DETECTIVE DAY ' AT HOLLOWAY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue IX, 21 August 1897, Page 264

DETECTIVE DAY ' AT HOLLOWAY.

In the June number of the Windsor Magazine Alfred Aylmer gives some interesting information concerning the various methods adopted by detectives for establishing the identity of criminals. ‘lt frequently happens that a man or woman who has got into trouble, and has been arrested for some small offence, is very much “wanted” for another, infinitely more heinous; or again, that the law-breaker proves to be someone “ at large on license”—a ticket-of-leave man, making improper use of the freedom conceded to him on the express condition that he will keep out of harm. So great importance attaches to identification. Many methods are employed to compass this ; but that which is by far the most interesting and perhaps the most efficacious up to the present time is the detectives’ inspection made three times weekly at Holloway. There is a great cluster of plain-clothes policemen around the gates on the morning in question —thirty of them : twenty-two Metropolitan and six of the City police, with one superior officer, and an inspector from New Scotland Yard. They are mostly burly, well-built, straight-limbed fellows, with the square shoulders, erect bearing of men who have been drilled, and that peculiar firm footfall and rather slow-moving regulation gait of the constable on his beat. For one and all have been “uniformed,” have learnt the rndi meats of their profession in the common round of everj day police business in the streets. Their faces have also a sort of family likeness; all, with the usual variety of feature noticeable among any thirty different men, have observant eyes, set lips, and a general look of thoughtful reticence and reserve. In outward appearance, however, especially in costume, they offer strong contrasts. Each has pretty well followed his own taste in dress. They are in short, as mixed and medley a lot to look at as you would see in any crowd at a street corner, and this result is no doubt encouraged by the authorities, who wish their detectives to differ in no marked or distinctive way from the rest of the world. As watching, “shadowing,” examination and inquiry form so large a part of their duties, there is wisdom in this rule. But I question whether our London detectives are not very generally recognisable, at least by those they pursue, and this very ceremony I am about to describe must greatly help this. The parade of prisoners is now ready in the great exercising-yard of the prison It is a march past rather than a parade, for the whole body of prisoners slowly circle round and round the outer or widest circle of the stone-paved paths that are marked out from the grass—carefully regarded by the little group of reviewing or inspecting officers collected in one corner of the yard.’