male officers. The second emphasises the persistence of a white, heterosexist, male culture, and is held by women, and minority ethnic and gay and lesbian officers.
P. D. James realistically reflects the representation of ethnic minorities in the police. Her early texts, published at the time when the police officers were exclusively
Britain-born, do not contain any ethnic characters. Later, as the situation started to change, she created a few ethnic characters. However, she is a critic of the multinational character of Britain and in her treatment of racial issues she tends to side with the first of the views mentioned above. She occasionally criticises positive discrimination, and it is the incessant reforms and attempts at dealing with the race question that her half-
Indian character, Francis Benton-Smith, blames for making the lives of minorities in the police difficult:
He had hoped, if not for friendship, for tolerance, respect and acceptance,
and to an extent he had earned them. But he was aware that he was still
regarded with wary circumspection. He felt himself to be surrounded by a
variety of organisations, including the criminal law, dedicated to protecting
his racial sensitivities, as if he could be as easily offended as a Victorian 63
virgin confronted with a flasher. He wished that these racial warriors would
leave him alone. Did they want to stigmatise minorities as over-sensitive,
insecure and paranoid? (Lighthouse 20).
Benton-Smith is even suspected of taking advantage of his racial background and of harassing his colleagues:
[I]t must have helped you to get taken on. It can‟t be easy, the job you have
chosen – not easy for your colleagues, I mean. One disrespectful or
disobliging word about your colour and they‟d find themselves sacked or
hauled up before one of those race-relations tribunals. Hardly part of the
police-canteen culture, are you? Not one of the boys. Can‟t be easy to cope
with. (James, PP 288).
James does not deny the existence of racial issues in the police, she understands the difficulty of the minorities to fit in the traditionally white culture but she does not blame the white policemen entirely for it. In her view the artificial attempts at establishing equality among various races stir anxiety and deepen the distrust among their members.
While being wary of the racial question and omitting the voice of homosexual police officers altogether, James clearly shows the difficulties of female police officers. Her female characters are not mere woman police constables taking care of female suspects who were criticised in the Golden-Age detective fiction, as was discussed in chapter 2.4. She reflects the changes and acceptance of women into specialised departments and makes her female detective, Inspector Kate Miskin, a member of the criminal investigation department. When Miskin starts her job, she is made to feel the
“all too common prejudice against female officers” (James, PP 145). After she is promoted to Dalgliesh‟s team, she becomes respected as a detective, but her colleague
John Massingham still half-regrets “the days when women police officers were content 64
to find lost children, […] reform prostitutes […] and if they hankered for the excitement of criminal investigation, were suitably occupied with […] juvenile delinquents (James,
TD 97). Although women joined the specialised departments in the 1960s, a suspect in the 1986 novel A Taste for Death finds it surprising and uncomfortable that “a woman he had taken to be no more than Dalgliesh‟s helot, whose role was to take unobtrusive notes and sit as a meek and silent witness, was apparently licensed to question him”
(187). Miskin is an experienced detective who is valued for her intelligence, common sense and hard work but she is still regarded by Massingham as a more vulnerable and thus second-rate detective.
In later novels, Miskin praises a colleague who has “no hang-up about working with a woman senior to himself, or, if he had, was more skilful than most of his colleagues at concealing it” (James, OS 306). Suspects and witnesses are no longer surprised when they are questioned by a female detective but success does not come easily, “being a woman in the macho world of the police” (OS 369). According to Sally
R. Munt, Miskin is “hard, deductive, ambitious, taciturn, private, principled, honest and loyal – a model hero” (24). Still, her career in the police is limited and she knows that she probably entered the force ten years too soon to become the first woman Chief
Constable (OS 368). It is only in the latest novel featuring Dalgliesh and his team that
Miskin is sure she will be promoted to detective chief inspector and can hope for further progress (James, PP 148). Munt claims that James introduced Miskin for the sake of realism (24). It is also for the sake of realism that Miskin may come closer to her dream only in the first decade of the 21st century.
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4.3 The Myth of the Thick Policeman
The image of the Bobby changed considerably after the Second World War and after the decade celebrating George Nixon, the police started to attract a lot of criticism. The police had been criticised and ridiculed before, but the critics became fiercer and their criticism less often toned down with humour.
