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Director on the political niceties:
    while direct communication between yourself and foreign police authorities for the purposes of information is unobjectionable, all demands for arrest, whether by telegram or otherwise, must be made through the diplomatic channel and the Foreign Office, and all demands for arrest on the part of the English police must be sent to the Secretary of State for transmission to the competent authorities abroad through the Foreign Office. 23
    There was always pressure from abroad about London’s refugees, and anarchists especially. Vincent was relaxed about social-democratic clubs, and thought they posed no threat whatsoever. And at first the Fenians were of no particular concern, for he discovered that there was a shadowy character called Anderson at the Home Office who monitored their activities. But anarchists were different. The anarchist movement was of course opposed to authority, but beyond that it split. While some simply wanted the freedom to do as they wished and expected that if everyone did so capitalism would just crumble away, others believed that this process would take too long unless given a helping hand. This ‘helping hand’ was propaganda by deed; in other words, showing just how great life could be if you summarily got rid of the symbols of repressive order. Kings, seats of government, expensive restaurants and police headquarters were favourite targets chosen on the basis that ‘scum rises to the top’.
    Vincent was aware that royal lives could be in danger from assassins, and also that continental governments believed the English dealt much too lightly with openly anarchist refugees. Certainly revolutionaries could meet and publish in London in a way they were not free to do anywhere else. It always irritated foreign countries when their home-grown anarchists fled across the Channel, wrote rallying cries to violent action, printed them and sent them home.
    It was also politically awkward, as the Foreign Office for its own reasons would not, and would not be seen to, bow to political pressure to deal with foreign revolutionaries. Further, the British ruling classes claimed that a fundamental difference in political philosophy was involved: they claimed that the ‘safety valve’ of social clubs, freedom of speech and movement and peaceful demonstration functioned well. Their relative liberality allowed them to keep an eye on potential troublemakers and defused revolutionary intentions in a cloud of hot air. So, with M. Lepine and others demanding action, and the Home Office and Foreign Office refusing to act, ‘Vincent... lived under a constant cross-fire of alternating censure’. 24 All he could do was visit socialist and anarchist clubs on the quiet, in disguise (which, according to his biographer, he did 25 ), and make sure that there was strong but unobtrusive security around visitors like the Kaiser, who made a State visit in 1879. He also employed a single Scotland Yard inspector, Von Tornow, who quietly kept an eye on political insurgents from continental Europe. 26
    The police force had some difficulty in accommodating itself to the new CID set-up. From the start in 1878 the uniformed men resented having a permanent plain-clothes branch in every division; they were seen as having a financial advantage, as one tradition carried over from the old detective force was that of rewarding them out of treasury funds. Over the years it had become a bounty system in all but name. They were not particularly well paid but could double their income if a senior officer recommended rewards by results in big cases. 27 Also, since there were fewer of them, they had the career advantage of being more noticeable in work, which by its nature required initiative.
    Melville at least must have felt quite sanguine about his prospects in the force. Just seventeen days after his appearance at Southwark Magistrates’ Court with his arm in a sling, on 20