Armed Burglars - The 1880s
Armed Burglars – The 1880s
Mike Waldren QPM
The first provision of firearms so that the police could deal with armed terrorists had come to a head in the 1860s (see Early Police Firearms – The 1860s). Next it was the turn of armed criminals to bring about changes. By the late 1870s the newspapers were in full cry about ‘the blight of armed burglars’, the most notorious of whom was Charles Frederick Peace. Born in Sheffield in 1832, Peace found himself being sentenced to longer and longer terms of penal servitude each time he was caught and by the time of his final release in 1872 he had decided that he would never again go back to prison. When, in August 1876, he was caught burgling a house in Whalley Range, Manchester, he shot and killed Constable Nicholas Cock in order to make his escape. He was not identified at the time but he became a wanted man after he shot and killed an acquaintance of his named Arthur Dyson during an argument in November 1876. To avoid arrest he headed south to London where he settled in Peckham and on resuming his nocturnal profession he made sure that he always had his revolver securely tied to his wrist.
In October 1878 he was caught breaking into a house during the night in Blackheath. In the official version Constable Robinson saw a suspicious light in a house and went looking for another officer before investigating. He met up with Constable Girling and their Section Sergeant and the three went back to the house. What actually happened was related by Robinson just before his death in 1926. Robinson and Girling were enjoying a quiet smoke when they were caught by their sergeant who was in the process of berating them for being absent from their respective beats when they saw a light in a nearby house. From now on the two versions coincide. Knowing that the occupants were supposed to be away, the sergeant went to the front door and knocked while the two officers climbed over the garden wall at the back. Peace jumped out of a ground floor window and fired four shots at Robinson but they all missed. Taking careful aim he fired again and Robinson used his arm to cover his face. The bullet hit him in the elbow. All three now struggled on the ground and Peace was finally knocked senseless by a ‘sweeping downward blow’ from Girling’s truncheon.
In November 1878 Peace was sentenced to life imprisonment for the attempted murder of Constable Robinson and he was then taken by train (from which he tried to make a daring escape) to Leeds Assizes to stand trial for the murder of Arthur Dyson. He was convicted and sentenced to death. On the eve of his execution he confessed to the murder of PC Cock.
Peace was not alone in carrying a firearm. In November 1878 Sergeant Jonah Sewell of Lancashire Constabulary was shot and killed by a suspect he was questioning in the street and in July 1879 Constable Joseph Moss of Derbyshire Constabulary was shot and killed by a prisoner he was searching in a police station. However, it was the murder of Constable Frederick Atkins in September 1881 in London that ignited the fuse. Atkins was on night duty in the neighbourhood of Kingston Hill when at about 1.15am he made a routine call to one of the large houses on his beat. It was common practice in those days for officers to check the security of larger residential houses and as he walked up the drive he was ambushed by an unseen gunman who shot him in the abdomen, chest and groin. In a lucid period before he died he told colleagues that he neither saw nor heard anything before the shots. A search later revealed that a protective bar had been removed from a ground floor window, beneath which lay a lantern and a chisel. The burglar, who was never caught, had cold-bloodedly shot a police officer three times.
The effect was electric. More than 1,500 officers attended the funeral and newspapers were in full cry about the dangers posed by armed burglars and the unfairness of asking unarmed police officers to deal with them. A month after the murder of Constable Atkins, in October 1881, even an uncharacteristically sympathetic Punch described it as ‘An Unequal Match’ and published a cartoon highlighting the problem with a constable cynically asking why, if the police could not be armed, burglars could not be disarmed?
The Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, asked the Commissioner of the Met, Sir Edmund Henderson, whether it was time to arm the force. Henderson consulted his Superintendents who were unanimous that arming the police would damage their public image and that the officers themselves did not wish it. This view was duly passed to Harcourt who was clearly getting information from other sources. He directed that the Inspectors be consulted as to the true feelings of their men.
The Inspectors views were duly sought and Henderson’s covering reply took the form of a memorandum which was presented to the Home Secretary at the end of November 1882. The Commissioner stated that the rank and file generally agreed with their Superintendents that a revolver would not afford much protection. He added that an officer would be at risk in law if he used the weapon with fatal results and would therefore be afraid to use it. He admitted ‘a certain sense of insecurity among the men who patrol at night in suburban districts, visiting all kinds of lonely places where no help is to be got in an emergency’ and he concludes with a suggestion that some patrols could be doubled-manned.