As already mentioned, James‟s police officers show a deep knowledge of pathology; they cooperate with forensic scientists and understand the work of scene-of- crime investigators. However, the popular image that has survived for several decades is the image of a dumb, unimaginative police officer. James‟s policemen are believed to think in clichés (James, OS 368) and tend to jump to the most obvious conclusions: “It was […] the basis of most police work. Only when the obvious proved untenable was it necessary to explore less likely explanations” (James, DD 194). As a result of their reliance on the most straightforward interpretation of facts, the police are seen as “too thick, ignorant and insensitive” (DD 370). Even Dalgliesh cannot help criticising an officer who, similarly to Christie‟s lynx-eyed Inspector Miller31, has “excellent eyesight
[but] the trouble is that there‟s no connection between his eyes and his brain” (James,
SN 169). Although it is “never safe to rely on the stupidity of the police” (James,
SS 354) and it is advisable not to “underestimate the police because of what you read in the upmarket papers” (James, TD 64), a literate cop remains a surprise (James, OS 311) and wits of the police continue to be questioned.
Similarly to Christie, James‟s characters tend to show greater respect to senior officers than to the juniors. The officers in lower ranks often remark that they are not taken seriously and that the interrogated do not mind showing their disrespect (James,
Lighthouse 178). Not only are their not respected, but they are also treated with little
31 See chapter 3.2. 66
civility and sometimes with downright rudeness. Especially the suspects in a position with authority, “more used to putting questions than answering them, [are] unwilling to antagonise the chief investigating officer but venting their resentment on a subordinate”
(James, PP 227). Christie‟s junior officers have to put up with negligence and irony but they never hear that “those great steel hoods of the Thames Barrier are very erotic. You two [Miskin and Aaron] should borrow a police launch. You might surprise yourselves”
(James, OS 342). To have the sexual lives of detectives discussed by a suspect would have been unthinkable during the Golden Age of detective fiction.
Although the modern police officers are no longer recruited primarily from agricultural labourers and unemployed craftsmen, and while they receive a long-term training, the public still sees their work as a rather working class occupation for the badly educated. In fiction at least, the lack of higher education is often given as the motive for entering the police. Kate Miskin joins the force because she does not want to study in the sixth form or at university (James, OS 150) and a rebellious son at the age of eighteen and straight from school joins the police as an act of defiance (OS 162).
Sergeant Robert Buckley passes his A-levels with reasonably good results but he does not go on to university because he judges that “success would come quickest in a job for which he was over- rather than under-qualified and where he would be competing with men who were less rather than better educated than himself” (James, SS 181). Sergeant
Robbins with a degree in history from a redbrick university and Oxford-educated
Benton-Smith with a degree in English consequently face rejection and resentment of the majority of the less educated colleagues.
Not only is the job of the police officer considered a working-class occupation, it also comes with little prestige attached. Daniel Aaron believes that his parents are ashamed of his job (James, OS 162), and Chief Inspector Rickards‟s mother-in-law 67
disapproves of her daughter‟s choice of a partner because it is beneath her to marry a police officer (James, DD 312). On the other hand, although the job is not prestigious, it provides job security and a sense of order. Kate Miskin joined the force because she
“was ambitious […] and prefer[s] order and hierarchy to muddle. I wanted a career where I could earn well from the start, hope for promotion” (James, TD 326). Kate
Miskin “had made a life for herself. She had escaped by hard work, ambition – and, of course, by some ruthlessness – from poverty and failure” (James, Lighthouse 309). The police is shown as an ideal chance for ambitious people with poor social background who hope to improve their living conditions and who long for a career and promotion based on hard and continuous, even if not prestigious work.
4.4 Crime and Criticism and a Cry for the Bobby
The traditional Bobby patrolling the streets has been a subject of jokes for more than one century. His nice manners have been admired but his ability to combat crime has been doubted. With the changes brought by the Second World War the Bobby with a whistle and a truncheon began to be replaced by a modern, American-like police officer with a wireless in a fast car. The image of a humble servant helping a child in need became unreal, as the tough sergeant became a more faithful representation of the realities of modern policing. Still, at the same time the loss of the local policeman on his regular beat began to be regretted.
Christie‟s characters seem to be pleased by Scotland-Yard officers coming to investigate a crime, since they believe in the superiority of the Metropolitan Police.
