M Read Online Free PDF

February 1879 he got married. His bride was an Irish girl, Kate Reilly from a village in County Mayo, far north of Kerry but also way out along the west coast. She worked at Barratt’s the drapers on the Westminster Bridge Road and they married just around the corner – in Southwark but still within a hundred yards of the Lambeth police accommodation – at St George’s Roman Catholic Church.
    Melville’s confidence was justified. Four months after the wedding he was promoted from Constable to Detective Sergeant in the CID. He was now stationed in P Division, which abuts L Division and includes Camberwell, Walworth and Peckham, districts slightly further south of the river. He was still dealing with straightforward crime of the kind that is motivated by greed or jealousy rather than ideals, and still ending up in street brawls for his pains, according to The Times. 28 An account of a case at Marylebone Police Court shows him making a difficult arrest in Clerkenwell.
    A Mr Tufts, of Westbourne Park near Paddington, was first into the witness box, and described how he and his wife had gone out the previous Saturday evening at 7.00 p.m. and returned around midnight. They were still up at 1.00 a.m. when they heard a lot of noise upstairs and their two servants (who had been with them for years) rushed down terrified. The police were called. They found the attic skylight open and all in confusion, and a thousand pounds’ worth of gold, jewellery and clothing gone from three bedrooms over two floors.
    Melville explained to the court how the following Tuesday evening at 5.00 p.m. he, along with Inspector Peel and two sergeants of G Division, went to Clerkenwell and waited two hours for one of the suspected men, a twenty-seven-year-old ‘general dealer’ called Armstrong, to come out of his house in Bowling Green Lane. He made the arrest, but Armstrong refused to go quietly and put up a furious fight. Quite a crowd gathered. It was probably not a crowd supportive of the police. Melville, by his own account (one detects an underlying bitterness) had just about reached the limit of his endurance when Inspector Peel finally broke it up.
    At the police station, and at the houses of Armstrong and his co-accused, cash, revolvers, cartridges, diamonds and skeleton keys were discovered. One of the men was seen by Melville surreptitiously passing his ill-gotten gains to the wife of the other and, as in the earlier Lambeth case, both couples were charged. Detectives like Melville were aware of the usefulness not only of informants (for this arrest clearly depended upon information received) but of burglars’ womenfolk to the breaking-and-entering trade. Women wore such a lot of clothes. At dead of night, a woman wearing a bonnet and cape over a voluminous dress could conceal the booty about her person and depart innocently arm in arm with her lover from the scene of the crime. If the fellow had to make a run for it, the police would pass her by and even if they didn’t, they couldn’t search her without taking her to the police station; there were no women police.
    While stationed at P Division Melville probably worked out of Walworth Road Police Station. No.44 Liverpool Street, the house where he and Kate and their eighteen-month-old baby Margaret were living at the time of the 1881 census, would have been conveniently close. The street name was later changed to Liverpool Grove but the house is still there, one of a pretty, three storey terrace with Gothic windows opposite a leafy churchyard. It was a tranquil backwater, convenient for East Street market and omnibuses to the Elephant and Castle just half a mile away.
    The Elephant and Castle was the major commercial centre for inner South London and its huge department store, Tarn’s. At six storeys high with associated factories and accommodation for nearly three hundred staff, Tarn’s was a magnet for eager ladies from nearby Blackheath and