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Two days later another constable was killed by an armed burglar in London. In the early hours of 1 December 1882 Constable George Cole caught Thomas Henry Orrock breaking into a chapel in Dalston. As he was taking his prisoner back to the police station Orrock shot the officer four times using a revolver he had hidden inside his coat and which he had bought from Exchange and Mart for 10s 6d (52½p). The Home Secretary again called for reports and in a memorandum (dated September 1883) prepared by Howard Vincent, the Director of Criminal Investigations in the Met, he was told of ten cases where revolvers were used against the police since October 1878 (when Peace was arrested and pointedly omitting cases outside London including the deaths of Sergeant Sewell and Constable Moss), two of which resulted in the deaths of Constables Atkins and Cole. A further six officers had been wounded and in two cases the bullet ‘passed through his clothes without inflicting injury’. The report was accompanied by a covering letter from Colonel Labalmondiere, one of the two assistant commissioners who, it appears, was the most senior officer left in the Met. The Commissioner and the other assistant commissioner, Colonel Pearson, were on holiday in Scotland. Labalmondiere pointed out that ‘the occasions on which police were attacked were very rare, and I cannot think that it can be requisite to arm them any further. ... I am of the opinion that a Police Order should be issued directing P.C.s when visiting any house where there is reason to believe burglars may be engaged to (before entering) loosen and take in hand their truncheons’.
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Four days later Labalmondiere got a bombshell back from the Home Secretary’s office: ‘Confidential. The recent murderous attacks on a policeman by a man armed with a revolver has again fixed the attention of the [Secretary of State] on the question of the sufficiency of the means of protection at present afforded to the Police, and on the expediency of arming them with revolvers or some other more efficient weapon than they at present possess. ... When this question has been previously raised by the [Secretary of State] he has been assured by the Commissioners that there is no discontent on the part of the Force with the present armament or any desire for further protection. This impression seems to have been derived from the reports of the Superintendents though the [Secretary of State] was always inclined to doubt whether this view really represented the feelings of the Constables. In consequence of the recent attack on a Constable by a man armed with a revolver the [Secretary of State] has called for fuller reports which embrace the opinions of the Inspectors who are more likely to be acquainted with the real sentiments of the men. A summary of their reports has been furnished to the [Secretary of State] and has convinced him that the view previously reported to him by the Commissioners was erroneous and that there is a wide spread and general dissatisfaction in the Police with respect to the present means furnished them for self defence. This feeling appears ... to be perfectly natural and entirely well founded’.
The memorandum went on to say that ‘It is impossible that this condition of things and this state of sentiment in the Police Force should be allowed to continue for a moment longer than is necessary in order properly to consider and deal with the matter which if allowed to remain as it is, may demoralise the whole spirit and courage of the Police. The [Secretary of State], with these reports before his disclosing a most dangerous danger in the Police, finds himself unfortunately without the means of consulting the Chief Commissioner or Col. Pearson. It is impossible of course that the [Secretary of State] can come to so grave a decision affecting the force as that of arming the Police without the advantage of their counsel. [The Secretary of State] cannot at all accept the suggestions of Col. Labalmondiere in his letter of Sept. 6 as affording in any respects an adequate solution of the matter’.
Owing to the urgency of the matter the Secretary of State wished to consult the commissioners together ‘and unwilling as the Secretary of State is to trunch [sic] upon the much needed holiday of the Commissioners he feels that in a matter so vital to the interests of the Police they will at once take the matter in hand ...’.
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Copies were also delivered by hand to Henderson on a private yacht off the coast of Oban in Argyle and to Pearson at Gordon Castle in Moray. Both returned to London forthwith and after a series of meetings Henderson directed that every sergeant and constable serving on outer divisions was to submit a report indicating whether he wished to be armed when performing night duty. The result must have been horrifying. 4,430 out of 6,325 men wanted a revolver, although 1,240 only wanted one when they were on ‘exterior beats’. Presumably the other 3,190 wanted one wherever they were.
