A chimney fire of this kind occurred in a small terraced house at Aidensfield as I was patrolling the village. I was first upon the scene. The cottage belonged to a retired postman called Horace Hart, a widower who kept his home immaculate. It seemed he’d forgotten to arrange the annual sweeping of his chimney, and when I arrived it was well alight, belching forth magnificent clouds of dense black smoke in spite of the wet sack Horace had stuffed aloft.
He had called the Fire Brigade from a neighbour’s house and I decided to await its arrival. There was nothing anyone could do in the meantime. Ashfordly Fire Brigade comprised a happy band of part-timers who had to leave their daytime jobs or their firesides and rush to the Fire Station, praying earnestly that their Fire Appliance would start.
As this was late one evening with men about their homes I felt reasonably confident that the brigade would make it. As a crowd gathered to observe events, Horace’s chimney was puffing out huge clouds in fine style. It was a classic chimney fire.
Among the neighbours who gathered to watch was the man in the adjoining cottage. His interest was not difficult to understand, for he emerged spluttering and coughing his anger that such a thing could happen, especially as the two houses were linked. This was Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Jasper Q. Clarke, who lived there with his sister and who pompously strutted about the village organising the lives of others and complaining incessantly about the noise from children, aircraft, tractors, radio sets, ice-cream vans, cars, motorcycles and seagulls. Some bicycle bells also annoyed him.
Fortunately for him no one had complained about the noises made by Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Clarke, but his anti-social activities did excite comment among the locals. He was a smart little man with a bristling grey moustache and grey hair cut in a military style. He wore hacking jackets and cavalry twill trousers, brogue shoes and occasionally a monocle. So perfectly did he play his part that sometimes I wondered if he was a confidence trickster pretending to be a retired army officer, but his credentials seemed genuine.
His presence among the observers led to comments about black deposits falling upon his garden and house and the dangers thus presented to his property by the inferno in the chimney right next to his. He kept darting into his own house to check it wasn’t ablaze, and it seemed his sister was away for the evening. He had reason to worry, however, because these cottage fireplaces were back to back, with their chimneys rising parallel with one another. They emerged in one chimney stack, albeit with separate chimney-pots.
With the anxious little man pacing up and down, the village awaited the arrival of Ashfordly Fire Brigade. When it arrived twenty minutes later the chimney was still belching black clouds and Horace continued to dampen the sack which filled the base of his stack. Clearly, the internal timbers or sooty deposits on the ledges inside were still burning, and this was dangerous.
Unfortunately for Horace it seemed that Thirsk Races had been held that evening, and every member of the Fire Brigade save one had taken the opportunity to watch a local horse. It had won, and they had gone out celebrating; they had not yet returned. The Fire Brigade therefore arrived in the person of one man, and he was driving the appliance.
He knew it was a chimney fire before embarking upon this trip, and was prepared to tackle the blaze alone, an idea that held some hope. In my capacity as local constable, however, I offered my help, casually mentioning my RAF Fire Fighting Course and the instruction received at Police Training School.
The fireman, a butcher from Ashfordly, said he appreciated my offer of assistance. He would have to operate the machinery of the fire appliance and asked if I could manage the hose. Proudly, I said I knew how to hold a nozzle and knew all about shouting ‘Water On’ and ‘Water Off’.
Thus the fire-fighting team was prepared. After inspecting the seat of the fire the fireman announced that something inside the chimney was ablaze. This confirmed our diagnosis. It might be sooty accumulations or it might be some exposed timbers, either of which needed water to extinguish it. Horace was therefore advised to remove all his furniture from the room in question, because the resultant mess would be pretty ghastly. Aided by the onlookers we had the room clear within five or ten minutes, and removed the sack from the chimney. This created some extra smoke and served only to feed the fire.
Because I was operating the hose I had to climb the ladder of the fire appliance with the hose, and direct the jet down the chimney. Through a series of switches on the fire appliance a ladder crept skywards until it came to rest very close to the belching chimney. My duty was simple — I had to climb the ladder in the manner taught me at the RAF Fire Fighting Course and direct the nozzle down Horace’s chimney until the fire was extinguished. It was a simple task.
I began my journey. The ladder shook and trembled as I climbed in the approved style, clutching the hose in the recommended manner. Finally I reached the chimney stack. Thick smoke was pouring out and my eyes began to smart. There was barely room to breathe among the swirling clouds as they moved about me, sometimes totally enveloping me and sometimes letting me bathe in the glow of the many lights below. In spite of the heat from the chimney and in spite of the effects of the smoke and in spite of the darkness and danger, I managed to seize the nozzle in the correct hold and direct it into the chimney-pot. My eyes were aflame by this time, smarting and running with tears, I was coughing violently, my hands were burning and I turned my head to avoid the thick, rising mass of muck and soot.
But the all-important nozzle was in position. I was ready. Half closing my eyes against the swirling, stinking cloud I reached out and by touch confirmed that the nozzle was firmly inside the chimney-pot. I shouted, ‘Water On’.
