CHAPTER V

LIEUT.-COLONEL W. H. WILSON

1888-1893

Lieut-Colonel W. H. Wilson, who belonged to the Bombay District Police, succeeded Sir Frank Souter on July 4th, 1888. He had already acted once as Commissioner from October 1885 to May 1886, during his predecessor’s absence on furlough. During the period which intervened between Sir F. Souter’s departure on April 30th and Colonel Wilson’s appointment in July, the duties of the Commissioner devolved upon Mr. H. G. Gell, the Deputy Commissioner. Colonel Wilson held the appointment for five years, during which he was twice absent on leave, once from May to December, 1889, when Colonel Wise was appointed _locum tenens_, and again for three months in 1890, when his place was filled by Major Humfrey.

Throughout his term of office Colonel Wilson, like his predecessor, was hampered by lack of men. The force at the date of his assumption of control numbered 1621 and cost annually Rs. 505,135. By 1892 there had been a trivial increase to 1634, while the annual cost had risen to Rs. 513,896. This lack of men was undoubtedly responsible for a decline in the prevention and detection of crime, as for example in 1888, when many cases of house-breaking were undetected, and in 1891, when a serious increase of crime against property was recorded in Mahim and other outlying areas. It also resulted in the force being so seriously overworked that the percentage of men admitted to hospital showed a constant tendency to increase. In his report of 1892 Colonel Wilson informed Government that the burden of duty sustained by the rank and file had become almost intolerable, that the men frequently became prematurely aged from overwork, and that many of the superior officers were ill from exposure and lack of rest. The Bombay Government endorsed the Commissioner’s complaints and admitted the urgent need of increasing the Force.[102] A reorganization of the Force, involving a considerable addition to its numbers, had in fact been under consideration for several years; but owing partly to financial stringency and partly to the delay inseparable from all official transactions, the much-needed relief was not granted until August, 1893,[103] by which date Colonel Wilson had left India and Mr. Vincent had taken his place. The former thus had little or no chance of securing any improvement in the criminal work of the divisional police, and on more than one occasion he found his force singularly inadequate to cope with special and emergent duties.

Like Sir Frank Souter, he also found the lack of police-stations and buildings a serious obstacle to efficient administration. Within a few months of assuming office he reported that the building at Byculla, in which he worked, was very inconvenient and too far distant from the business quarters of the City, and he urged the early construction of the proposed Head Police Office on Hornby road. He reiterated his demands in 1890, 1891, and 1892, stating that no real improvement could be effected until that office and additional quarters for the men were constructed. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, accommodation was provided for two European police officers in the Esplanade Police Court, which was occupied for the first time in 1889; while in the last year of his tenure of office, the divisional police secured some extra accommodation by the full use of the old Maharbaudi building, which had proved inconvenient to the public and was therefore vacated in 1893 by the Second Presidency Magistrate in favour of a Government building in Nesbit Lane, Mazagon.[104] In the latter building also accommodation was provided for two European police officers.

The capabilities of the detective police were tested by several serious crimes. The first, known as the Dadar Triple Murder, occurred in 1888 and aroused considerable public interest. Two Parsi women and a little boy, residing in Lady Jamshedji road, were brutally murdered by a Hindu servant, who was in due course traced, tried and executed. In 1890 the murder of a Hindu youth at Clerk Road was successfully detected, and this was followed in 1891 by the Khambekar Street poisoning case, in which a respectable and wealthy family of Memons were killed by a dissolute son of the house. The police investigation, which ended in the trial and conviction of the murderer, was greatly obstructed by the collateral relatives of the family, who made every effort to render the enquiry abortive and were actively assisted by the whole Memon community.

