EL3258 THE VICTORIAN ART OF MURDER Student No.

: 1500033

Title: “There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman” 1: Sherlock Holmes,

Sweeney Todd, Susan Hopley, and the representations of law enforcement
and detection in Victorian crime fiction.
Argument: The development of institutionalised police forces in Britain
contributed towards an aestheticization of law enforcement in crime fiction,
suggesting a preference for elaborate methods of discovery, rather than
extravagant examples of crime.

The establishment of the London Metropolitan Police (MET) in 1829 indicated

towards greater austerity in law enforcement, suggesting the importance of a
visible and distinctive policing body. Despite this, the literary presentation of
public law enforcement within Victorian crime fiction is relatively marginalised,
the presence of a cohesive policing body condensed into individual figures
representative of an entire institution. Writing in 1829, Bell’s Life in London and
Sporting Chronicle described the new police force’s appearance as
‘unostentatious, and they are not recognizable, unless from close observation.’ 1
Approbating the ‘fine abled-bodied set of fellows, and who were dressed in brown
surtouts, over uniform coats’ by their attentiveness ‘to their duties, and, […] the
regularity with which they conducted their business before the Magistrates’, 2
Bell’s Life infers that the MET were not designed as individualised bringers of
justice, but a faceless body subordinate to a greater legal and moral authority. It
is this ‘facelessness’ which makes representations of law enforcement within
three examples of crime fiction, Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes tale, A
Study in Scarlet, Catherine Crowe’s Susan Hopley, and James Malcom Rymer’s A
String of Pearls, so intriguing. The rise of the detective plays at slight discord
with the functioning body of a police force, exchanging the moral and legal
obedience to an institutional hierarchy with a charismatic, attractive, and
recognisable ‘face’ of law enforcement.
When Thomas De Quincey described ‘one murder [as] better than another, in
point of good taste’, with ‘differences and shades of merit [much] as statues,
pictures, oratorios, cameos, intaglios’, he perceives murder as a stylistic,
subjective, and aesthetic expression of artistic quantification. 3 What De Quincey
generally describes as being a quality of the ‘Connoisseur’ of murder is the
ability to perceive beauty and artistry in the immoral; an appreciation of which is
comparable to enjoyment of high-brow literature, art, and music. If, as De
Quincey contends, murder was an artform, it plausibly follows that law
enforcement was a defamatory and inelegant body, prohibiting the artistic
expression found in murder scenes. Crime fiction would consequently have little
standing, presumably a genre which acted as an impediment to creativity.
Indeed, this is not wholly the case. As Dorothy Sayers has written, it is precisely
the ‘mysteries made only to be solved […] whose horrors will pass away as the
tale is told’ which contribute to the popularity of crime fiction. 4 Sayers implies
that the enjoyment of crime fiction originates from the definitiveness of
resolution and moreover, it is not the act of murder which is beautified, but the
act of detection. This paper will argue that it was the aesthetics of law
enforcement, rather than of murder, which perpetuated the popularity of crime
1 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, Ch.4. The Project Gutenberg, 2008. Ebook.
Accessed 21 Nov. 2017.http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2097/2097-h/2097-h.htm#chap04

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fiction, foregrounding a singular detective-hero against a background of official