James‟s characters, on the other hand, tend to express disapproval of the London detectives. They tend to side with the local police who are reckoned to be competent
(James, Lighthouse 134) and generally good (James, PP 301). The rise in crime is put 68
down to cutting expenditures on local policing and subsequent disappearance of the
Bobby from small villages. It is believed that some crimes “wouldn‟t have happened if we‟d still had our village policeman” (James, OS 254). In places where the police remained, they are criticised for abandoning the traditional methods and for “poor supervision, too much reliance on technology and not enough good old-fashioned detection” (James, DD 335). It has become a popular argument of the papers that “it was time to get back to the bobby on the beat” (DD 347), and Chief Inspector Rickards would give “a dozen computers for a DC who can sense when a witness is lying”
(DD 204). Faced with criminality and violence, James‟s characters long nostalgically for the perfect Bobby who is believed to solve everything.
The characters are, on the other hand, positive that the current state of the police is unsatisfactory. Although, as has been said earlier, British writers avoided picturing their police as vicious brutes, characters in James‟s writing usually fear them. Kate
Miskin wonders what it was in the past that “had produced such fear of authority, such terror of the police” (James, OS 340). Their methods are reckoned as suspicious and nothing about the police can reassure a suspect (James, SS 191). Any contact with them is considered disagreeable and they are “never kind, only when it suits them” (James,
TD 375). Police officers are hardly human beings and they are devoid of any human instincts (OS 416), and are not seen as positive characters coming to those in need but as nosy parkers causing unnecessary pain. Since some believe that the police are “the oppressive fascist agents of capitalist authority” (OS 434), when they are labelled as bothering (James, Lighthouse 216), it sounds almost like a compliment.
The public in James‟s writing are constantly worried about the abuse of power and the police are frequently criticised for their pleasure to exercise it. Dalgliesh admits that “no one joins the police without getting some enjoyment out of exercising power” 69
(James, TD 191) but warns his subordinates that whenever the pleasure becomes the end, it is necessary to look for another job. Despite the long tradition of unarmed, civilian police, the police officers are seen as oppressors who in the process of the investigation “learn a lot of secrets you‟ve no particular right to know and cause a lot of pain. Do you enjoy that? Is that what gives you your kicks?” (James, DD 367). The public believes the police officers inflict vengeance on the suspects (TD 435) and are ready to use whatever methods to get their man.
The press have always paid a lot of attention to police work and any time some doubts arise concerning the police methods, they give it a lot of coverage. The police are bound by rules and regulations and often complain about the difficulties they bring to their work: “The criminal justice system has favoured criminals for the last forty years. […] The answer is to get good honest evidence and make it stick in court”
(James, OS 370). They confess that “enough difficulties are placed in the path of the police in this country; we don‟t voluntarily add to them” (James, SN 82). Despite this and the fact that the public is well informed about the rights of the police, the police are awaited with terror: “She thrust the morbid images out of her mind and made herself remember what he in fact was; a twentieth-century senior police officer, bound by Force regulations [and] restricted by Judges‟ Rule [...]. She had expected to feel anxiety, but not this rush of humiliating terror” (James, SS 201). Though the British police are under constant supervision of other institutions, some of the interrogated “react to perfectly ordinary questions with a disconcerting mixture of fear and endurance as if you were secret police from a totalitarian dictatorship” (James, DD 272), not a country with a long tradition of non-military police.
Christie‟s characters are usually supportive of the police, those coming from the middle and upper classes in particular. However, James‟s police are let to feel “wariness 70
[…] amounting to dislike. It was not an uncommon phenomenon nowadays, even among the middle classes” (James, DD 256). The police are continuously suspected of hidden violence and striking terror into the interviewed: “Both [Miskin and Aaron] had been very polite, almost gentle with her [Miss Blackett] but she hadn‟t been deceived.
They were still interrogators and even their formal expressions of sympathy, their gentleness, were part of their technique. She was surprised […] how she had known this and known them for the enemies they were even in the tumult of her fear” (James,
OS 246). The feeling of fear of the police was not only the result of their new image, tougher and more virile, but also of their representation on television, influenced by
American police series (Emsley, EB 130); and in The Skull beneath the Skin watching
“one of those documentaries devoted to exposing the corruption, brutality and racism of the police” (255) is directly blamed for undermining the authority of the police and arousing fear and resentment.
