CHAPTER VIII

MR. H. G. GELL, M.V.O.

1902-1909

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another important matter in the legislative sphere was the passing of the Bombay City Police Act IV of 1902, which consolidated the provisions of the preceding enactments and vested the whole control of the police force in the Commissioner. The Act removed the difficulties of which Mr. Kennedy had complained in 1898, and furnished the police with all the legal authority required for the performance of watch and ward duties, the investigation of offences, and the arrest and detention of wrong-doers.

During the first decade of the twentieth century the volume of crime steadily increased. The annual average number of cases for the quinquennial periods ending in 1900 and 1905 was respectively 32,411 and 30,814: in 1908 the police dealt with nearly 41,000 cases. The number of persons arrested likewise increased from 37,000 in 1900 to 44,000 in 1908, while the number of convictions secured in 1908 was 41,500, as compared with 19,900 in 1880 and 34,450 in 1900. The value of property stolen in 1880 was estimated at Rs. 146,000; in 1900 at Rs. 333,000; and in 1908 at Rs. 353,000; while the percentage of recoveries during Mr. Gell’s _régime_ decreased from 59 in 1902 to 37 in 1905 and rose again to 56 in 1908. The annual migration of the people to plague-camps during the hot months still offered special facilities to the professional house-breaker, and was occasionally responsible, as in 1903, for an abnormal number of thefts. A somewhat similar epidemic of robberies resulted from the immigration of famine-stricken refugees in 1906. Many of these cases defied investigation, as they were not immediately reported; and in the case of thefts from houses temporarily vacated during the season of heavy plague-mortality, the losses were often not reported to the police until the owners returned two or three months afterwards to their homes.

These failures, which may be ascribed in some measure to the absence of a proper beat-system, were counter-balanced by the capture of two notorious professional house-breakers, one of whom was a Parsi, Nanabhai Dinshaw Daruwala, and the other a Borah named Tyebali Alibhai. Nanabhai was a criminal of more than ordinary courage and address, who had gathered around him a gang of clever assistants and had contrived to defy justice for more than twenty years. He had amassed considerable wealth by his house-breaking exploits, and as he spent his ill-gotten gains freely and was ready to pay ample hush-money, he secured immunity from arrest for many years. His capture was long sought without success. But at last, in 1907, the detective police managed to run him to ground, and, despite the offer of heavy bribes for his release, secured his conviction and imprisonment for a long term of years. The Borah, Tyebali, was a man of much less ability, and confined his attention almost entirely to the houses of respectable residents on Malabar Hill. In this area he carried out a series of daring robberies both by day and night, and had disposed of much valuable plate and jewellery before he was finally arrested and convicted in 1908.

Hardly a year passed without one or more murders, the number which occurred in 1902 and 1904 being respectively 18 and 20. Most of them were of the usual type—murder for the purpose of robbery or as the punishment of a wife or mistress for infidelity. With a few exceptions, all these cases were successfully investigated by the detective branch of the force. A prolonged and complicated series of forgeries, devised and carried out by eighteen men possessed of education and private means, was cleverly brought home to the culprits by Superintendent Sloane, who was appointed head of the detective branch on the retirement of the Sirdar Mir Abdul Ali in 1903.[110]