and ‘unrecognizable’ police officers. Regrettably, consideration of the dichotomy
between the detective and the policeman is limited, marginalised in favour of the
development of the detective, sensationalist fiction, and research areas such as
gender, morality and criminality or victimisation. Analysis of law enforcement in
literature has largely been historical and factual: crime fiction, however,
extenuates the contrast been institutional and private law enforcement,
presenting the detective-protagonist as a recognisable fictional ‘hero’,
aestheticizing a fundamentally unaesthetic process.
Perhaps the most famous example of the distinguished detective is Conan
Doyle’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’, the inhabitant of flat 221B Baker Street whose
appearance has transcended both historical period and national boundary. 2 This
paper considers A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle’s first Holmes mystery, as a
tableau of the juncture between a mass policing body and the individual
detective. In comparison to A Study in Scarlet, this paper studies how Catherine
Crowe’s Susan Hopley, or The Adventures of a Maidservant and James Malcolm
Rymer’s Sweeney Todd, or The String of Pearls depict law enforcement,
questioning whether the dichotomy of the detective and the policeman seen in
Conan Doyle’s fiction is a satisfactory paradigm for fictional law enforcement.
Crowe’s and Rymer’s texts, both written and published between 1842 and 1847,
not only offer a view of the MET in its earlier years, but also depict a London
witnessing its first detective force of eight active officers. 5 The significance of this
difference in time is that by 1887 and A Study in Scarlet, the police detective was
an established figure of London society, whereas in Crowe’s and Rymer’s novels,
the detective appears more abstractedly and tentatively. The detective
characteristics seen in Sherlock Holmes are treated as personality traits,
seemingly peripheral in the scheme of seeking justice. Whilst historically the
London police symbolised increased austerity in law enforcement, Victorian
crime fiction seemingly lacks recognition of policing bodies ‘on the beat’. To be
more precise, Victorian “crime fiction” does not seem to champion the decrease
in the number of violent crimes against people committed between 1835 and the
turn of the century, nor the corresponding notion that by 1900, the number of
crimes known to the police had halved. 63 Rather, Victorian “crime fiction”
aestheticized the detective as the face of ‘white collar crime’, 4 opposed to the
association crime and immorality had with working classes. 5
2 For examples of recent adaptations of ‘Sherlock Holmes’, see Lynnette Porter (ed),
Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptions. Jefferson: McFarland &
Company, Inc. Publishers. 2012.
3 Casey’s argument posits that although the levels fluctuated, between 1835 and 1900,
crime levels were generally decreasing, from 900,000 violent attacks in 1835, to
approximately 600,000 by 1881. Alongside this, Casey notes that offenses known to the
police were also decreasing at a much steadier rate, from 400,000 in 1857 to 225,000 in
1899. The negative correlation between the number of violent crimes and crimes known
indicates, generally, towards a lesser presence of violent crime from 1835. (381)
4 This phrase is coined by Shpayer-Makov, The Making of a Policeman: A social history of
a labour force in metropolitan London 1829-1914. 130.
5 See satirical poem ‘The beggars — a new song’. Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth
Packet & Plymouth Journal (Truro, England), Saturday, November 10, 1821; pg. [1]; Issue
959. The lines describe beggars as an ‘audacious, lying, trickling, filthy, drunken crew’;
those who ‘he prayed, and whined, and swore from door to door, / That fall’n from a good
estate, his virtues kept him poor;’. These passages ironically indicate the ‘virtues’ of a
class inherently ‘criminal’.

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Crime fiction does not necessarily entirely depend on a morbid fascination with
the horrors of murder, mutilation, or familial dispute, but an attraction to the
increasingly specialised methods of detection and policing. Writing that ‘the
horrible should be subordinate to nobler elements of interest and not in itself the
main source of the effect produced’, 7 Leslie Stephen’s alludes to the process of
murder as inferior to the methods of resolution, embellishing legality with deeply
moralistic and righteous sentiment, contrary to De Quincey’s description of the
law as ‘stern and harsh: the law will not hear of […] tender motives’. 8
Yet this satisfaction of seeing justice served arose from a perpetual fear of
increasing crime. David Taylor describes the early Victorian period as one
concerned with ‘the habitual criminal’ and the characteristics of perpetrators; 9 a
fear sustained by print media. Taylor’s argument is evidenced by Bell’s Life,
whose 1825 article, ‘Increase in Crime’, described a ‘rapid progression’ of
criminality which, ‘unless there is some alteration in the system which at present
exists, in process of time the very Justices themselves will be swallowed up
amidst the flood of crime.’ 10 According to public press, the London police force
were not solely public protection, but a reassurance that justice and cultural
principles were upheld. As David Taylor continues, in the public eye, police
officers ‘had a central role to play in the remoralising of […] society’, 11 reinstating
moralistic tendency to seemingly ‘immoral’ social ‘delinquents’. Law
enforcement becomes symbolic: not simply ‘fine able-bodied […] fellows’, but a
reinstatement of British moral values.
Catherine Crowe’s Susan Hopley provides an example of the morals of law
enforcement; to some extent portraying a xenophobic attitude towards foreign
examples of policing, thus indicating towards the necessity of a body employed
in morality, justice, and austerity. When in France, Susan Hopley is detained by
the French police.
She soon felt her arm in the rough grip of an angry soldier; and then
apprehending resistance would only make matters worse, she
quietly suffered herself to be led back to the guard-house; […] her
imagination running quite astray as to their intentions, Susan wept
and entreated […]; and when, with a rudeness approaching to
brutality, they proceeded to search her person, she resisted their
efforts to lay hands on her with all the strength she could exert.12
Somewhat ironically, Crowe paints the French policing authority as instigators of
injustice and fear, the ‘facelessness’ of their group identity evoking a tense and
uncomfortable narrative of Susan’s experiences. Susan’s silence and tears,
‘utterly ignorant’ of her situation, similarly denote the ruthless and impulsive
methods of French policing; the scene arguably draws greater comparison to
sexual violation rather than an interrogation. In resisting the efforts of her
captors, Susan seeks an alternative to the brutality of the French model.
Discovering the corrupt nature of French policing – largely considered to be the
most ‘correct’ and advanced example of a police force throughout the eighteenth
century13 - Crowe highlights the juncture between law enforcement as an
objective legal authority and a protector of morality and social virtues. Paralleling
the concern expressed in Bell’s Life regarding the permeation of criminality into
figures of justice, Crowe compares the brutal nature of law enforcement to the