These crimes, however, were cast into the shade by the famous Rajabai Tower case, which caused great public agitation. On April 25th, 1891, two Parsi girls, Pherozebai and Bacchubai, aged respectively 16 and 20 years, were found lying at the foot of the Rajabai Clock Tower, in circumstances and under conditions which indicated that they had been thrown from above. When discovered, one of the girls was dead, and the other so seriously injured that she expired within a few minutes. Suspicion fell upon a Parsi named Manekji and certain other persons: but the latter were released shortly after arrest, as there was no evidence that they were in any way concerned in the death of the two girls. The Coroner’s jury, after nineteen sittings, gave a verdict that Bacchubai had thrown herself from the tower in consequence of an attempted outrage upon her by some person or persons unknown, and that Manekji was privy to the attempted outrage; and further that Pherozebai had been thrown from the tower by Manekji, in order to prevent her giving information of the attempt to outrage herself and her friend. Manekji was tried by the High Court on a charge of murder and was acquitted. Various rumours were afloat as to the identity of the chief actors in the crime, among those suspected being a young Muhammadan belonging to a leading Bombay family. No further clue was ever obtained, and to this day the true facts are shrouded in mystery.

The police dealt successfully with an important case of forgery, in which counterfeit stamps of the value of one rupee were very cleverly forged by a man who had previously served in the Trigonometrical Survey Department of the Government of India and was afterwards proved to have belonged to a gang of expert forgers in Poona. The collapse of a newly-built house prompted Superintendent Brewin to make a lengthy and careful inquiry into all the details of construction, which ended successfully in the prosecution and punishment of the two jerry-builders who erected it. House-collapses are not unknown in Bombay, particularly during the monsoon, when the weight of the wet tiles causes the posts of wooden-frame dwellings to give way; but so far as is known, the case quoted is the only instance on record of a builder being prosecuted and punished under the criminal law for causing loss of life by careless or defective construction. The Sirdar Abdul Ali was equally successful in unravelling an important case of illicit traffic in arms and ammunition carried on by a gang of Pathans with certain transfrontier outlaws—a matter in which the Government of India at that date (1888) took considerable interest.

The offence of gambling in various forms occupied the attention of the police to a greater degree than before, and the prevalence of rain-gambling led to a test prosecution in the magisterial courts. This form of wagering used to take place during the monsoon at Paidhoni, where a house would be rented at a high price for the four months of the rains by a group of Indian capitalists. There were two forms of _Barsat ka satta_ or rain-gambling, known familiarly as _Calcutta mori_ and _Lakdi satta_. In the former case wagers were laid as to whether the rain would percolate in a fixed time through a specially prepared box filled with sand, the bankers settling the rates or odds by the appearance and direction of the clouds. In the latter case, winnings or losses depended on whether the rainfall during a fixed period of time was sufficient to fill the gutter of a roof and overflow. The gambling took place usually between 6 a.m. and 12 noon, and again between 6 p.m. and midnight, the rates varying according to the appearance of the sky and the time left before the period open for the booking of bets expired. The practice, which was very popular, was responsible for so much loss that in 1888 two of the principal promoters of rain-gambling were prosecuted by the order of Government. The Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. Cooper, who tried the case, decided that rain-gambling was not an offence under the Gambling Act, as then existing, and his decision was upheld on appeal by the High Court. Consequently Colonel Wilson applied for the necessary amendment of the Bombay Gambling Act, and this was in due course effected by the Legislature. Since that date rain-gambling has been unknown in Bombay.

In 1890 and 1891 the police made continual raids on gambling-houses, and in 1893 were obliged to adopt special measures against a form of bagatelle, known as _Eki beki_, which had a wide vogue in the City. The Public Prosecutor himself visited one of the more notorious resorts in order to acquaint himself thoroughly with the system, which in consequence of continuous action by the police was for the time being practically stamped out of existence. Bombay, however, has always been addicted to gambling, whether it be in the form of the well-known _teji-mundi_ contracts, the _ank satta_ or opium-gambling, or the ordinary gambling with dice and cards: and notwithstanding that the police at intervals pay special attention to the vice and secure some improvement, the evil reappears and rapidly increases, directly vigilance is relaxed. The promoters of gambling are adepts in the art of misleading the authorities: they rarely use the same room on two successive occasions; they have elaborated a vocabulary of warning-calls; and they employ spies and watchmen to keep them posted in all the movements of the police. Some of the latter have probably at times accepted hush-money and presents to turn a blind eye on the gamblers’ movements: for otherwise it is difficult to understand why men, who are widely known to have been organizing gambling reunions for years, should have successfully evaded the law and in some cases have accumulated a considerable fortune in the process.

