Journalists and Police Detectives in Victorian and Edwardian England: an Uneasy Reciprocal Relationship.(SECTION III REQIONAL TOPICS)(Report)

Detectives are sometimes likened to historians and vice versa. (1) On closer examination, the resemblance between detectives and journalists is no less noticeable. The latter likeness, specifically between police detectives and journalists who wrote for newspapers on crime and policing, was particularly striking during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Interestingly, the two occupations were not only similar, but also evolved in parallel. More importantly, in the process they developed links and interdependencies that helped them perform their respective duties. However, while contacts between them were mutually beneficial, they were also marked by tension and conflict. This duality of interdependence and conflict continued to characterise relations between journalists and detectives (and the police generally) after the First World War, but this topic has been investigated. (2) The present paper proposes to reveal the complex relations that unfolded between them during their formative period in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such research has not yet been undertaken, although these relations were distinctive of the period and, furthermore, vital to the development of both occupations. An analysis of the special relationship between them thus sheds light on hitherto unexplored but significant aspects of the worlds of policing as well as of journalism. Moreover, their relationship played a major role in determining the material about law enforcement that reached the public through the press. The circumstances under which this material was moulded constitute another important topic of this article.

The article concerns the relationships between journalists and detectives in all of England, but with strong emphasis on London where the links were far more intensive and consequential. London was the media centre of the country. Either because Scotland Yard was located in London or because the Yard constituted a kind of a national detective organisation, providing services to localities other than the metropolis, and dealing mainly with serious crime, it became a focus of interest for media people and an object of widespread coverage, considerably more than any other detective department in the country. While some local crime and law enforcement managed to draw the attention of the national channels of communication, the flow of news items and articles about crime and detection from London outwards was substantial. (3) London detectives thus enjoyed media exposure throughout the country. In fact, to many people, Scotland Yard detectives represented the English detective. Thus, to understand the basic characteristics of the links between police detectives and pressmen, focus should be laid on London with occas3ional references to the provinces. It should also be noted that since police detectives were part and parcel of the police organisation as a whole, and affected by developments there, mention will be made of these facets when relevant.

To a great extent, the activity of Victorian and Edwardian detectives and journalists was similar and, increasingly, they were expected to do similar things. The essence of their work relied on investigation--on the act of probing and exposing. Indeed, journalists often called themselves "investigators". (4) In their professional capacity, both developed the skills of taking evidence, interviewing witnesses and, on the basis of scattered pieces of information, constructing a narrative, often explaining a burning or puzzling issue. Their professional status depended on their ability to perform these tasks repeatedly and successfully. The limited use during that period of scientific means in investigations meant that stress was put on individual merit. Accordingly, both detectives and journalists were expected to possess a distinctive mix of qualities to fulfill their jobs adequately--determination, persistence, an inquisitive and analytical mind, and sharp observation. Moreover, although journalists worked for private organisations, they increasingly claimed to advance the public interest, just as police detectives did. (5) Neither group had formal professional training, acquiring their skills on the job.

So overlapping were the two occupations that at times they exchanged roles and crossed into each other's domain. As part of their vocational culture detectives would naturally wear a disguise when they wanted to hide their identity; journalists often did the same while searching for information. (6) Each party would on occasion pass itself off as the other. (7) The similarities between detectives and journalists did not escape the eyes of perceptive contemporaties. The journalist J. Hall Richardson actually described his 45 years of reporting about crime as "press-detective work" (8) In 1905, the London Magazine published an article entitled "Newspapers as Detectives", in which stories of pressmen acting as crime fighters abounded. (9)

The Evolution of Both Occupations

The two occupations were not merely alike, but also evolved in parallel. Each had existed before the nineteenth century, but for both the 1840s constituted a turning point. In contrast to later centuries, the predominant ideology of criminal justice in the eighteenth century did not demand the capture of every violator of the law, and therefore no systematic arrangements were made towards this end. The discretionary use of a harsh penal code was meant to deter potential law breakers. Parish constables, patrolmen and local magistrates undertook some detection tasks, but the role of pursuing and prosecuting criminals (or returning stolen goods) was left largely to the initiative of private individuals, who often hired thieftakers to do the job for them. (10) Britain's first police detectives--the Bow Street Runners--appeared in the streets of London in the mid-eighteenth century, but they were a very small force and combined official and private work.

With the expansion of public policing in London in the latter eighteenth century, more detectives were attached to the newly created police offices, and other changes were introduced in the period that made the capture of criminals more effective." (11) The Metropolitan Police of London, created in 1829 as the first modern police force in the country, used policemen in plain clothes to pursue offenders and spy on political dissidents, yet only in 1842 did it establish a detective department specializing in stamping out crime. Detective departments emerged only gradually in other forces.