When the police are not feared, they are not welcomed and their presence is constantly complained about. Although they are eagerly anticipated when a crime is discovered, their presence is soon seen as a violation of privacy and begins to be bitterly resented. “The police, like rat-catchers, were accepted as necessary adjuncts to society, required to be immediately available when needed, occasionally praised but seldom consorting with those not privy to their dangerous expertise, surrounded always by a faint penumbra of wariness and suspicion” (James, Lighthouse 316). They come by invitation and consent but they are not welcome (James, PP 187): Dalgliesh is aware that “his presence was irksome. It could hardly be welcome, he knew that. He was used to being the harbinger, at best of ill news, at worst of disaster” (James, SN 195). As a detective, “horror and death were his trade and, like an undertaker, he carried with him the contagion of his craft” (James, DD 99). Similarly to Christie‟s characters, James‟s 71
protagonists are afraid of antagonizing the police and “however disagreeable or inconvenient their presence, when they call on you, you have to let them in” (James,
OS 227) because only “the fools or the very powerful antagonise the police” (PP 411).
According to James, “having the police in the here is like having mice in the house. You can sense them scrabbling away even when you don‟t actually hear or see them and once they‟re in you feel you‟ll never get rid of them” (OS 205). As has already been suggested, in contrast to Christie, James‟s characters are more outspoken critics and although they are wary of the police, they do not hesitate to voice their criticism.
Since the police uncover a lot of secrets during their work, James‟s characters, trying to protect their privacy, consider their job as distasteful (James, PP 336) or describe the police as “little scavengers […]. It must be a strange job, sniffing around for evil like a dog round the trees” (James, SN 138). The police take advantage of people talking and “it was pointless to try to keep anything private from them.
Everything […] would be nosed out by this impertinent young man and reported to his superior officer. [What they do is to] discover, magnify, misinterpret and use to make mischief” (SN 147). They are not expected to help, but to harass, intimidate, and harm.
Whereas in “television police series he [the policeman] remained incorruptible
[…] in the greater freedom of the novel […] policemen could be portrayed as brutal and corrupt” (Emsley, EB 130). Consequently, James‟s characters believe that “innocent people do sometimes get harassed” (James, OS 265) and “haven‟t quite the confidence
[they] once had that they [the police] don‟t make mistakes” (OS 263). The decline in confidence in the ability of the police to tackle crime effectively is another feature of the second-wave detective fiction. Although the police in the Golden-Age fiction seek help at the private sleuth with the most complicated cases, they are believed to be competent to deal with everyday crime. By contrast, the police in modern detective fiction are 72
either rendered incompetent or uncaring. It is not rare that characters “didn‟t place their confidence in our wonderful boys in blue. […] The police haven‟t an impressive clear- up rate when it comes to domestic burglary” (James, OS 46), or when it comes to mugging and street violence: “What was the point of ringing the police? They didn‟t have a chance of catching the muggers and this would only add to their statistics of crimes reported but unsolved” (OS 137). The characters feel disillusionment, disappointment and scepticism. According to Emsley, this change was caused by the growing distance between the policemen and the community they were supposed to police (EB 130), which explains the calls for the Bobby to return back to his beat and to turn back to more traditional ways of policing.
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5 CONCLUSION
The modern police were established in London in 1829 but it does not mean that there had not been any forms of policing before that. From the very beginning, policing was organised locally, in tythings, towns, cities and individual boroughs, which may explain later reluctance to create a state force. Local residents taking turns in policing slowly gave way to professional watchmen, who guarded the streets at nights, and thief-takers, who were paid for bringing culprits before the judge. Although the inadequacies of the parochial system of policing were more frequently pointed to in the eighteenth century, the English did not want to create a centralised police force similar to those on the continent. When Robert Peel came with his proposal for the police reform in the late
1820s, he had to ensure that the police would be seen as different from other forces and the emphasis was therefore put on the civilian, unarmed, and non-partisan image of the police.
Individuals and groups responsible for policing Britain have traditionally attracted more criticism than praise. Constables in Shakespeare‟s plays are usually naive, foolish characters, laughed at for their ignorance. Traditional historians often described the protectors of the City of London, the Charlies, as decrepit, drunk and incompetent.
Professional thief-takers and trading justices were frequently suspected of collaboration with the criminals they were supposed to apprehend. Still, the idea of an organised professional police force was so inimical to the English that the first professional police had to overcome a great amount of distrust and suspicion.
Working conditions of the first recruits were so harsh that the first decades of the existence of the police were remarkable for the high turnovers. The wages were low, working hours were very long and both professional and private lives had to be beyond reproach. Consequently, the policemen left the force soon after joining it and it was
74
consequently very difficult to create a body of experienced professionals who could convince the public of their skills and competence. Moreover, most recruits were originally agricultural or manual labourers, which contributed to the perception of the police as a rather working class occupation for the less educated. The middle and upper classes initially saw the police as a threat to their rights and liberties and were concerned about the power the police might exercise. The working class resented the police‟s intrusion into their lifestyle and past-times but during the second half of the nineteenth century the public realised the advantages the police work brought and the unarmed, apolitical, courteous, unique Bobby became the nation‟s favourite.