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violation and exploitation of an innocent female: an allegory illustrating the

contaminative influence of crime on the refinement of British civilisation.
Seeking distance between Britishness and the continental policing forces, Crowe
generates a model of injustice grounded in France: it is where Susan is
imprisoned, the sisters Caroline and Livia Cripps abandoned by villainous
husbands, and the supposedly motherly and wifely figure, Madame le Clerc,
transfigured into a criminal architect. This prejudice was also voiced by Patrick
Colquhoun in Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, first published in 1797.
Despite nearly fifty years preceding Crowe’s text, the sentiment towards France
has marked similarity, for Colquhoun refers to Paris as a ‘theatre of action’ for
the ‘horde of sharpers and villains, who heretofore resorted to [it] from every
part of Europe’.14 Paris, or France in general, seems to be used by Crowe
intentionally: its reputation as both ‘villainous’ and leading in policing systems
enables Susan Hopley’s attempts at escape to symbolise the need for an
alternative appropriate to British culture, principles, and decorum. In this way,
Crowe refrains from sensationalism. By designing a contrast between Susan’s
stolidity, described merely as ‘distressed at the obstruction thus placed in her
way’15 and the Frenchmen’s ‘roar of laughter […] the augmented violence of his
manner’,16 comparably animalistic in its ferocity, Crowe indicates the importance
of establishing a rational, modest, and democratic style of policing, ‘correct’ to
the values of the Englishman.
Dorothy Sayers likewise highlights this tension between national and European
interpretations of law enforcement. Referencing the novelist, Herr Lion
Feuchtwanger, Sayer’s contends that
great attention [is] paid by the Englishman to the external details of
men and things. The Englishman likes material exactness […]; the
German and the Frenchman, in different degrees, care little for it in
comparison with psychological truth.17
Sayers is more forthright in her opinions, pinpointing Crowe’s more abstract
notions of superlative policing: good detection and law enforcement requires
‘material exactness’ over ‘psychological truth’ and sensationalism. Echoing
Aristotle, positing a law of ‘reason free from passion’, Sayers disproves the hot-
blooded trends of foreign policing methods, suggesting a preference of rational
justice-seeking bodies as part of a belief greater than mere institutional
competition: a suggestion of the superiority of a nation’s national identity. The
French Revolution, Patrick Colquhoun contends, served only to ‘expose […] our
lives to the attack of murderers, robbers and highwaymen, as the price of
Liberty”.’18 If the price of liberty includes criminality and indeed, threats to the
welfare of British society, as Colquhoun implies, law enforcement symbolises the
reinforcement of that national identity. Together, Susan Hopley, Colquhoun’s
analysis, and Sayers’ criticism indicate towards the notion that law enforcement
became a manifestation of morality, cultural values, and national pre-eminence.
Whilst it is perhaps obvious to consider Rymer’s Sweeney Todd through
aestheticizing lenses, focusing upon the mechanism and artistry of Todd’s and
Mrs Lovett’s homicides, Rymer’s text significantly, although not so blatantly,
depicts the emergence of law enforcement as glorified practice. In the
concluding scenes of A String of Pearls, Rymer combines the rationality and

