CHAPTER IV

SIR FRANK SOUTER KT., C.S.I.

1864-1888

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

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

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

Land Police 1239 Police Guards for Government buildings 116 Harbour Police 101 ---- Total 1456

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

Superintendents 6 Inspectors 22 Sub-Inspectors 12 Jemadars 24 Havildars 62 Men 1216 Mounted Police 13[88]

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

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

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

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

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

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

(_a_) _Land Police_

1 Commissioner of Police 1 Deputy Commissioner of Police 6 Superintendents 36 Officers on Rs. 100 per month and over 92 Officers on less than Rs. 100 per month 1020 Constables

(_b_) 98 Police guards for Government buildings

(_c_) _Harbour Police_

1 Superintendent 13 Subordinate Officers 87 Constables

(_d_) _Dockyard Police_

7 Subordinate Officers 77 Constables

(_e_) 5 Police-guards for distilleries

(_f_) _C. D. Act Police_

2 Subordinate Officers 10 Constables

(_g_) _Prince’s Dock Police_

6 Subordinate Officers 44 Constables

(_h_) 20 Constables at burning and burial grounds.

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

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

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

Year Number of all grades Annual Cost

1885 1521 Rs. 475,297 1886 1580 ” 493,116 1887 1612 ” 510,690 1888 1621 ” 505,135

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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