Two matters of a novel character engaged the attention of the divisional police during Colonel Wilson’s _régime_. The first was a series of balloon ascents, which drew immense crowds of spectators. The earliest ascents were performed in the opening months of 1889 from the grounds of old Government House, Parel, by a Mr. Spencer, who successfully descended with a parachute. He was followed in 1891 by Mr. and Mrs. Van Tassell, who, except on one occasion when the lady’s parachute did not open immediately, carried out their performances without a hitch. This form of public amusement, however, came to a sudden and unhappy conclusion on December 10th, 1891, when Lieutenant Mansfield, R. N., essayed an ascent. When he had reached a height of about 1000 feet, the balloon suddenly burst, and he fell headlong to earth and was killed in full view of a large crowd of spectators. Since that date and up to the outbreak of the War in 1914, the only aerial spectacle offered to the Bombay public was a much-advertised aeroplane flight from the Oval. This venture was a fiasco. The aeroplane would only rise a few feet from the ground, and at that elevation collided violently with the iron railing of the B. B. and C. I. railway and was wrecked.

The second event, which evoked much comment, was a strike by the _employés_ of eleven cotton-spinning mills as a protest against a reduction in wages. So far as can be gathered from official records, this was the first strike of any magnitude that occurred in the industrial area, and seems to have been the earliest effort of the labour-population to test their powers of combination. The police had to be concentrated in the affected area, in order to guard mill-property and quell possible disorder: but the mill-workers at this date were quite unorganized and no disturbance occurred. The action of these mill-hands, however, carried the germ of the disorders which have since caused periodical damage to the industry and have interfered frequently with the normal duties of the police force.

It is convenient at this point to refer to the problem of European prostitution, which has repeatedly formed the subject of comment in more recent years. Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the foreign prostitute from eastern Europe was practically unknown in Bombay, and such immorality as existed was confined to women of Eurasian or Indian parentage. Once, however, the large European shipping-companies had established regular steamer-communication with India, and Port Said had become a port of call and an asylum for the riff-raff of Europe, the Jew procurer and “white-slave” trafficker gradually included India within the orbit of a trade, which was characterized by a fairly regular demand and by large and easily earned profits. The Foreigners Act III of 1864, under the provisions of which the Bombay Police arrange for the deportation of foreign pimps, as well as of prostitutes whose conduct demands their expulsion, was apparently not used frequently before the last decade of the nineteenth century, except against troublesome Pathans and Arabs, belonging respectively to the transfrontier region or to the territory of Indian Princes. But the immigration of foreign women must have begun tentatively during the _régime_ of Sir Frank Souter and continued to expand under the auspices of the international procurer, until by the last years of the nineteenth century these unfortunates had secured a strong foothold in certain houses situated in Tardeo, Grant road and other streets of the Byculla ward.

The growth of the European population, resulting from the expansion of the trade of the port, and an increasing disinclination on the part of Government and society to countenance the old system of _liaisons_ with Indian women, may have induced the authorities to regard the establishment of the European brothel and the presence of the European prostitute as deplorable but necessary evils. Provided that the women were kept under reasonable control and the police were sufficiently vigilant to ensure the non-occurrence of open scandals, no direct steps were taken to abolish a feature of urban life which struck occasional travellers and others as inexpressibly shocking. To the peripatetic procurer, who visited Bombay at frequent intervals in order to relieve the women of their savings and ascertain the demand for fresh arrivals, the Police showed no mercy; and the regular use which they made of the Foreigners Act towards the close of the last century indicates that by that date Bombay (like Calcutta and Madras) had become a regular halting-point in the procurer’s disgraceful itinerary from Europe to the Far East.