Neither the divisional nor the detective police, however, succeeded in discovering the origin of the disastrous cotton-fires which took place at Colaba in 1906. The value of the cotton destroyed or rendered unsaleable was estimated at 40 lakhs of rupees. Since that date similar conflagrations have occurred at intervals, in circumstances which seem to justify more than a suspicion of deliberate incendiarism. But in spite of special precautions and special police arrangements no practical proof of complicity has ever been obtained. In 1913 these fires at the Colaba cotton-green were so frequent and so disastrous that the Bombay Government appointed a special committee under the chairmanship of Mr. S. M. Edwardes, the Commissioner of Police at that date, to investigate the circumstances and origin of the conflagrations and make proposals for minimising the risk of them in future. The result of that committee’s enquiry will be mentioned on a later page; but it may be here stated that on each occasion of these wholesale conflagrations at the old Colaba cotton-green the police found it very difficult to initiate and prosecute inquiries about firms or individuals, suspected of aiding and abetting incendiarism, owing to the disinclination of the insurance companies, with whom the cotton was insured, to assist the inquiries or register a formal complaint in respect of their losses. The system of underwriting adopted by all the fire insurance companies in Bombay resulted in the net loss incurred in any fire being divided among so many parties that the actual sum paid out by the company concerned was comparatively trivial, and did not, in their view, justify the adoption of proceedings, which might have frightened the cotton-merchants into refusing to insure their goods with them in future. Consequently, the only chance the police had of discovering an offence was to arrest an incendiary _in flagrante delicto_, and this was rendered practically impossible by the character of the cotton, which will smoulder unseen for some time before it bursts into flame, by the enormous width and height of the stacks of cotton-bales, crowded on far too small an area on the edge of a main thoroughfare, and by the ease with which any person could escape detection in the labyrinth formed by the various _jethas_ or collections of bales.

The question of traffic regulation in the streets demanded attention during this period. By 1903 the number of public and private conveyances in Bombay had risen to nearly 16,000, and although the style and condition of the victorias plying for hire showed considerable improvement,[111] rash driving was exceedingly common and street accidents had largely increased. The position was aggravated by a steady rise in the number of motor-vehicles, necessitating the creation of a special branch of the police-force for the registration of motor-cars and the issue of driving-licenses. One of the first owners of a car in Bombay during the closing years of the nineteenth century was the late Mr. B. H. Hewitt, one of the Municipal Engineers; and after 1900 his example was followed by a constantly increasing number of residents, some of whom showed a tendency to drive at excessive speed and to pay little attention to the orders of the police on traffic-duty. Thus, between 1905 and 1907 more than 900 new motor-cars appeared on the streets, and in the latter year the traffic-problem was further complicated by the abolition of the old horse-tramcars and the opening on May 7th of the electric tramways.

In these circumstances the incapacity of the average Indian constable to regulate traffic in the European manner became more marked, and some of the Divisional Superintendents had to spend more time than they could really spare in trying to inculcate an aptitude for directing and controlling pedestrian and wheeled traffic. Their efforts were not very successful, and it was generally felt that, although a few Indian officers and constables had profited by tuition and showed improvement in this branch of their duties, the presence of European police was absolutely essential at crowded points during the busy hours of the day. As previously remarked, the difficulties of the Indian constable were much aggravated by the studied disregard of his orders and warnings, frequently shown by his own compatriots.

As regards the beggar nuisance, Mr. Gell was disposed to continue the policy of his predecessor; and accordingly in 1902 he deported no less than 10,000 mendicants, mostly belonging to the territories of Indian Princes. But this procedure was peremptorily forbidden by Government in the following year, on the grounds that deportees of this class were prolific disseminators of plague infection. After 1903, therefore, the expulsion of beggars ceased, with the result that Bombay became once again a popular resort for penurious and homeless vagrants from all parts of India.

Efforts to rid Bombay of the foreign procurers, who subsisted on the traffic in European women, continued unabated. In 1902 the Commissioner deported 29 of these rascals; in 1903, 30; in 1904, 20; and in 1905, 2. No action was recorded in 1906 and 1907, but ten men were deported in 1908. These figures indicate in some measure the dimensions of the traffic and the lucrative nature of the business. The prospect of trivial profits would scarcely have persuaded 81 aliens within a period of four years to risk the chances of arrest and deportation. The history and description of these foreigners were recorded in the files of the detective branch, and in most cases their finger-print impressions were taken by the Criminal Identification Bureau, which under the auspices of Mr. Kirtikar and his assistant was rapidly acquiring a reputation for useful work.

