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University Student Number: C1101917

Module Number: SE2390
Module Title: Nineteenth Century Crime Fiction: From The Newgate Calendar To
Sherlock Holmes
Question Number and Title: 4. How and why do the representations and functions
of the police/police detectives in crime narratives change over the 19th Century?

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Due to the largely ineffectual nature of initial quasi-police forces and the tendency
for corruption, the police were viewed very dimly at the beginning of the 19th
Century. It was not until the establishment of the detective police force and
subsequent positive portrayals of brilliant detectives from Dickens, Collins and Poe
that the police force began to garner public approval and affection, and began to turn
public opinion to the positive societal effectiveness of a preventative police force.
I
French Police, English Anxiety and the Rise of the Detective Figure
We see in Poes Purloined Letter that the Gendarmerie are a spy police who
search the apartment of a suspected minister without his knowledge.1 Their
methodology was deemed very dangerous, mysterious and secretive and resulted
in secret denunciations, the destruction of private confidence and the paralysis of
the energies of the people. 2 The French police had always had a political role and
often engaged in espionage3 to unearth politically subversive dissidents. The fear of
an invasion of civil liberty in England4 emanates from the behavior of the French
spy police, and these anxieties would come to a head in the Popay case in 18335
cementing the unpopularity of Robert Peels police force. Published in 1841,
Murders of the Rue Morgue is scathing verdict on the detective skills of the French
1 Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter, in Tales Of Mystery and
Imagination (London: Harper Collins, 2011) pp.416 437 (P.420) All
further references are to this edition and will be quoted in
parenthesis in the body of this essay.
2 Clive Emsley, Old Fears and a New Model, in Policing and Its
Context 1750-1870 (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp.53-75 (P.58)
3 Clive Emsley, Old Fears and a New Model, in Policing and Its
Context 1750-1870 (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp.53-75 (P.51)

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Police that augmented the ill feeling towards the Metropolitan Police Force. Poe
presents the reader with Chevalier C. August Dupin; scion of decaying aristocracy6,
master of observation, logic, intuition, esoteric knowledge7 who is widely considered
the first detective hero of fiction.8 Dupins brilliance is juxtaposed against the
ineptness of the French Police force who miss clues, fail to observe Dupin removing
key evidence from the scene of the crime9 and show an inability to solve the crimes

4The New Police [] forms one of the greatest inroads on the

principles and practice of the British government and constitution
that modern times have witnessed. [] an intense feeling of
hostility to it prevails in the metropolis, which actuates the middle
class as well as the multitude David Robinson, The Local
Government of the Metropolis, and other Populous Places,
Blackwoods Edinburgh magazine 29:175 (January 1831), pp. 82104
5 William.S Popay was a policeman. So far, so good; but when he
became a plain-clothes policeman not so good. For he was then
specially detailed by the Police Department to watch the activities
of certain of the working-class organisations in London. He enrolled
himself a member of the Camberwell and Walworth Branch of the
National Union of the Working Classes, and became a regular
attendant at their meetings. He drafted suitably strong resolutions
for the Union, encouraged his fellow members to plans of violence,
urged the establishment of a gallery where they could learn to
shoot and duly reported to police headquarters all the plots which
he helped to hatch. His dupes thereupon addressed a petition to
the reformed parliament, protesting against the use of spies and
provocative agents. [..] Popay was dismissed from the service []
made a scapegoat. It helped swell the unpopularity, already great,
of Sir Robert Peels police George Cole, The Life of William Cobbett
(New York: Routledge, 2011) P. 271.
6 Martin Priestman, The Detective Whodunnit from Poe to World
War I In, Crime Fiction from Poe to the Present (Plymouth:
Northcote House, 1998) pp.5-18 (P.7).
7 Ronald Thomas, The Moonstone, detective fiction and forensic
science, in A Cambridge Companion To Wilkie Collins ed. Jenny
Bourne Taylor. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp
65-78 (P.68).

