ABSTRACT
The author joined the Manchester police force in 1868, aged twenty-three. By 1884 he had risen to the rank of chief detective inspector, and he was appointed as a divisional superintendent in 1897. He was a notable detective nationally and well-connected in Manchester high-society, but equally adept at disguising himself and moving unseen among the working-class districts of the industrial city. He regarded one of his central achievements as helping to ‘clean up’ Deansgate in central Manchester, and suppressing beer houses which he regarded as centres of vice. As with other police, he viewed alcohol as a virtually unavoidable temptation within these districts due to the lack of alternative forms of amusement. Overall, if the language and underpinning intellectual understanding of poverty and crime are accepted as a blunt indicator of his views and opinions, he was a tough, effective but realistic and sympathetic police officer.