The daily work of the police in the courts was directly affected by the establishment in 1904 of three benches of honorary magistrates in Girgaum, Mazagon and Dadar, which were intended to afford relief to the Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. J. Sanders Slater, and his three colleagues in the disposal of unimportant police cases. A fourth bench was established at the Esplanade Police Court in 1908, to deal with petty cases from the Harbour and Docks. These benches were empowered to deal with cases arising under certain sections of the Bombay City Police Act, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, the Public Conveyance Act, the Gambling Act, the Railways Act, and under section 352 of the Indian Penal Code. They proved very convenient to the police of the outlying F and G divisions, who were formerly obliged to bring offenders and witnesses all the way to the stipendiary court in Mazagon, but they involved much extra work for the European police officers of the various sections, who had frequently to attend both the stipendiary and honorary magistrates’ courts. The latter commenced their work daily at 8-45 a.m., and the stipendiary courts at 11 a.m., so that European officers of busy sections had often to spend most of the working day in the courts. During their absence the registration and investigation of complaints at the police-station had perforce to remain in abeyance. One of the most urgent requirements during Mr. Gell’s Commissionership was the creation of properly equipped and staffed police-stations, at which, no matter what the volume of work in the courts, at least one superior police officer would be found on duty at any hour of the day or night, ready to record complaints and initiate inquiries. The establishment of the benches of honorary magistrates served to accentuate the inadequacy of the old police system and the inability of the force to cope with a greatly increased volume of case-work.

A serious obstacle to any re-arrangement of duties was the illiteracy of the great majority of the Indian subordinate officers and constabulary. As early as 1868 the Bombay Government asked the Commissioner to mention in his annual reports the progress made by the police in simple reading and writing; to which the Commissioner replied that as each member of the force was on actual duty for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, any form of education was impracticable. In 1885, when the total strength of the force was 1,721, there were only 113 officers and 362 men able to read and write, and of these only the European officers were literate in English. These numbers had slightly increased by the end of the following decade, in consequence presumably of the gradual spread of primary education. The numbers of officers and men able to read and write in 1896 were respectively 194 and 570. Occasionally an Indian with practically no education would rise to a high grade in the force by sheer natural ability and devotion to duty. Such men were the Subehdars Ramchandra and Daji and Inspector Khan Bahadur Sheik Ibrahim Imam, of whom the latter served for 47 years and on his retirement in 1911 was granted by the Bombay Government a special _jagir_ (landed estate) in the Poona District, in recognition of his long and meritorious service.[112] The value of these men lay in their extraordinary knowledge of the urban population, their _flair_ for criminal investigation, and their power of mediation between conflicting sects. Their lack of education and their ignorance of English debarred them from affording any relief to the European police in the registration of complaints and the prosecution of offenders in the courts.

No effort had been made to open a career in the force for literate Indians of the upper-classes, and it became obvious during Mr. Gell’s _régime_ that in this respect the composition of the force had not kept abreast of the spirit of the age. While the general standard of literacy in Bombay had widened appreciably, and the growth of population had resulted in an increased number of cases of all kinds, the bulk of the Indian element in the force remained ignorant of English and was also often uneducated in its own vernaculars. Consequently the whole responsibility for the routine duties of the force fell upon a limited number of European officers, many of whom could claim no higher standard of education than that provided for the rank and file of the British Army. Among the latter, however, there were men of natural ability who by dint of application and study at odd moments had acquired a fair standard of general knowledge and could frame a good report of facts. To this category belonged men like Superintendents McDermott, Grennan, Nolan, Sloane, Williamson and others; and on their reports and administrative capacity the Commissioner and his Deputy necessarily placed much reliance. There were others, however, who acquired no literary polish throughout their career and whose educational attainments were no higher than when they first joined the force as supernumerary sub-inspectors. On the other hand, these men were always a solid asset in times of popular disturbance or at seasons of public festivity requiring the preservation of order among large crowds. From the Superintendent down to the latest joined Sub-Inspector, the European police contributed the leaven, which stiffened the force at the periodical Muharram outbreaks and ensured the orderly progress of events on the occasions of Royal and Viceregal visits.