The support of the police occasionally fluctuated in the first half of the twentieth century but generally remained high and reached its peak in the 1950s, when the character of an ideal Bobby, PC George Dixon became the national hero. The 1960s, however, witnessed a considerable deterioration of the relationship between the public and the police caused by both changes in the society and the police. The links between the Home Secretary and police strengthened and the non-partisan Bobby suddenly appeared more political. As technological devices spread, the Bobby could not do with a whistle and a truncheon any longer but began to use cars, radios and guns, and consequently, the image of the unarmed, local policeman faded. Low education and poor training caused further questioning of police legitimacy, and so did a series of corruption scandals in the 1970s. Growing harshness of the police‟s intervention damaged the image of the police severely and contributed to the decline in support of the middle class. In order to prevent this trend, the police representatives developed the
Plus Programme whose main aim is to promote the image of the police and bring the police near the ideal of the traditional Bobby.
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When the modern police were established in 1829, some of the characteristics of the old watchmen became a part of the new image. The working class in particular regarded the police as comic, suspicious and undoubtedly corrupt characters who spent their time flirting with cooks and maids. Later, the humour softened and the middle class developed the image of a loyal and honest, even though not particularly intelligent servant that survived well into the twentieth century and is reflected in Golden-Age detective fiction.
Detective novels and short stories written in that period were generally considered escapist literature whose main aim was to entertain and sooth the nation distraught by the First World War. As a result, main characters of detective fiction are brilliant amateur detectives, for instance Hercule Poirot, Albert Campion and Peter Whimsey, who the reader might admire and rely on, and the official police are laughed at. The police are ridiculed, in connection with their lack of intelligence in particular, and are said to be trusted only with straightforward cases or crimes committed by foolish criminals.
Agatha Christie, however, does not criticise the police too harshly because for
Golden-Age writers the police were representatives of an established institution and should thus have been respected. Christie‟s police are conscientious and hard working, albeit unimaginative and unmethodical, but they are praised for their routine indefatigable work. Christie‟s senior detectives, Battle and Japp, may appear to be stereotypical police officers, slow-thinking, rather stupid, dull, and unimaginative, but in fact they are mentally alert, highly competent and decisive detectives. Battle is an astute officer who moves slowly but decisively and whose wooden face makes the suspects unwary of his abilities. His character becomes more realistic when his family is introduced and Battle is shown as a sensitive father and caring uncle. Inspector Japp is a
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zealous officer who believes in no tricks and distrusts psychology but who works effectively and reliably. He is suspicious of everything foreign but he is always fair, patient and kind, the embodiment of the good qualities of the English policeman.
Christie‟s police officers are described as nosey because the public resents the intrusion their work brings; but they are not refused help with their investigation. Young officers are sometimes overlooked but never disrespected and the senior are generally held in high regard. Christie‟s police are never corrupt and they are praised for their good manners, kindness and patience, hard, honest and systematic work and adherence to rules. They are the loyal servants whose lack of creativity is compensated by diligence and solicitude.
Detective fiction published after the Second World War became more realistic and it more concentrated on psychology and detailed descriptions of both the setting and characters. Since the readers were more knowledgeable about the police and their work, the treatment of crime and the police changed considerably.
James‟s detectives are no longer amateurs but professional Scotland-Yard officers.
They are not assisted by a private sleuth but by a team of experts on crime investigation.
Besides, they are realistic characters with fully developed private and professional lives.
As a result of the move to realism, the reader knows much more about the characters, for instance about Daniel Aaron‟s untidy girlfriend and Kate Miskin‟s passion for expensive furniture. In contrast to Christie‟s policemen, James‟s officers have sexual lives, non-conventional and openly discussed in the novels. Kate Miskin, Charles
Masterson and Francis Benton-Smith are single, having occasional affairs with ex- colleagues, suspects, and flighty actresses respectively. James‟s detectives are both male and female and of various social, ethnic and religious background. Daniel Aaron is
Jewish, Francis Benton-Smith is half-Indian and a woman, Kate Miskin, is a senior
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detective in the criminal investigation department, which would have been both unacceptable and unrealistic in Golden-Age detective fiction.