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in the three Dupin Texts.10 Critic Stefan Knight suggests that it is the stupidity of the
police force that makes Dupins success so easy11 and perhaps elucidates Poes
sympathies with the detective, whilst suggesting skepticism as to the usefulness of
the police force. Dupin brilliantly deducts through a racionative thought process that
the murders committed in the Rue Morgue are not perpetrated by a human, but an
escaped orangutan. He ascertains all that he needs to know through the witnesss
accounts and the overheard exclamation of mon Dieu! finding a full solution of
the riddle (p,350) from this small clue. Dupin guesses the thoughts of his
companion through analytical reasoning and observation a quality that is notably
missing from the French police. Dupin mentions that there is no method in the
proceedings of the Parisian police (p.336) whereas it is his methodology that sets him
apart as a superior detective of crime. He doesnt trust the police12 and this translates
into the mistrust of the reader. This is a familiar trope of detective fiction, where the
incompetent police allow for the emergence of the eccentric intellectual detective, the
juxtaposition of which provides a telling contrast detrimental to the portrayal of the
8 A.E Murch, The Short Detective Story- Edgar Allan Poe in The
Development of the Detective Novel (London: Peter Owen, 1969)
pp. 67-83 (p.67).
9 I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of
Madame LEspanye Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders In The Rue
Morgue in Tales of Mystery and Imagination (London: Harper
Collins, 2011) pp.319- 358 (p.349) All further references are to this
edition and will be quoted parenthetically in the body of the essay
10
11 Stephen Knight, his rich ideality: Edgar Allan Poes Detective in
Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1980) pp.39-66 (P.48)
12 But not trusting to their eyes, I examined with my own P.342,
Poe

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police. We see this with Collins Inspector Cuff and Dupin, figures who both
foreshadow Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes and his intellectual brilliance, all
three possessing a massive intellect and a brilliant analytical mind.13 The police of
The Purloined Letter are useless without his involvement as Dupin swiftly gains
possession of the compromising letter where the police repeatedly fail. The Police
are jealous of Dupins talent as the Prefect of Police is defeated [..] in his own
castle. (P.358).

II. William Russells Waters & Dickenss Detective Police Party

In Charles Dickenss A Detective Police Party, he lionizes the
extraordinary dexterity, patience and ingenuity14 that the detective police
demonstrate in their work in the public sphere. Established in 1842, the
Detective police force will have been 8 years old as Dickens was writing. In
a relatively short period of time they have impressed enough on Dickens in
order for him to write so positively about their exertions, dispelling anxieties
harbored around a spy force. He projects that their work is wholly in the
public interest and legitimizes their espionage by the suspicion that the
13 A.E Murch, The Short Detective Story- Edgar Allan Poe in The
Development of the Detective Novel (London: Peter Owen, 1969)
pp. 67-83 (p.70).
14 We not proceed to endeavor to convey to our readers some faint
idea of the extraordinary dexterity, patience and ingenuity
exercised by the Detective Police. Charles Dickens, A Detective
Police Party, in Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles
Dickens, ed. Peter Haining (London: Peter Owen, 1996) pp. 71-90.
(P.71). Originally appeared in Household Words, 18:1 (27 July 1850),
pp. 409-414 All further references are to this edition and will be
given parenthetically in the body of the essay.

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object of observation is somehow criminal, while the detectives harbor
nothing [..] slinking in their manners. (P.74) The real names of these
officers are thinly veiled - Wield is Inspector Field (who Dickens would later
represent in Bleak House), Witchem is Sergeant Whicher and Dornton is
Sergeant Thornton. Dickens wanted to translate these working class
detectives into an effective police figure for the middle class reader, although
their social classes made them unsuitable as literary and fictional heroes.
Dickens is notably ambiguous about the class of his detectives, yet Russell
demarks Waters as a fallen gentleman15 perhaps to garner sympathy with the
middle classes in the rigidly stratified class structure of 19th Century
England. Most of the first constables of the Metropolitan Police were a cross
section of working class Londoners16, yet middle class fiction needed literary
heroes from the middle class. Waters therefore provides some empathy with
the widening spectrum of Victorian middle class readers who felt that they
were most likely to be victims of crime and yet who probably were not, and
therefore had little exposure to police detectives. Russells Waters stories
were so hugely popular that is led to an immediate vogue for yellow-back
detective stories17 causing massive exposure for the Police detective.

15 Chief result of my own reckless follies compelled me to enter

the ranks of the Metropolitan Police as the sole means left me of
procuring food and raiment Russell, One Night in a Gaming House,
P.9.
16 Clive Emsley, Old Fears and a New Model, in Policing and Its
Context 1750-1870 (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp.53-75 (P.63)
17

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It was only after the disbanding of the Bow Street Patrols in 1939 that
the New Police could officially recognize the need for a police detective
department.18 Dickens clearly saw the need to replace the old and corrupt
system with the new, and by publically supporting the Detective Police
Dickens in Household Word he would have garnered huge public support
because of the popularity of his periodical. The Detective Forces
predecessors, the Bow Street Runners were paid primarily by the courts for
bringing offenders to justice but also from rewards offered by the victims
who returned their property.19 The pursuit of commerce led to the culture of
corruption, as several thief takers abused their public trust20 reducing their
reputation in the public opinion to an all time low.21 Dickens objects to the
Bow Street Runners indifferent character in A Police Detective Party, their
fraternity with thieves (ironically Waters former acquaintance with Carson
the swindler allows him to infiltrate the criminal circle and apprehend the