The annual pilgrimage to Mecca again assumed large proportions during these years. In 1902 the restrictions, imposed originally as a precautionary plague-measure, were abolished, and the period opened with the arrival in Bombay of about 1,000 pilgrims and with the return of 3,376 Hajis, who had to be repatriated to various districts of British India. In the following year the number of outgoing pilgrims was 8,700, and in 1904, 16,593, the large increase in the latter year being ascribable to the occurrence of the _Akbari Haj_, which falls once in ten years. But the traffic continued to expand. In 1905, 19,000 pilgrims embarked at Bombay for Jeddah and nearly 14,000 returned; in 1906, 24,300 embarked and 16,000 returned; and in 1907 more than 20,000 from all parts of India, from Bokhara, Turkestan and other parts of Central Asia, from Ceylon and Java, had to be shepherded on board by the Pilgrim Department of the Commissioner’s office. The majority of these people were wholly uneducated; the existing _musafirkhanas_ (rest-houses) provided for them in the City were quite inadequate for their proper accommodation; while the vessels provided for the passage to Jeddah by two or three merchants or companies were ill-found and equipped, and were becoming unseaworthy by reason of age.

At the same time the treatment of the pilgrims at various stages of their self-imposed journey, the behaviour of the pilgrim-brokers, who arranged for the purchase of tickets and were responsible generally for assisting pilgrims under the supervision of the Pilgrim Department, the arrangements for their embarkation and the disinfection of their clothing and effects, carried out by the Port Health authorities, and various other matters connected with the annual exodus, occupied the increasing attention of the Muhammadan community and occasionally formed the subject of rather acid criticism. It was asserted that the whole subject of the pilgrimage required more attention than an overworked Police Commissioner could give it, and that more facilities should be accorded to respectable Moslem residents for expressing their views on the details of the traffic and for keeping in touch with the local arrangements for booking and embarkation. Accordingly, the Bombay Government, with a view to disarming criticism and in the hope of giving some relief to the Commissioner, appointed in 1908 a Haj Committee, composed of leading Muhammadan residents of Bombay, with the Commissioner of Police as _ex-officio_ President. During the first year of its existence, this Committee did not do very much; but later it developed into a useful consultative body, and gave much assistance to Mr. Gell’s successor in matters connected with the comfort of the pilgrims and the local arrangements for housing and disembarkation. On several occasions the members of the Committee subscribed money from their own pockets to relieve cases of distress and secure the repatriation of penniless Moslems stranded in Jeddah.

This period witnessed the preparation of schemes for the housing of the police and the construction of police-stations. In 1902 the City Improvement Trust forwarded to Government for approval plans for stations and residential quarters at Wodehouse road in the Fort and at 1st. Nagpada: and these buildings, together with quarters for the Risaldar of the Mounted Police and stables for the sowars, were completed and occupied in 1906. Meanwhile the Commissioner was pressing for the provision of more accommodation for the constabulary, and he found a powerful ally in the Police Surgeon, Dr. Arthur Powell, who reported in 1905 that the prevalence of pneumonia and consumption in the force was primarily due to the residence of the men in dark, crowded and insanitary _chals_. A little relief was afforded in 1908 by the completion of a block of lines for constables and quarters for native officers in Duncan road, and a set of quarters for European officers, with lines for the men, was also completed at Sussex road in the same year. Much expenditure, however, had still to be incurred before the force could be said to be suitably housed.

Two other important buildings of a different character were provided during Mr. Gell’s _régime_—the Northcote Police Hospital and the office of the Protector of Pilgrims. Up to 1866 constables requiring medical treatment were admitted to the Sir J. J. Hospital on Parel road. In that year the stable of the old Hamilton Hotel was assigned as a separate hospital for the police, and was so used till 1870, when the Municipality placed an old workshop in Mazagon at the disposal of the Police Commissioner. This ramshackle building, which accommodated only 35 indoor patients, was totally unsuited for a hospital and was a source of constant and justifiable complaint. Nevertheless the police were forced to put up with it, until Lord Northcote, the Governor, (1900-03) sanctioned the construction of a proper building, accommodating 94 patients, on one of the new roads at Nagpada constructed by the City Improvement Trust. The building was formally opened by Lord Lamington in August, 1904.