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practicality of organised policing bodies with the flamboyance and bravado of the
individual heroic figure. In a narrative which combines the skills of both police
officers and the magistrate, Sir Richard Blunt, Rymer simulates the
protection/detection dichotomy.
‘Murderer!’ shouted Sir Richard, in a voice that rang like the blast of
a trumpet through the house.
In an instant he sprang upon Sweeney Todd, and grappled him by
the throat. There was a short struggle, and they were down upon
the floor together, but Todd’s wrists were suddenly laid hold of, and
a pair of handcuffs were scientifically put upon him by the officer 19
Despite the frenzy of Todd’s arrest, the roles of the magistrate and the police
officer remain clear, symbiotically enabling the implementation of justice. Sir
Richard’s voice is ‘trumpet-like’, akin to the trumpet salute conducted in royal or
prestigious ceremony, indicating that his presence marks the arrival of justice.
Brassy, loud, and clear, Sir Richard dominates the scene, emphasising the
process of Todd’s arrest, rather than the acts of the criminal caught ‘red-handed’.
In remaining distinct from the silent, nameless police officers, Sir Richard
becomes a synecdoche of law enforcement; he is the ‘face’ of policing despite
the gesture of fastening the handcuffs being enacted by the two officers.
Describing the action of applying handcuffs as ‘scientific’ infers that it is the
disciplined nature of the institutional policeman which Rymer perceives as crucial
to the fulfilment of legal punishment: the fastening of handcuffs illustrates justice
served, merely embellished by the aesthetic of Sir Richard’s flamboyancy.
Perhaps a reason for Rymer’s embellishment of the official policeman with the
colourful character of Sir Richard is due to the somewhat mundane duties of the
London ‘bobby’. In her autobiography of Detective Inspector Jerome Caminada,
Angela Buckley describes ‘walking the beat’ as ‘patrolling a small area of the city
for 14 hours a day, at the regulation pace of two-and-a-half miles an hour.’ 20
Restricted by shift, locality, and even speed of walking, Caminada’s experiences
arguably disagree with the excitement and adrenaline associated with crime
fiction: certainly, the spectacle of Todd’s arrest would be rather more lacklustre
had the regulations of the official police force been adhered to. Rymer
aestheticizes the process of law enforcement by ascribing the success of the
arrest to the appearance of the magistrate: described as a ‘tall, gentlemanly-
looking man’21 whose height and magnetism distinguish him from the
‘unrecognizable’ body of the police, Rymer redefines institutional law enforcers
as an honourable body, and likewise, the squalid location of Fleet Street into a
repository of ‘white collar crime’.

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Whilst Rymer readily applies the personalisation of law enforcement, such a view
was not universal and arguably had greater standing in fiction rather than
periodical media. Shpayer-Makov argues that ‘on the whole [the London police]
suffered from a censorious public discourse’, 22 and, as the subject of journalistic
banter, police detectives were trivialised and demonised rather applauded as law
enforcers. An essay published in Punch in 1851 described the ‘function of these
Detectives is to investigate and expose the fraudulent adulteration of articles of
food practised by a set of scoundrels under the names of grocers […] assisted by
a microscope, […] throwing light on the fraud in question’. 23 The author’s
sarcasm, suggesting the quality of food as the only crime worthy of investigation,
scorns the detective as an over indulgence, indicative of middle-class paranoia

1. ‘One of the Detective Force’,

Cleave’s Penny Gazette of Variety and
Amusement, (London, England),
Saturday, October 15, 1842; Issue 1
and 261.
rather than genuine London society. Sweeney Todd provides the environment in
which the elaborate detective figure can thrive; a city plagued with the most
amoral criminal. Within crime fiction, therefore, the sensationalism of the crime
is matched with equally extravagant methods of law enforcement.
In 1842, marking the creation of the first London detective force, Cleave’s Penny
Gazette of Variety and Amusement published a cartoon depicting the detective
with black skin, pointed horns and angular features, and armed with an arrow-
shaped truncheon, evoking imagery more appropriate to demonism rather than
justice (Fig. 1). Unlike Punch, the cartoon recognises the detective due to his
appearance: although demonic, Cleave’s cartoon articulates the trend of using
appearance to determine character, often found in crime fiction. More intriguing
about Cleave’s depiction of the detective is its striking similarity to Conan
Doyle’s famous detective:

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‘so excessively lean […]. ‘His eyes were sharp and piercing, […];
and his thin, hawk-like nose […]. His chin, too, had the prominence
and squareness which mark the man of determination.’ 24
The angular aesthetic of the detective is somewhat ambiguous, suggesting
demonism and intellectual superiority. However, as this paper considers
aestheticization of the detective, the representation of the angular nose is
surprisingly insightful: the aquiline feature found in both Holmes and Cleave’s
Penny Gazette emphasises the observational skill, fearlessness, and authority
symbolically associated with the ‘eagle-like’ proboscis, 6 required in the art of
detection. Although Cleave’s Penny Gazette is hardly a complimentary depiction,
the angularity of the detective constructs notions of sincerity; the harshness of
appearance correlating with the resolute nature of their employment. In this way,
Conan Doyle implies that the detective is a dangerous figure in his sheer intellect
and righteousness. As a development from Rymer’s purely aesthetic magistrate
figure, Holmes is a combination of the moral attractiveness of Sir Richard, and
the technological specificity of the policeman: a combination which makes the
detective less physically attractive, but more appealing in terms of sincerity,
authority, competence, and ability to execute law enforcement successfully.
That Sherlock Holmes has come to embody more than law enforcement is
considered by Leslie Haynsworth, who views Holmes as a ‘literal embodiment of
imperialist ideology, at least insofar as it informs notions of “ideal” masculine
subjectivity.’25 When Doyle alludes to Holmes talent of being able to ‘distinguish
at a glance the ash of any known brand either of cigar or of tobacco’, 26 he
acknowledges that Holmes’ detective competence functions within a sphere
dominated by masculine pastimes. According to Catherine Hall, the definition of
‘manliness’ within Victorian culture was closely related to middle-class ideals of
financial independence. Hall contends, the ‘independent man was a man who
[…] was not subject to the will of another: notions connected with […] occupation
as key to a man’s identity’. 27 Almost mirroring Hall’s definition, Holmes describes
his occupation in terms further enhancing his individualism and success as a
detective due to his close association with ideals of masculinity and occupational
independence.
“Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the
world. I’m a consulting detective, if you can understand what that
is. […] I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No
man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of
study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have
done […].”28
In the fictional world of the Victorian detective tale, however, Holmes’ ‘natural
talents’ are not singular. Rymer’s Sweeney Todd introduces an equally ‘naturally
talented’, consulting detective.
If Mr Crotchet had no other good quality on earth, he still had that of
listening most attentively, and he never opened his mouth while the

6 See the OED Online entry for ‘aquiline, adj. (1)’, and in particular, the lines from W.
Kirkby in On Power of God in Creation of Animals, 1835: ‘The aquiline tribes, soaring in
the air beyond human ken.’ Available from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/10058?
redirectedFrom=aquiline#eid [Accessed 10 January 2018]

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magistrate related to him what had just formed the subject matter
of Mr Jeffery’s communication; […]. Mr Crotchet gave a singular and
peculiar kind of grin as he said, […] his eyes […] fixed upon the
magistrate,-
“He smugs ‘em.”29
Mr Crotchet, although a character playing little part in the overall plot of Rymer’s
mystery, functions as Sir Richard’s ‘consulting detective’, deducing Todd’s crime
from fact, suspicions, and a creative sagacity. 30 That Crotchet immediately
interprets the disappearances with homicide; an interpretive ability and
understanding of man’s affinity for sensationalism which syndicates him into the
class of the Holmesian detective: as Watson notates, Holmes’ knowledge of
‘Sensational Literature’ is ‘immense. He appears to know every detail of every
horror perpetrated in the century’31. Yet Mr Crotchet has been neglected,
overshadowed by the inventiveness of Todd’s mechanised murders. Perhaps a
reason for the neglect of Mr Crotchet is his lack of refinement in appearance.
Helen Johnston argues that attitudes towards criminality were associated with
the labouring classes and ‘immorality’: if ‘the roots of criminality were also to be
found in the examples of immorality and vice that the poor and the labouring
classes had around them’ in the form of ‘sinfulness, the lack of religion, lewd or
indecent behaviour, vice or sexual promiscuity and drunkenness’, 32 then Crotchet
draws greater comparison to the criminal rather than the detective. Described as
a ‘rough a specimen of humanity as the world could have produced […] tall and
stout, and his face looked as if, by repeated injuries, it had been knocked out of
all shape’,33 Crotchet is a juxtaposition to the ‘eagle-like’ appearance of Doyle’s
detective. Similarly, his dialectal speech opposes the intellectual eloquence of
Holmes’ diction. Combining Johnston’s argument with Hall’s contention that
manliness correlated with middle-class occupational independency, it is possible
to distinguish between a working-class and middle-class detective: social class
provided reassurance of the morality of the detective, aestheticizing the process
of detection.
It is perhaps ironic that the very methods of detection which Holmes’ epitomises
were dismissed by Captain Rathbone in Sweeney Todd as ‘precipitation’: merely
evidence of a ‘creature of impulse’ and used when ‘desperate emergencies
require desperate remedies’.34 From Watson’s narration in A Study in Scarlet, the
science of detection is theorised as attempting ‘to show how much an observant
man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in
his way’35 and although Watson initially dismisses such theory as ‘ineffable
twaddle’ designed so that ‘the uninitiated […] might well consider him as a
necromancer’,36 he places exaggerated supernaturalism on Holmes’ talent.
Nevertheless, Sweeney Todd, and Susan Hopley similarly indicate early
incarnations of deduction. Catherine Crowe’s protagonist, illustrates the ability to
use ‘accurate and systematic examination’.
Susan sat wrapt in her own meditations […] the flood of vivid
recollections […]. Her mind had always been impressed with the
notion that the visit of the stranger […] was somehow or another
connected with that catastrophe. Many a time in the silence of
night, or of an evening, when her work being done, she was seated

