Police ! By Charles Tempest Clarkson and J. Hall Richardson.
(Field and Tuer.)—There is a great deal of out-of-the-way in- formation, strung together without much apparent method, in the very discursive volume which bears the above title. After a brief account of the old watchmen and "Charlies," the authors go on to .describe the present system, dating from Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1829. Among other things, chapters are devoted to detective work, to dynamite plots, mobs, Scotland Yard, and the Home Office, and various other matters connected with the force. The authors are not very accurate, for they tell us in one place that Bow Street Station dates from 1770, and in another that Fielding, who died in 1754, was a Magistrate there. In another, they quote Dickens as writing thus : " To each division of the force is allotted two officers,"—a blunder Dickens cannot possibly have made. In describing the steps taken for the identification of .convicts, they only mention photography, and say nothing of the Continental system of anthropometry, or taking the measurements of the convict as well. There is a superstition against it at Scotland Yard, but it is undoubtedly more effective than any method in use there. Mistakes may be made about photo- graphs, but it is impossible that there should be two men re. sembling each other in feature, and having all their measurements
absolutely identical. The danger of mistake is therefore infinitely lessened.
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