The growth of the annual Haj traffic, mentioned in a previous paragraph, rendered accommodation for the office of the Protector of Pilgrims an urgent necessity. A ground-floor building, consisting of a large covered porch and two or three rooms, was therefore built in 1907 in the compound of the Head Police Office and served as the headquarters of the Pilgrim department, until the reorganization of the Criminal Investigation Department by Mr. Edwardes and his Deputy, Mr. F. A. M. H. Vincent, rendered necessary a re-arrangement of the accommodation at headquarters.

Before we describe the disturbances which occurred during Mr. Gell’s tenure of office, a word may be said of the courage and resource occasionally shown by Indian constables in the course of their daily duty. In 1903 a havildar was awarded the medal of the Royal Humane Society for rescuing two boys from drowning; a constable received the medal for similar action in the following year; while in 1906 the Society rewarded three constables for saving life in difficult and dangerous circumstances. On several occasions also the Commissioner rewarded constables for actions marked by conspicuous courage or intelligence. These instances serve to support the opinion that under proper leadership the Maratha of the Konkan and the Muhammadan of the Deccan will show plenty of sang-froid in emergencies. Considering that the men received little or no training before being placed on duty in the streets, that they had little or no education, and that they served year after year in a climate which is notoriously enervating and under conditions productive of ill-health, it is greatly to the credit of the police constable that he performed his duty with so few serious mistakes and that he frequently gave proof of personal courage and tenacity. If at times he appeared to cling too closely to the _pan-supari_ shops in the vicinity of his post or beat, or to lack alertness in directing traffic, it must be remembered that he was rarely off duty for any length of time, that he had singularly little opportunity for recreation and amusement, and that long hours of point-duty under the Bombay sun would try the strongest constitution.

Twice during Mr. Gell’s term of office the peace of the City was broken by rioting at the annual celebration of the Muharram. The first occasion was March 23rd, 1904, the fifth day of the festival, when the ancient antagonism between the Sunni and Shia sects developed into open hostility. The ostensible cause of the disturbance was the determination of the Sunni processionists to play music and beat their tom-toms in front of the Bohra mosque in the notorious Doctor Street. Casual street-fighting between the Bohras and their antagonists occurred daily up to March 27th (the _Katal-Ki-Rat_ or night of slaughter), and the aspect of affairs was so ominous that Mr. Gell decided to cancel the license for the _tabut_ procession from Rangari _moholla_ (i.e. Abdul Rehman street and adjoining lanes), the inhabitants of which had been directly responsible for several assaults upon the Bohras. This order was strongly resented by the general Sunni population, which resolved not to carry out the _tabuts_ for immersion on the final day of the festival. As usual, the abandonment of the _tabut_ procession released large bodies of hooligans and bad characters, who testified to their annoyance by attacking the police and the general public. At the same time the Bohras were seized by a general panic, the results of which might have been disastrous, and this fact, combined with the open disorder in the streets, led Mr. Gell to summon the military forces to his assistance. The Cheshire Regiment, a Battery of the R. A., the Railway Volunteers, the Bombay Light Horse and H. E. the Governor’s Bodyguard were despatched to various points of the disturbed area and picketed the streets until April 1st, when peace was finally restored. The casualties were fortunately few, and serious loss of life was prevented by the speedy arrival of the troops.