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in her clean cap and apron, […] the circumstances of those eventful
days pass in review before her. 37
Furthermore, in Sweeney Todd, Captain Rathbone and Colonel Jeffery similarly
demonstrate the talent attributed to Doyle’s famous detective.
“I don’t know what to think, further than that your friend Todd has
been out of town, as the state of his boots abundantly testifies.”
“They do indeed; and he has the appearance of having been a
considerable distance, for the mud that is upon his boots is not
London mud.”
“Certainly not; it is of quite a different character altogether […].” 38
In their talents of observation, memory, and intuition, Hopley, Rathbone and
Jeffery demonstrate the qualities previously attributed to Holmes’ modern
detection; ironically as if having learned from Holmes’ writings themselves. More
accurately, however, is the suggestion that the ‘science of deduction’ is integral
to the inquisitiveness of human nature, rather than a scientific phenomenon.
John Dewey writes that humanity has an innate desire to understand the physical
environment; this desire to control manifests itself as an ‘inquiry which
establishes specific correlations between minute elements.’ 39 In simpler terms,
Holmes’ skill of deduction is an amplified process of the human desire to control
and understand by forming relationships between separate pieces of information.
What is significant across the three texts is how this ability is perceived: in
Rymer’s and Crowe’s narratives, the inquisitiveness Dewey describes is rejected
on grounds of impulsiveness or insubstantiality. In a moving scene, Susan Hopley
describes,
But these speculations always terminated in the depressing sense
of her own hopelessness […] “no, I can do nothing – nothing in the
world. I should only be stirring up enemies for myself without doing
a bit of good.”40
In comparison, Rathbone and Jeffery dismiss their own irrational thoughts for a
favourable, more rational, alternative: ‘The result of placing the affair in such
hands [as Sir Richard’s] will at all events be, that, if in anything we may attempt,
we may be by force or fraud overpowered, we shall not fall wholly unavenged.’ 41
The sense of personal hopelessness and physical incapacity to enforce legal or
moral measures suggested by Rymer and Crowe, emphasises the distance
between the citizen and law enforcer, viewing the ‘power of deduction’ as mere
‘ineffable twaddle’ rather than a highly cultivated investigatory talent.
Michael Salers argues that Holmes’ distinctiveness as a literary detective is the
way in which he ‘utilized reason in a manner magical and adventurous, […]
because it imbues its objects with meaning’. 42 Identifying Holmes the creator of
meaning, Salers praises Holmes as a pseudo-deity, majestic and heroic,
emphasising the supernaturalism of his skill and exceptionality of his character.
As Salers refers to Holmes’ literary popularity, however, he perhaps overlooks
the significance of the detective as a representation of law enforcement, and
moreover, of a British institution. Holmes as the aestheticized detective
correlates with the desire for police reform depicted in Susan Hopley, idealising a
police force as a representation of national virtues. Wallwork and Dixon explain,