18 Heather Worthington, A conspicuous constabulary: Or, Why

Policeman Wear Tall Helmets In, The Rise of the Detective in Early
Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005) pp. 103-159 (p.104)
19 Clive Emsley, Detection and Prevention: the Old Police and the
New in Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 2nd edn. Ed John
Stevenson (Longman: Essex, 1996) pp.216-247 (p.220).
20 The cases of Jonathan Wild and Stephen McDaniel were both
prominent cases of abuse of power. Clive Emsley, Detection and
Prevention: the Old Police and the New in Crime and Society in
England 1750-1900 2nd edn. Ed John Stevenson (Longman: Essex,
1996) pp. 216-247 (p.220).
21 some of the more famous Runners left suspiciously large sums
of money to their wives/children in their wills Heather Worthington,
Briefing Notes Week Three: Dickenss Detective Police

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criminals) and the glee in which they parade their successes;22 never being
afraid to make the most of [sic.] themselves (P.71). Juxtaposing this
slovenly behavior with Dickenss depictions of the detectives: the resounding
bravery in cuffing the violent outlaw Tally Ho Thomson (p.81), erudite
knowledge in identifying Fikey as a forger of railway debentures and the
pursuit of Mesheck, who purchased debts from army officers with forged
bills, we can see the positive effects that this would have on public opinion
of the Detective Police. He portrays the specialist knowledge, flair and
methodology (observation, interaction, eavesdropping, checking stories and
impersonating criminals) that suggests their worth as a public entity.
Arthur Russells Recollections of a Police Officer is the first
documentation in England of the working methods of a police detective.
Russell; in a similar vein to Dickens, describes his experiences with the
police as honorable (p.vi) and backs this up by his noble depiction of
Waters, who seeks no financial recourse from Lady Everton in his
investigation of the criminal Cardon23. Waters shows immense courage in the
face of such utterly reckless ruffians24 to infiltrate the gang of criminals.
22 Apart from many of them being of very indifferent character,
and far too much in the habit of consorting with thieves and the
like, they never lost a public occasion of jobbing and trading in
mystery and making the most of themselves. Dickens, A Detective
Police Party, p.17.
23 Lady Everton need not in that case seek to animate my zeal by
promises of money recompense. Russell, One Night in a Gaming
House. p. 272.
24 William Russell, (Waters), One Night in a Gaming House, in
Recollections of a Detective Police Force (London: W.Clover and
Sons, 1856), pp 9-27. (P.20). All further references are to this
edition and will be given parenthetically in the body of the essay

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He also makes a self-sacrificing effort to save Mary Kingsfords life that puts
his own in mortal jeopardy. 25 Waters believes that the Police officers are
wrong in their assumption that Mary is complicit in an audacious robbery.
(p.204) He opts to observe and use all of his knowledge of criminography to
ensure that Mary Kingsford is proved innocent. He notably seeks a fellow
brother detective as confidant instead of a member of the regular force. This
suggests the general perception of the detective police force is that they are
more effective than the regular police. The brother detective suggests the
identities of these gamblers, blacklegs and swindlers (p.200) are numerous
and ever changing; it is only through this specialist knowledge of criminal
circles that Waters can carry on his pursuit.

III. Mr Whicher, Cuff and the Moonstone

By 1868, the publishing year of Wilkie Collinss The Moonstone, public
perception of the police was beginning to change. In his positive portrayal of
Inspector Cuff he draws on the historical figure of Inspector Whicher, one of the
most sensational detectives in the Metropolitan police force. Whichers exploits
earned him appearances in Household Words under the non-too subtle pseudonym
Sergeant Witchem26 and elements of his methodology in solving the Constance
25 William Russell, (Waters), Mary Kingsford, in Recollections of a
Detective Police Force (London: W.Clover and Sons, 1856) pp.190215 (p.203) All further references are to this edition and will be
given parenthetically in the body of the essay
26 Ronald Thomas, The Moonstone, detective fiction and forensic
science, in A Cambridge Companion To Wilkie Collins ed. Jenny
Bourne Taylor. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp
65-78 (P.69).