The popular belief in the police‟s lack of intelligence, however, survived into the end of the twentieth century and James‟s detectives are still believed to think in clichés and to be ignorant, thick and insensitive. The low standard of education in the force is reflected in Kate Miskin and Daniel Aaron, who join the police immediately after school, and Benton-Smith who struggles to make his university degree fit in the police culture.
Public trust in established institutions, including the police, declined after the
Second World War and the police were no longer considered incorruptible, polite and completely honest. As in the first half of the nineteenth century, the police are distrusted, dreaded and suspected of deceit. Sergeant Robert Buckley confesses to a streak of sadism in his nature and Sergeant Oliphant is suspected of being a bully. In
James‟s writing the police are feared and frequently criticised for their exercise of power and striking terror into the suspects. James reflects the suspicion of corruption, violence and coarseness, she shows the dislike of the police spreading in the middle class and their growing resentment over the police‟s intrusion into their private lives.
She shows the suspects disrespecting and ridiculing the officers. Her junior detectives are not only overlooked as Christie‟s, but they are also exposed to loathing, rudeness and sexual cues. James mirrors the criticism of the excessive reliance on technology and at the same time inability to prevent crimes and also the public‟s disappointment about the contemporary state of policing and the resulting nostalgia for the old good Bobbies on their beats.
The image of the police changed radically in the twentieth century and so did their representation in detective fiction. The courteous Bobby, who was indulgently laughed
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at and gently reprimanded for intellectual deficiencies but respected at the same time during the Golden Age, has become a tough police officer, who is harshly criticised, feared and distrusted. It is generally believed that if this situation is to change, the police need to return to more traditional ways of policing.
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The earliest forms of policing and relating concepts are analysed first. Then the role of Bow Street Runners and the Fielding brothers is discussed and their influence on future reforms is presented. Several chapters are devoted to the foundation of the Metropolitan Police and to the development of relationship with individual social classes. The remaining chapters deal with detectives, woman police officers the changes in the image of the police in the twentieth century. The second main part is devoted to the police as pictured by Agatha Christie in several novels and short stories, most of which come from the 1920s and 1930s, the so called Golden Age of detective fiction. The focus of this part is the relationship between the professional and amateur detectives, two Christie‟s fictional policemen, Battle and Japp, and the representation of the police as far as their intelligence, competence, manners and morality are concerned. In the third main part the representation of the police in works by P. D. James is analysed and the new image of the police after the Second World War is examined. Most attention is paid to ethnic minorities in the police, female detectives and the growing resentment about the police. The reasons for criticism and for the calls for return to traditional way of policing are explained. 88 8 RESUMÉ Hlavním účelem této práce je analyzovat vývoj vztahu anglické veřejnosti k policii a způsob zobrazení policie ve vybraných dílech Agathy Christie a P. D. James. V práci je ukázáno, že způsob zobrazení policie je ovlivněn celkovým vztahem veřejnosti k veřejným institucím a autoritám. Práce se skládá ze tří hlavních kapitol. První z nich se věnuje historii policie a jejímu obrazu v kultuře. Na začátku jsou vysvětleny pojmy týkající se skupin, které se považují za předchůdce policie v moderním smyslu slova. V další části je probírán význam bratrů Fieldingových a sboru Bow Steet Runners a jejich vliv na budoucí reformu policejního systému. Několik kapitol je věnováno založení metropolitní policie a vývoji jejího vztahu s jednotlivými společenskými třídami. Zbývající část se zabývá profesionálními detektivy, ženami – policistkami a změnami obrazu policie ve dvacátém století. Druhá hlavní část práce pojednává o policii a jejím zobrazení v několika románech a povídkách Agathy Christie, přičemž většina zmiňovaných děl pochází z dvacátých a třicátých let dvacátého století, tzv. Zlatého věku detektivní fikce. Tato část práce se zaměřuje na vztah profesionálního a soukromého detektiva, dva z policistů Agathy Christie, inspektory Battla a Jappa, a zobrazení policie v souvislosti s jejich inteligencí, schopnostmi, způsoby a chováním. Ve třetí části je analyzován obraz policie v díle P. D. James a nová tvář policie, budovaná po druhé světové válce. Nejvíce prostoru je věnováno situaci etnických menšin, ženám – detektivům a rostoucímu odporu k policii. Na závěr jsou uvedeny důvody stále častější kritiky a požadavků na návrat policie k tradičnějšímu způsobu práce. 89