ABSTRACT
As a title, 'Crime does not pay' sounds familiar, even banal, enough. What follows, however, will seek to reveal a cryptic meaning which challenges some old, and offers ways in to some new, perspectives on detectives and how detective work developed in the Metropolitan police. In the beginning there were no detectives in the Metropolitan police. It was deliberately a preventive and not a detective force. Indeed, for the first ten years of its existence the Metropolitan Police existed alongside the forces established under stipendiary magistrates from 1792. This dualism stimulated rivalry and dysfunctional jealousies which were only brought to an end by the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839. Although police press/media relations departments are mostly the creation of the second half of the last century, the Metropolitan Police like other forces was involved directly with the press from the beginning. In fact, of course, crime reportage has been a staple of all newspapers throughout time.