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‘the very term ‘nation’ straddles an ambiguity between the social and the
spatial, denoting both a people (bound together by imagined relations of
similarity) and a place (the imagined country or homeland)’: 43 in other words,
national identity is a correlation between person and place. Holmes’
predictability and regularity, ‘rare for him to be up after ten at night, and […]
gone out before I rose in the morning’, 44 is reflected in his environment: even the
muds of London are, in their ‘colour and consistence’, reliable indicators of
geography.45
Considering Sherlock Holmes as a figure of national identity has further standing
in the symbolic use of advanced technology. Just as Sweeney Todd uses the
image of the handcuffs as a reassurance of justice being served, A Study in
Scarlet uses the juxtaposition between traditional methods of arrest and modern
technology to comment on the aesthetic nature of law enforcement. In the
moments before Jefferson Hope’s arrest, Holmes engages Lestrade in an
exchange regarding his choice of handcuff technology.
“Why don’t you introduce this pattern at Scotland Yard?” he
continued, taking a pair of steel handcuffs from a drawer. “See how
beautifully the spring works?”
“The old pattern is good enough,” remarked Lestrade, “if we can
only find the man to put them on.”
[…] At that instant there was a sharp click, the jangling of metal,
and Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet again. […] Holmes’
triumphant expression and the ring of his voice, of the cabman’s
dazed, savage face, as he glared at the glittering handcuffs, which
had appeared as if by magic upon his wrists.’ 46
That Doyle emphasises the ‘jangling of metal’ suggests an association between
the arrest and the technology used to accomplish the act with dexterity. Indeed,
the jangle of the handcuff coincides with the ‘ring’ of Holmes’ voice; the
glittering metal of the handcuffs compared to the art of ‘magic’. Watson’s
narration heeds to the supernatural majesty of Holmes’ deductive skills to such
an extent that Holmes appears as brilliant and ‘glittering’ as his law enforcing
technology. Against Holmes’ thoroughly modern approach to detection and his
methods of enforcing law, Scotland Yard appear as clumsy, blundering figures of
comedic value rather than reputable police officers. Gregson, described as ‘tall,
white-faced, flaxen-haired’, and Lestrade, ‘lean and ferret-like’, define the
unaesthetic detective.47 Wanting in charisma, determination, or masculinity,
Conan Doyle’s police detectives serve only to emphasise the superior methods,
appearance, and national virtues embodied in Holmes’ characterisation. In using
Holmes as an archetype of the efficient detective, decorated with modern
inventions, Conan Doyle highlights the mechanisms of arrest and consequently,
romanticises and aestheticizes the process of law enforcement, individuating the
detective as a single heroic figure.
Much as Conan Doyle uses Lestrade and Gregson to degrade institutional
policing, Susan Hopley uses the environment of the police station, described as a
place of ‘perfect luxury’ for criminal activity and inhabited by ‘the dregs of
society’, to calculatedly discredit law enforcers. 48 When Crowe describes the way
in which Hopley’s mistress, Alicia Aytoun sits ‘with her veil drawn close to her

10
EL3258 THE VICTORIAN ART OF MURDER Student No.: 1500033

face, […] her pocket handkerchief to her eyes’, 49 she suggests that the ‘mass of
corruption and vice’ found in the office includes both the perpetrators of, and the
protectors against, crime. In suggesting a continuity between poverty, the
‘habitual criminal’ and the environment of the police station, the image of law
enforcement becomes as unaesthetic and ‘plebeian’ as the criminal. The
significance of Conan Doyle’s technological, scientific, and dexterous detective is
the reinvention of law enforcement as an attractive, middle-class profession,
aestheticizing a process previously associated with brutality, antiquity, and
ineptitude.
To bring this paper to a conclusion, the representations of law enforcement in
Victorian crime fiction appear graduated between brutal enforcers of law, and
aestheticized individuals of social justice. In this way, law enforcement is not
necessarily a consistent demonstration of effective policing bodies, but a
representation of cultural and social progression embodied in a single character
type. Throughout the three texts this paper has studied, law enforcement has
developed from a demonstration of police brutality and the need for reform, to
the creation of an individual detective and policing figure, embodying cultural
virtues and social modernity. By embracing modern scientific and technological
methods of policing, Arthur Conan Doyle helped to transform the image of the
detective policeman into a heroic literary figure, rather than, as seen in
Catherine Crowe’s text, a symbol of national faults. Aestheticizing the detective,
lenient towards flamboyant resolutions rather than sensational murders, not only
enabled the reader to associate ‘justice’ with a recognisable individual, but
revoked attitudes towards policing bodies which emphasised their ineptitude or
corrupt intent. In making the detective an attractive figure, crime fiction
developed an equilibrium where physical appearance equated policing
effectiveness: the detective figure could be relied upon to resolve the crime,
persevering heroically through the dangers of investigation. Whilst the actions of
Holmes or Sir Richard may seem melodramatic and flamboyant, such
dramatization of the detection defines their aestheticization. Although De
Quincey argued that murder could be compared to an art form, this paper
suggests that it was the process of detection which could more accurately be
described as ‘fine art’: much as the artist uncovers his canvas, the detective
elaborately uncovers the truth using methods styled by the customs and
developments of a national culture.