Another serious disturbance marred this festival during the last year of Mr. Gell’s Commissionership. On the morning of February 13th, 1908, a fracas occurred between a Shia tabut-procession, composed of Julhais, Mughals, Khojas and a few Bohras, and a body of Sunni Muhammadans congregated at a mosque in Falkland road. The police arrested some of the Sunnis who appeared to be the ringleaders in the affray. The news of the encounter spread rapidly to other quarters; and the arrest of their co-sectaries so annoyed the Sunni Muhammadans that they declined to take out their _tabuts_ in procession. This resulted, as usual, in letting loose on the streets hundreds of low-class and combative Muhammadans, who usually accompanied the processions, and they straightway proceeded to sow the seeds of disorder in various parts of the bazar. In the hope of averting a catastrophe Mr. Gell gave orders early in the afternoon for the release of the men arrested after the fracas in the morning. But the temper of the mob had by that time been aroused, the cry of _Huriya, Huriya_, was raised, and the ominous stampedes and rushes which usually preceded an outbreak of disorder occurred in the streets and lanes bordering on the Grant and Parel roads. The mob confined itself to these tactics and to spasmodic attacks on the Bohras and other Shias until the late hours of the afternoon, when serious rioting broke out on Parel road. Here the Pathan element joined forces with the mob; shops were looted and set on fire; all traffic was stopped and the tram-cars were stoned. General panic supervened. As the mob was truculent and refused to disperse, Mr. Gell ordered the European police, who were facing the mob in Parel road (Bhendy Bazar), to use their revolvers. The firing put a stop to the actual rioting, but in view of the general demeanour of the crowds, troops were called out in the evening in aid of the civil power and remained on duty in the disturbed quarter until the next day.

These Muharram disturbances, though imposing a severe strain upon the Commissioner and the police force, caused less concern to the general public than the prolonged rioting in the industrial quarter in July, 1908, when more than 400,000 mill-hands broke into open disorder after the conviction of the late Bal Gangadhar Tilak for sedition by the High Court. Tilak had been arrested in Bombay on June 24th on charges arising out of the publication in his paper, the _Kesari_, of articles containing inflammatory comments on the Muzaffarpur outrage, in which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy had been killed by a bomb—the first of a long list of similar outrages in Bengal. The bomb was extolled in these articles as ‘a kind of witchcraft, a charm, an amulet’, and the _Kesari_ delighted in showing that neither ‘the supervision of the police’ nor ‘swarms of detectives’ could stop ‘these simple playful sports of science.’ Whilst professing to deprecate such methods, it threw the responsibility upon Government, which allowed ‘keen disappointment to overtake thousands of intelligent persons who have been awakened to the necessity of securing the rights of _Swaraj_’. “Tilak spoke for four whole days in his own defence—21½ hours altogether—but the jury returned a verdict of “Guilty”, and he was sentenced to six years’ transportation, afterwards commuted on account of his age and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay.”[113]

From the moment of his arrest, Tilak’s agents and followers descended upon the mill-area of Bombay and sedulously spread the story that Tilak had been arrested because he was the friend of the industrial workers and had tried to obtain better wages for them. Some of them were reported to have declared during the trial that there would be a day’s bloodshed for every year to which he might be sentenced by the Court. Most of the ‘jobbers’ who control the supply of labour were easily won over, and Tilak’s Brahman emissaries from Poona found many co-adjutors among their own caste-men in Bombay, and among the Bhandaris and Konkani Marathas living in Parel, Tardeo, Chinchpugli and Dadar sections. Curiously enough the Ghatis, or Marathas from the Deccan, showed far less interest in the trial of Tilak and far less disposition to violence than their caste-fellows from Ratnagiri and other districts of the western seaboard. The Deccan mill-hands at Sewri, for example, at the very height of the rioting, informed an Englishman with whom they were familiar that he need fear no harm from them, and they confirmed their words by taking no share in the disturbance which lasted for six days. The hostile attitude of the Konkani Marathas was due to the continuous efforts of agitators, and this was particularly the case in the neighbourhood of Currey and De Lisle roads, where special agents from their own districts had been introduced by Tilak’s revolutionaries.