It must be remembered that the number of European professional prostitutes in India has never been large, and the worst features of the traffic, as understood in Europe, are fortunately absent. That is to say, the women of this class who find their way to the brothels of the Grant Road neighbourhood and to the less secluded rooms in and around the notorious Cursetji Suklaji street, which used to be known on this account as _safed gali_ or “white lane”, are not decoyed thither by force or fraud. The women usually arrive unaccompanied and of their own choice, and they are well over the age of majority before they first set foot on the Bombay _bandar_. Their treatment in the brothel is not bad and they are not subjected to cruelty. The “mistress” of the brothel, who is herself a time-expired prostitute and has sometimes paid a heavy sum to her predecessor for the good-will of the house, feeds and houses the women in return for 50 per cent of their daily earnings; and as her own livelihood and capital are at stake, she is usually careful to see that nothing occurs to give the house a bad name among her clientèle or to warrant punitive action on the part of the police. The “mistress” acts in fact as a buffer between the women of her house and the male visitor, protecting the general interests and health of the former and safeguarding the latter from theft and robbery by the women, who are usually drawn from the lower strata of the population of eastern Europe and who would, in the absence of such control, be liable to thieve and quarrel, and would also commence visiting places of public resort, such as the race-course, restaurants etc., and walking the streets of the European quarter.

European women of this class are found only in the chief maritime cities of India—Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Karachi and Rangoon, the only places in India which contain a considerable miscellaneous European population. Their total number is not large. Some of them doubtless were originally victims of the “white-slave” trafficker; but their first initiation to the life happened several years before they found their way to India, with funds advanced to them by the pimp or, as they style him in their jargon, “the fancy-man” who first led them astray. There have been instances in Bombay of these women contriving to accumulate sufficient savings in the course of ten or twelve years’ continuous prostitution to enable them either to purchase the good-will of a recognized brothel or to return to their own country and settle down there in comparative respectability. One or two, with their savings behind them, have been able to find a husband who was prepared to turn a blind eye to their past. Thus has lower middle-class respectability been secured at the price of years of flaming immorality. But such cases are rare. These women as a class are wasteful and improvident, and are prone to spend all their earnings on their personal tastes and adornment. Most of them also, as remarked above, have become acquainted early in their career with a procurer, usually a Jew of low type, who swoops down at intervals from Europe upon the brothel in which they happen to be serving and there relieves them of such money as they may have saved after paying the recognized 50 per cent to the “mistress” of the house.

During Colonel Wilson’s Commissionership little mention is made of action by the police against the foreign procurer. The latter was probably not so much in evidence as he was at a later date. The opening years of the twentieth century witnessed a change, however, in this respect, and a short time before the outbreak of the Great War, the Government of India made a special enquiry into the scope and character of European prostitution in India, in consequence of the submission to the Imperial Legislature of a private Bill designed to suppress the evil. The report on the subject submitted at that date (1913) by the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, was directly responsible for a decision to give the police wider powers of control over the casual visits of European procurers—a decision which was carried into effect after the close of the War by strengthening the provisions of the local Police Act and the Foreigners Act. In 1921 the Government of India was represented at an International Conference on the Traffic in Women and Children, held at Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations; and shortly afterwards India became a signatory of the International Convention of 1910, by which all the States concerned bind themselves to carry out certain measures designed to check and ultimately to abolish the traffic.

There is little else to chronicle concerning the work of the police under Colonel Wilson. The arrangements for the visits of the late Prince Albert Victor and the Cesarewitch in 1890 were carried through without a hitch, despite the acknowledged inadequacy of the force. The annual Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca brought to Bombay yearly about 8000 pilgrims, whose passports and steamer-tickets were supplied by Messrs. Thomas Cook and Sons, the general supervision of the pilgrims and their embarkation at the docks being performed by the Protector of Pilgrims and a small staff, in collaboration with the Port Health officer. The period was remarkable for the establishment of several temperance movements in various parts of the City, which were declared in 1891 to have imposed a check upon wholesale drunkenness. No diminution, however, of the volume of crime against property was recorded, despite the activities of the Detective Branch and the action taken by the divisional police against receivers of stolen property, of whom 80 were convicted in 1889 and 64 in the following year. The property annually recovered by the police in cases of theft and house-breaking amounted to about 50 per cent of the value stolen, the paucity of the constabulary being the chief reason for the non-detection of constant thefts and burglaries which occurred in Mahim and other outlying areas. Considering how greatly he was handicapped by lack of numbers, ill-health among the rank and file, and the absence of proper accommodation for both officers and men, Colonel Wilson’s administration may be said to have been fairly successful. Fortunately he was spared the task of dealing with any serious outbreak of disorder, such as occurred during the early days of his successor’s term of office.