11
1 THE NEW POLICE ACT. (1829). Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle. Sunday 04 October,
Issue 396.
2 THE NEW POLICE ACT. (1829). Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle. Issue 396.
3 SECOND PAPER ON MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS. (1839). Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine, 46:289, 661.
4 Dorothy Sayers, ‘The Omnibus of Crime’. The Art of the Mystery Story, Howard Haycraft (ed).
(New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992), 72.
5 Haia Shpayer-Makov, The Making of a Policeman: A social history of a labour force in
metropolitan London, 1829-1914. (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002), 128.
6 These arguments are found in Christopher A. Casey, ‘Common Misperceptions: The Press and
Victorian Views of Crime’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41:3 (2011). 382 Fig. 5 and Fig. 6.
7 Leslie Stephens, ‘The Decay of Murder’, Cornhill Magazine 20 (1869). 723.
8 SECOND PAPER ON MURDER. (1839). Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 46:289, 667.
9 David Taylor, The New Police in nineteenth-century England: Crime, conflict, and control.
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 103.
10 INCREASE OF CRIME, Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, (London: England) Sunday,
January 30, 1825. Issue 153, 34.
11 David Taylor, The New Police. 102.
12 Catherine Crowe, Susan Hopley; or, The Adventures of a Maid-servant. (Edinburgh: William Tate,
1842), 215. My italics.
13 Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England 1750 -1900. (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited,
2005), 86, fn. 21.
14 Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, 1797. (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), 358.
15 Crowe, Susan Hopley. 216.
16 Crowe, Susan Hopley. 215.
17 Dorothy Sayers, ‘The Omnibus of Crime’. 75.
18 Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis. 352.
19 James Malcolm Rymer, Sweeney Todd: or, The String of Pearls. (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth
Editions Limited, 2007), 254.
20 Angela Buckley, The Real Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Story of Jerome Caminada. (Barnsley:
Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2014), 16. https://www.dawsonera.com:443/abstract/9781473834699
21 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 238.
22 Haia Shpayer-Makov, ‘Journalists and Police Detectives in Victorian and Edwardian England: An
Uneasy Reciprocal Relationship’. Journal of Social History 42.4 (2009). 965.
23 ‘The Lancet’s Detective Force’, Punch, (London: England), Saturday, February 15 1851. 65.
24 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 12.
25 Thompson and Porter, qtd. Leslie Haynsworth, ‘Sensational Adventures: Sherlock Holmes and
His Generic Past’, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 44:4 (2001). 459.
26 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 32.
27 Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2012). 140. https://books.google.co.uk/books?
id=xIorxt4X6FkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
28 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 17-19.
29 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 199.
30 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 199.
31 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 14.
32 Helen Johnston, Crime in England 1815-1880: Experiencing the criminal justice system. (Oxon:
Routledge, 2015), 14.
33 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 199.
34 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 186-7.
35 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 16
36 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 16
37 Crowe, Susan Hopley. 143.
38 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 184.
39 John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922), 148.
https://archive.org/details/humannatureandco011182mbp
40 Crowe, Susan Hopley. 148.
41 Rymer, Sweeney Todd. 187.
42 Michael Saler, ‘‘Clap if you Believe in Sherlock Holmes’: Mass Culture and the re-enchantment
of Modernity, c. 1890–c. 1940’, The Historical Journal 46:3 (2003). 604.
43 Jodi Wallwork and John A. Dixon, ‘Foxes, green fields and Britishness: On the rhetorical
construction of place and national identity’, British Journal of Social Psychology 43 (2004). 23.
44 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 11.
45 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 14.
46 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 61.
47 Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 23-5.
48 Crowe, Susan Hopley. 142.
49 Crowe, Susan Hopley. 142.

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