On 21 September 1883 Henderson wrote to the Home Secretary and, after the usual preamble about the views of the Home Secretary being carefully considered, the letter continued: ‘The Commissioners are not prepared to take the responsibility of recommending the Secretary of State to issue an order that the police are in future to carry revolvers when employed on night duty in the exterior districts. At the same time, looking to the feeling which appears to have been evoked among the Police the Commissioners would submit for the consideration of the Secretary of State whether it might be desirable to issue revolvers to such men as desire to have them when employed on night duty in the exterior districts and who can, in the opinion of the divisional officers, be trusted to use them with discretion’.
In other words, rather than arm all 6,325, only allow those who actually wanted to carry a firearm and who (more importantly perhaps) could be ‘trusted’ to do so. The Commissioner may have lobbied the Home Secretary in person to get his compromise accepted, suggesting that it at least be tried before going to full arming, because Godfrey Lushington, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office replied on 24 September that: ‘Under the circumstances stated, Sir William Harcourt is prepared to sanction the experiment to the extent proposed, i.e. he sanctions the issue of revolvers to such men as desire to have them when employed on night duty in the exterior divisions ...’. There is no mention in all this mass of correspondence of the measure being an ‘experiment’ until Lushington’s reply. On 16 October 1883 Henderson was given Home Office authority to purchase 931 Webley .450 calibre gate-load revolvers with the Adams revolvers first supplied in 1867 (see Early Police Firearms – The 1860s) being disposed of in exchange.
The changes to Metropolitan Police regulations were agreed by the Home Secretary on 24 June 1884 and published in force orders six days later at which time it was officially announced that: ‘The following regulations relating to the issue to, and the use by Police of revolvers, having been approved, the Superintendents are to see that they are strictly adhered to. ... Revolvers are only to be issued to men who desire to have them when employed on night duty, and who can, in the opinion of the Divisional Officer, be trusted to use them with discretion ...’. Although agreed as an ‘experiment’, the regulation allowing the carrying of firearms at night in the Met remained in force for the next 52 years (until July 1936).
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However, it was not just the Met that had to deal with armed burglars. On 20 January 1885 Inspector Thomas Simmons of Essex Constabulary was on routine patrol in a pony and trap in Romford. He was accompanied by Constable Alfred Marden and shortly after 4pm they spotted three men acting suspiciously. One of them, a known criminal named David Dredge, left the trio and headed across the fields while the other two took off down the road. Simmons told Marden to go after Dredge while he went after the other two. When Marden caught up with Dredge he was threatened with a revolver. Meanwhile Simmons caught up with the other two and was shot in the stomach. Marden raced back to help his Inspector but there was very little he could do. Simmons died 4 days later.
The effect was similar to that following the murder of Constable Atkins just over three years earlier. On the day of the officer’s funeral all shops and businesses in Romford closed as a mark of respect and hundreds of people lined the streets to see the funeral procession with over 2,000 people attending the funeral service. Essex officers also expressed concerns over their safety, particularly those whose beats were adjacent to the Met suburbs, and argued that if the Met could carry firearms, why couldn’t they? Harcourt gave authority for the force to purchase 22 Webley revolvers and in June 1885 Major William Henry Poyntz, the Chief Constable of Essex, used wording almost identical to that used in the Met in an instruction permitting officers in his force to carry revolvers on night duty if they ‘desire to have them’.
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Henderson’s compromise solution worked. Morale was restored and in the event by the turn of the century only a handful of officers in the Met still carried a firearm at night. It was probably the closest we have ever come to having an armed ‘Home Office’ police force on mainland UK.
Note:
A well researched (and highly recommended) account of the murder of Inspector Simmons and its link to the fatal shooting of Constable Joseph Byrnes in Cumberland nine months later can be found in ‘The Romford Outrage’ by Linda Rhodes and Kathryn Abnett published by Wharncliffe Local History (2009).
According to ‘The British Police’ by Martin Stallion and David Wall published by The Police History Society (1999), although there were single police forces in Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, there were 203 forces in England, 21 in Wales and 69 in Scotland in 1885. Were there any developments to do with police firearms in your force/area or its predecessors during this period of history? If so please contact mike.policehistory@yahoo.com.
© Mike Waldren