Key facts

• The MET was set up in 1829 by home secretary, Sir Robert Peel
• Royal Mint Street was a rookery with an annual death rate of 50 in every 1000 after 1865, double the rest of London
• The casual ward could take 400 inmates and was for those who wanted a bed at night, but they had to work to earn it
• People earned 6-12 shillings a week in good employment (poor pay)
• According to the Medical Officer of Health report for Whitechapel in 1873, Whitechapel had almost 200 people per acre while London on average had 45 (overcrowded)
• In 1876, Royal Mint Street was sold by the government to Peabody Trust, a charity set up by an American banker. by 1881, 287 flats were built
• Many Jewish immigrants lived on Flower and Dean Street, but they found it hard to integrate due to different cultural practices like Sabbath rituals
• In 1857 a soup kitchen was founded in Brick Lane for Eastern immigrants, by January 1858 it was feeding 1000 people a week
• Jewish immigrants brought socialist ideas. They set up socialist organisation, International Workers Educational Club and ‘The Worker’s Friend’ newspaper
• After the persecution of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Russian Jews came to England, with 30,000 arriving in London between 1881 to 1891
• An 1871 census showed that 902 lodgers were staying in 31 doss houses on Flower and Dean Street alone
• 16 out of 17 cases brought before the Thames Police Court on the 1st June 1887 mentioned drunkenness
• Charles Booth employed 80 researchers to explore living conditions in London. He saw Flower and Dean Street “as a vicious, semi-criminal area“
• Made up rumours were printed about Nikolay Vasiliev, a Russian anarchist Jew responsible for serial murders in France who had recently moved to England
• H division was based in Leman Street police station near Peabody Estate and had 505 policeman to a population of 176,000
• The Central Investigation Department (CID) was part of the MET and set up in 1870 by Commissioner Henderson
• Sir Edmund Henderson was blamed for many scandals like, the Trial of Detectives, Fenian bombings and Titley case
• Sir Charles Warren was commissioner of the MET from 1886 - 1888. He took over from Henderson and was in constant arguments with Home Secretary, Henry Matthews
• Charles Vincent was head of CID from 1878 - 1884, he introduced the first ‘police code’ to improve professionalism
• by 1830 there were 3300 policemen in the MET
• In 1835 newspapers praised the police for their response to a fire at Millbank prison
• By 1852, there were 5700 men in the MET
• In 1867 Irish Fenians planted a bomb in Clerkenwell that the police ignored warnings of
• In 1877 a court case revealed corruption among senior officers in the Detective Branch. ‘Trial of the Detectives’ was closely followed in newspapers and the following year Sir Charles Vincent renamed the branch into the CID.
• In 1885, only one year after the Special Irish Branch was set up, Fenian bombs exploded at the Houses of Parliament and Tower of London
• In 1886 Henderson resigned as commissioner And was replaced by Sir Charles Warren
• In 1887 Warren resigned
• The mugshot was introduced in 1894
• In 1895 new rules for recruitment included that the applicant must be 21 - 27, able to read and write and be taller than 5’9
• In 1901 fingerprint identification was introduced
• George Lusk, a builder, set up the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and interviewed witnesses like Matthew Packer
• The Thames police court dealt with over 1700 cases in 1887
• Following the ‘double event’ on 30 September 1888, the MET followed up 300 lines of enquiry and arrested 80 people across London. They also interviewed over 2000 people nearby, especially butchers
• The City of London police took sketches of Catherine Eddowes’ body in Mitre Square
• Warren experimented with Bloodhound dogs to track the killer. Two dogs, Burgho and Barnaby, were trained. Detectives had to wait 2 hours before entering Mary Jane Kelly‘s murder scene due to the dogs.
• The ‘beat’ was a set routine for H division police constables, as a deterrent. It was 30 minutes by day and 15 minutes at night.
• Alcohol made small disputes worse and caused violence and abuse, like the case of William Fromberg on 3 May 1879 and the case of Henry Seignberg of Cable Street on June 1878.
• A law in 1870 made it illegal to serve alcohol to someone already drunk
• In 1935 W.G.Cornish wrote about ‘Bessarabian’ gangs that ran protection brackets which threatened the owners of Jewish business
• After 1885 keeping a brothel was illegal