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Kent murder case permeate this novel.27 Despite not solving the mystery and causing
a pandemic of detective fever (P.60) around the house, Cuff is still portrayed as
being extremely talented. Franklin Blake goes as far to suggest that, when it comes
to unraveling a mystery, there isnt the equal in England of Sergeant Cuff! (P.45) He
does however make crucial mistakes as he is obstructed from following up the case
because of the difference in social class between him and the main suspects.28 It is his
failure to read the upper class woman in Rachel Verinder that sets him apart from
Dupin, as he fails to read clues correctly.
Cuff represents the fear of infiltration into the familial sphere that made the
idea of a detective police so unpopular in England. Despite his pre-eminence as a
detective29, Franklin Blake treats him haughtily, Rachel Verinder and Lady Verinder
harbor an unaccountable objection to him (146) and Betteredge wishes that he

27 The representation of Sergeant Cuff is based loosely on the real

detective sergeant Whicher; Whicher was the detective involved in
the Road Murder, which featured Constance Kentyou may
remember the broadside about her? And Collins not only borrowed
his police detective from fact, he drew on elements of the
Constance Kent Road murder as well. Of course it is not a murder
that Sgt Cuff investigates in The Moonstone, but a stolen diamond.
Nonetheless, details such as the investigation of the laundry list
the washing bookand the examination of the clothing of all the
women in the house after the discovery of a smear on the newly
painted door to Rachel Verinders bedroomare all taken from the
investigation into the Road murder as detailed in the newspapers of
the time. In that case, a nightgown was missing; Whicher believed
that Constance had murdered her little brother, got blood on her
nightgown in the process, and had then removed the stained
garment from the laundry and burned or hidden it. Heather
Worthington, Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone I Lecture

28 Martin Priestman, The Detective Whodunnit from Poe to World

War I In, Crime Fiction from Poe to the Present
(Plymouth:Northcote House, 1998) pp.5-18 (P.12).

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would choke on his victuals.30 (P.174) This illuminates some of the distrust that the
public harbored towards the police. Much like Dupin, Cuff exhibits an oppressive
power in trespassing upon the private lives of others.31 Cuff is however also depicted
as gregarious, extremely erudite and morally upstanding. He returns to solve the
mystery in grateful remembrance of the late Lady Verinders liberality (p.225),
choosing to work for honour stating that not a farthing of money is to pass for his
services despite being called in on private hire. (Ibid.) Both Cuff and Dupin
illuminate by their extraordinary skill and ratiocinative thought process the ineptness
of the regular police force. Cuff shows up the maladroitness of Sergeant Seegrave
(who despite his fine and resolute appearance proves useless) after he dismisses the
smudge on Rachel Verinders door as a trifle. (P.47) Cuff quickly demonstrates how
pivotal the smudge is in establishing the time of the crime. (P.48) D.A Miller
describes Cuff as having supervision32 seeing beyond the average human being and
thus making him extraordinary. This is perhaps Collins attempting to distinguish
between the superior qualities of Metropolitan Police in comparison with the
Municipal Forces, a fact that historian Clive Emsley supports in his text Crime and
29 When it comes to unraveling a mystery, there isnt the equal in
England of Sergeant Cuff! Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (London:
Penguin Classics, 1998) P.181 (2014) All further references are to
this edition and will be given parenthetically in the body of the
essay.
30 I shouldnt have been sorry if the best of everything had choked
him
31 Peter Thoms, Dupin and the power of Detection, In A
Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe 2nd edn, ed Kevin J Hayes.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) pp. 133-147
(P.136).
32 D.A Miller, From Roman Policier to Roman-Police: Wilkie Collinss
The Moonstone, Novel 13:2 (1980), pp.153-170 (P.154).

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Society in England 1750-1900.33 Cuff makes three predictions that are proved
absolutely correct:
You will hear something from the Yollands [] you will hear of the
three Indians again [they will be wherever Rachel is, he saysat this
point he thinks she has stolen her own diamond] you will, sooner or
later, hear something of that money-lender in London [] Mr
Septimus Luker. (p.89)
He is not however, infallible. He wrongly accuses the heroine in Rachel
Verinder and subsequently gets removed from the case. The solution of the
crime is effected by the members of the family in which it occurred34 and is
solved by the unusual misfit, Ezra Jennings through his personal experience
of opium and scientific methodology. This aligns Jennings with Dupin, and
foreshadows Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes and his medicalscientific methodology to solve crime.35
Despite all proving fallible at some point; Cuff, his inability to solve
the mystery of the Moonstone, Waters, his gambling problem that proved his
33 The London metropolitan police was more completely organized
than we should be able to establish in the rural districts Clive
Emsley, Detection and Prevention: the Old Police and the New in
Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 2nd edn. Ed John
Stevenson (Longman: Essex, 1996) pp. 216-248 (p.228).
34 Lyn Pickett, the Newgate Novel and Sensation Fiction 18301869, in The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction pp 19-40 (P.
34)
35 Ronald Thomas, The Moonstone, detective fiction and forensic
science, in A Cambridge Companion To Wilkie Collins ed. Jenny
Bourne Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp
65-78 (P.73)