The probability of a disturbance was foreseen by the authorities, and Mr. Gell took various precautions to circumscribe the area of the outbreak. British regiments, Indian infantry and cavalry were held in readiness; a barricade was erected on Mayo road leading to the High Court; several officials and non-officials were appointed Special Magistrates and were posted at important points to watch the progress of events, assist the police, and take all feasible measures for securing the peace of the City. The Special Magistrates were a curiously mixed body. Among them were Mr. James Macdonald, a sexagenarian Scotsman, who had served the City for years as a member of the Municipal Corporation; Colonel Cordue, R. E., the Master of the Mint; Mr. Philip Messent, Engineer of the Port Trust; Mr. Arthur Leslie of Messrs. Greaves, Cotton and Co., who filled his pockets with lemon-grass oil for the benefit of the men of the Royal Scots, who were posted at the old police _chauki_ in Jacob’s Circle and had their bare knees badly bitten by the mosquitoes and other forms of low life which shared the _chauki_ with the police-constables; the author of this work, who was at the time enjoying a spell of comparative ease in the literary backwaters of the Bombay City Gazetteer; and last but not least, the Hon. Arthur Hill-Trevor, a commercial free-lance and honorary magistrate, who regarded himself as a sort of Honorary and Supernumerary Deputy Commissioner of Police, and in that capacity executed various blood-curdling manœuvres which caused no little apprehension to his more pacific colleagues.

It so happened that some of the precautions proved superfluous. There was no attempt on the part of the rioters to rush the High Court or even to attend the trial of Tilak: there was no organized attempt to march on the European residential quarter or to attack the European population _en masse_. Although the rioting assumed at times a very threatening character, it was confined wholly to the mill-area, except on one afternoon, when the Bania merchants, employed in the cloth-market of the C division, turned out in force and had to be dispersed by firing. A consideration of all the circumstances of the Tilak riots leads one to infer that the Commissioner was not as well served by his detective agency as he might have been, and that the disturbances might have been more disastrous and have lasted longer, if Tilak’s emissaries and agents had had more time at their disposal in which to foster the spirit of violence. By the end of the first day’s rioting it was clear that outlying areas like the Fort and Malabar Hill were exposed to no danger, and consequently most of the Special Magistrates gravitated from their original posts to Jacob’s Circle, which divided the industrial quarters from the central portion of the City and served as a gathering-ground for the forces of law and order.

Within the mill-district the rioting was fairly continuous and occasionally serious, and isolated Europeans whose duties obliged them to reside in the area north of Jacob’s Circle found it wise to vacate their houses for the time being and seek shelter in Mazagon, the Fort and other parts. Much damage was done to mill-property, and in several encounters with the mob the European police were forced to use their revolvers and the troops had to fire in self-defence. The Indian cavalry were stoned from the _chals_ on more than one occasion, and small parties of unarmed police fared badly at the hands of the rioters, who had accumulated considerable stores of brick-bats and road-metal at convenient vantage-points.

The Bombay Government, realizing that the trouble was not a sudden and spontaneous outburst of popular feeling and that the rebellious mill-hands were the victims of an unscrupulous agitation, based on malevolent falsehood, had issued strict orders for the avoidance of bloodshed as far as possible: and both the military forces and the police exercised such steady self-restraint that the casualties were relatively few. Nevertheless the continuance of rioting and the dislocation of business in the City set many people wondering whether other methods of restoring peace might not be tried. About the fifth day of the disturbance the Chamber of Commerce sent a deputation to the Governor, to point out the loss sustained by the commercial and trade-interests of the City and to urge upon Government a stronger effort to dissuade the mill-population from violence. The author of this history, who had witnessed the whole sequence of events at Jacob’s Circle and had on one occasion accompanied a detachment of the Northampton Regiment to Dadar to protect certain isolated Europeans, had already asked permission of Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Jenkins, Member of Council, to visit the heart of the disturbed area in company with certain Indian gentlemen who had offered their assistance, and endeavour to produce a milder feeling among the mill-hands. The permission was granted. Accordingly the writer, accompanied by the late Rao Bahadur Narayan T. Vaidya, Dr. Dinanath Naik Dandekar and four or five others, visited a large number of mill-hands’ _chals_ and dwellings in Parel and Dadar, spoke to several groups of mill-hands, and urged them to resume their regular duties. In places the party was met with sullen hostility and with shouts of _Tilak Maharaj ki Jai_, but the eloquence of the Indian members of the party was not without effect, and when Rao Bahadur N. T. Vaidya urged them to substitute _Satya Narayan ki Jai_ for their Tilakite war-cry, some of them seemed disposed to accept the suggestion.

