In 1829, Sir Robert Peel convinced government and the public that they had a right to sleep safely within their own homes and walk the streets without worry. The Metropolitan Police were established and headquartered at 4 Whitehall Place, its back door opening onto Scotland Yard, the former site of a Saxon palace that had served as a residence for visiting Scottish kings. By the late seventeenth century, most of the palace had fallen to ruin and was demolished, and what remained was used as offices for British government. Many well-known figures once served the crown from Scotland Yard, including the architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren and the great poet John Milton, who at one time was the Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell. Architect and comic writer Sir John Vanbrugh built a house on the old palace grounds that Jonathan Swift compared to a “goose pie.”
Few people realize that Scotland Yard has always been a place and not a police organization. Since 1829, “Scotland Yard” has referred to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, and that remains true today, although the official name now is “New Scotland Yard.” I suspect the public will continue to hold to the belief that Scotland Yard is a group of sleuths like Sherlock Holmes and that a London uniform officer is a bobby. Perhaps there will always be books and movies with provincial police who are stumped by a murder and deliver that delightfully hackneyed line, “I think this is a job for Scotland Yard.”
From its earliest days, Scotland Yard and its uniformed divisions were resented by the public. Policing was viewed as an affront to the Englishman’s civil rights and associated with martial law and the government’s way of spying and bullying. When the Metropolitan Police were first organized, they did their best to avoid a military appearance by dressing themselves in blue coats and trousers and topped themselves off with rabbit-skin stovepipe hats reinforced with steel frames just in case an apprehended criminal decided to knock an officer on the head. The hats also came in handy as footstools for climbing over fences and walls or getting into windows.
At first, the Metropolitan Police had no detectives. It was bad enough having bobbies in blue, but the idea of men in ordinary garb sneaking about to collar people was violently opposed by citizens and even by the uniformed police, who resented the fact that detectives would get better pay and worried that the real purpose of these plainclothesmen was to tattle on the rank and file. Developing a solid detective division by 1842 and introducing plainclothes officers in the mid-1840s entailed a few fumbles, including the unenlightened decision to hire educated gentlemen who had no police training. One can only imagine such a person interviewing a drunk East End husband who has just smashed his wife in the head with a hammer or taken a straight razor to her throat.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was not formally organized until 1878, or a mere ten years before Jack the Ripper began terrorizing London. By 1888, public sentiment about detectives had not changed much. There remained misgivings about police wearing plain-clothes or arresting people by artifice. The police were not supposed to trap citizens, and Scotland Yard strictly enforced the rule that plain-clothes policing could take place only when there was ample evidence that crimes in a certain area were being committed repeatedly. This approach was enforcement, not prevention. It delayed Scotland Yard’s decision to order undercover measures when the Ripper began his slaughters in the East End.
Scotland Yard was completely unprepared for a serial killer like the Ripper, and after Mary Ann Nichols’s murder, the public began to cast its eye on the police more than ever, and to criticize, belittle, and blame. Mary Ann’s murder and inquest hearings were obsessively covered by every major English newspaper. Her case made the covers of tabloids such as The Illustrated Police News and the budget editions of Famous Crimes, which one could pick up for a penny. Artists rendered sensational, salacious depictions of the homicides, and no one – neither the officials of the Home Office nor the policemen nor the detectives and brass at Scotland Yard nor even Queen Victoria – had the slightest comprehension of either the problem or its solution.