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ruin; Dickens detective who gets pickpocketed on the way home, all of these
detective figures helped to boost the reputation of the police force that was
tarnished by its initial high turnover, ineffectiveness, rumors of drunkards on
the job and all round ineptness.36 All of the detectives in this essay are
depicted as gregarious, noble and motivated by the public good rather than
money. Dupin is the anomaly yet he justifies himself with his huge skill in
detection. They are also not depicted as being superior to their readers as
they were often of lower class and much similar to the background of the
criminals they were pursuing, making them unsuitable as literary and
fictional heroes at the time of writing.
WORD COUNT 2040

36 Heather Worthington, A conspicuous constabulary: Or, Why

Policeman Wear Tall Helmets In, The Rise of the Detective in Early
Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005) pp 103-159 (p.116)

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Bibliography
Primary Texts
Collins, Wilkie, The Moonstone (London: Penguin Classics, 1998)
Dickens, Charles, A Detective Police Party, in Hunted Down: The Detective Stories
of Charles Dickens, ed. Peter Haining (London: Peter Owen, 1996) pp. 71-90. (P.71).
Originally appeared in Household Words, 18:1 (27 July 1850), pp. 409-414
Allan Poe, Edgar, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, in Tales of Mystery and
Imagination (London: Harper Collins, 2011) pp 319-358
Allan Poe, Edgar, The Purloined Letter, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
(London: Harper Collins, 2011) pp 416- 437
Russell, William, One Night in a Gaming House, in Recollections of a Detective
Police Force (London: W.Clover and Sons, 1856), pp 9-27.
Russell, William, Mary Kingsford, in Recollections of a Detective Police Force
(London: W.Clover and Sons, 1856) pp.190-215
Secondary Sources
Emsley, Clive, Old Fears and a New Model, in Policing and Its Context 17501870 (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp.53-75
Emsley, Clive, Detection and Prevention: the Old Police and the New in Crime
and Society in England 1750-1900 2nd edn. Ed John Stevenson (Longman: Essex,
19961996) pp. 216-247

15
Cole, George , The Life of William Cobbett (New York: Routledge,
2011) P
Collins, Philip, The Police In Dickens And Crime, ed. L. Radzinowicz
(London & New York, MacMillan, 1965) Pp. 196-119
Knight, Stephen, His rich ideality: Edgar Allan Poes Detective in Form and
Ideology in Crime Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980) pp.39-66
Miller, D.A, From Roman Policier to Roman-Police: Wilkie Collinss The
Moonstone, Novel 13:2 (1980), pp.153-170
Murch, A.E, The Short Detective Story: Edgar Allan Poe in The Development of the
Detective Novel
Pickett, Lyn, the Newgate Novel and Sensation Fiction 1830-1869, in The
Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction pp 19-40
Priestman, Martin, The Detective Whodunnit from Poe to World War I In Crime
Fiction from Poe to the Present (Plymouth:Northcote House, 1998) pp.5-18
Robinson, David, The Local Government of the Metropolis, and other Populous
Places in Blackwoods Edinburgh magazine 29:175 (January 1831), pp. 82-104
Thoms, Peter, Dupin and the power of Detection, In A Cambridge Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe 2nd edn, ed Kevin J Hayes. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004) pp. 133-147
Thomas, Ronald, The Moonstone, detective fiction and forensic science, in A
Cambridge Companion To Wilkie Collins ed. Jenny Bourne Taylor. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp 65-78

16
Worthington, Heather, A conspicuous constabulary: Or, Why Policeman Wear Tall
Helmets In, The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) pp 103-159
Also Consulted
Gillingham, Laura, The Newgate Novel and the Police Casebook, in A Companion
to Crime Fiction, eds Charles Rezpka and Lee Horsley (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 93-104
Knight,

Stephen

Crime

Fiction

1800-2000:

Detection,

Death,

Diversity

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004)

Pringle, Patrick, Hue and Cry: The Birth of the British Police (London: Museum
Press, 1955), pp. 11-40
Pykett, Lyn, The Sensation Novel: From The Woman in White to The Moonstone
(London: Northcote House, 1994)
Trodd, Anthea, The Policeman and the Lady: Significant Encounters in MidVictorian Fiction, Victorian Studies, 27 (Summer 1984), pp. 435-460