Though some were inclined to look askance at their intervention, the efforts of this little peace-party did engender a better feeling, and this, coupled with a natural weariness of prolonged hostilities and the loss of their wages, resulted in the gradual return of tranquillity after the sixth day. By the end of the first week of August, affairs had resumed their normal course, the mill-hands were again at work, and the Bombay Government were at liberty to consider the salient features and lessons of the outbreak. Sir George Clarke, the Governor, was blamed in some quarters for having paid a sympathetic visit, after the close of the riots, to wounded mill-hands in the Sir J.J. Hospital. But his policy in this matter was dictated by an earnest desire to smooth away the bitterness which measures of repression are calculated to provoke, and by a conviction that there had been an absence of contact between the local authorities and the industrial population, which had been permitted to fall completely under the lawless influence of Tilak and his immediate followers. The fact that the disturbances lasted for a whole week invited a doubt whether the police arrangements were as effective as they might have been, and whether indeed a more efficient intelligence organization might not have facilitated a speedier conclusion of the unsatisfactory duties which the military were called upon to perform. An impression prevailed that, although the mill-hands who defied the police and troops had been severely punished, the real authors and fomenters of the disturbances had managed to escape scot-free, and that they could not have enjoyed such immunity, if the police had had their fingers more closely upon the pulse of the City.

So far as concerns the prosecution and conviction of Tilak, Sir George Clarke won “the respect of the vast majority of the community, and although he failed to secure the active support which he might have expected from the ‘moderates’, there were few of them who did not secretly approve and even welcome his action. Its effects were great and enduring, for Tilak’s conviction was a heavy blow to the forces of unrest, at least in the Deccan; and some months later, one of the organs of his party, the _Rashtramat_, reviewing the occurrences of the year, was fain to admit that ‘the sudden removal of Mr. Tilak’s towering personality threw the whole province into dismay and unnerved the other leaders’”.[114]

Having thus secured the discomfiture of the revolutionary party in Western India, the Governor applied himself to the problem of the Bombay City Police administration, which appeared to him to need revision, not only in response to the general findings of the Police Commission, but also by reason of its apparent failure to keep closely in touch with political intrigue, such as that which precipitated the riots of July 1908. Apart from the mere question of numbers and pay, the force appeared to the Governor to be working on somewhat obsolete lines and to need keying up to the pitch at which it might cope more successfully both with its regular duties of watch and ward and with the large amount of confidential investigation necessitated by the rapid and alarming growth of political unrest and sedition. These were the main reasons underlying the appointment of the Morison Committee, which has been described in an earlier paragraph. One of the most important sections of that committee’s report was concerned with the reorganization of the old detective branch of the police-force, hereafter to be called the Criminal Investigation Department (C. I. D.), upon which devolved the task of watching the trend of political movements and of accumulating knowledge of the antecedents and actions of the chief fomenters of unrest.

The work of a police-officer in an Indian city has always been extremely arduous, and few men in these days are able to bear the strain for many years without some loss of vitality and health. There is little doubt that the extra work and anxiety entailed by the Royal Visit of 1905, which was followed a few days later by the arrival of Lord Minto and the departure of Lord Curzon, had much to do with the temporary breakdown of health which obliged Mr. Gell to take furlough in 1906; while the strain inevitably imposed upon him by the Muharram and Tilak riots of 1908 was partly the cause of his again taking leave to England in the early part of 1909. In doing so, his long service in the City came to an end: for by the time his leave had expired, his successor was in the midst of a comprehensive reorganization scheme, which would have suffered in the event of his reversion to his own grade in the Indian Civil Service. In order, therefore, to enable him to complete his full period of pensionable service, Mr. Gell, on his return from England, was appointed Deputy Inspector-General of Police for the Presidency and a little later for Sind. It was in Sind that he completed his official career, and from Karachi that he sailed finally for England. His long connexion with the City of Bombay is commemorated, though not perhaps adequately, in the name of one of the newer streets opened by the City Improvement Trust in the neighbourhood of Ripon road. Memories of his equability of temper and his impartiality are still cherished by the older officers and men of the police-force, who pay a willing tribute to his character as an officer and a gentleman.