There would be a short wait as the water rose to the occasion, and through smarting eyes, I looked down upon the little crowd below. Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Clarke had rushed indoors yet again to check his house and all eyes were upon me. Lights and torches beamed their rays in my direction, and from my vantage point I could see the powerful jet of water thrusting its way along the hose. I watched mesmerised as the flat empty hose thickened rapidly and grew round as the water approached the nozzle. It straightened out the bends and jerked the hose into life, forcing it to kick against the strain. At that precise moment the wind changed direction and I was totally smothered in a moving mass of smoke. The hose was bucking in my grasp.
When this happens the force is tremendous and threatens to jolt the nozzle from your grasp. It must be held firm at all costs, otherwise it can leap from your grasp and cause severe injuries to anyone nearby. Blinded by the smoke and heat I hung on for all I was worth. The nozzle moved within the chimney-pot — I felt it slide under the pressure, but the smoke concealed it. I clung to it as it writhed and bucked in my tight grip, and listened as the powerful jet gushed down the chimney. Once it was pouring out of the nozzle I settled down to hold it tightly in position, my eyes smarting and my lips dry with the dirt and heat.
Then there was a tremendous commotion below.
Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Jasper Q. Clarke ran out of his house, smothered from head to toe in a thick black horrible mess. His eyes were the only white spots about him as they peered beseechingly from the mask fate had donated him.
I had put the hose down the wrong chimney.
Chapter 8
And many a burglar I’ve restored to his friends and his relations.
SIR WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT — ‘Trial by Jury’
*
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) achieved operatic success when he worked with Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842-1900), but it was the former who coined the oft-repeated phrase about what happens when ‘the enterprising burglar’s not aburgling’. Not many other writers feature the burglar in their works — they favour murderers and confidence tricksters, highwaymen or kidnappers and in fact the burglar is frequently portrayed as a simple fellow clad in a striped sweater bearing the word ‘swag’ across the front. In spite of the burglar’s lack of ap
peal as a creature of drama, his deeds are dark and sinister because he breaks into the castle of man and the plain fact is that burglars are not universally loved by their public.
None the less, the burglar was greatly loved by lawyers. He made money for them because the nature of the crime lent itself to many hours of legal wrangling, discussion, fee-earning and decision-making in High Courts. He also provided legal authors with a good deal of fascinating copy, while the constable in his infancy must learn and understand the intricacies of this crime.
For hundreds of years burglary could be perpetrated only at night, and this fact alone gave it a certain stature. Today things have changed, and burglary may be committed at any time of the day or night.
When I joined the police service, therefore, burglary was a night-time crime and had to be prevented at all costs. If a burglary was committed on one’s beat it was considered akin to allowing a murder to happen or a rape to occur, consequently every police officer did everything in his power to prevent burglaries.
There is a certain fascination in the history of the crime. Ancient legal writers tell how houses, churches and even the walls of cities and their gates were legally protected from being breached by villains who wished to steal. Chester and York are examples of such cities. The earliest known name for the crime was burgh-breche and its Latin name around AD 1200 was burgaria. Today we would not regard breaking into cities through their walls as burglary, but it was once part of this old crime. By the Middle Ages, however, it had come to be applied only to dwelling-houses, although for a time churches were encompassed within its provisions because they were regarded as the dwelling-house of God.
Such thinking pervaded through the development of criminal law and led to all manner of beautifully argued High Court decisions. Such discussion became facetiously known as legal fiction, and included arguments such as whether a tent could be a dwelling-house or whether movable structures like caravans and houseboats, or even flats, were dwelling-houses. A building could be considered a dwelling-house even if no one lived in it at the time, but the main point of the crime, when I joined the Police Force, was that it could only occur between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., the period between those times being regarded as ‘night’.
Because burglary was regarded so seriously, night-duty constables paid great attention to the likelihood of burglars being abroad on their beats, and a thorough knowledge of the ingredients of the crime was drummed into us, we had to recognise a burglar when we saw one, not because of his striped sweater and bag of swag, but because of his ability to commit acts which were within the wording of the legal definition of burglary. The legal definition was completely changed by the Theft Act 1968 but I can still recall the old one which created such gorgeous decisions in court.
It was provided by Section 25 of the Larceny Act 1916 and read as follows:
‘Every person who in the night,
(i) breaks and enters the dwelling-house of another with intent to commit any felony therein; or
(ii) breaks out of the dwelling-house of another having
(a) entered the said dwelling-house with intent to commit any felony therein; or
(b)having committed any felony in the said dwelling-house shall be guilty of felony called burglary and on conviction thereof liable to imprisonment for life.’
That definition was instilled into us at Training School so we would never forget it; and it was an interesting crime to study. There was a very helpful mnemonic which helped us to learn its provisions. It was: IN BED.
We learned the provisions of the crime by writing those initial letters in this manner:
I — Intent.
Intent to commit any felony therein.
N — Night.
Must be committed at night, i.e., between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.
B — Breaking.
There must be a breaking, either constructive or actual. Mere entry without a breaking does not constitute burglary.
E — Entry.
The house has to be entered either by inserting some part of the body like a hand or an instrument like a hook on a stick.
D — Dwelling-house.
It had to be a dwelling-house of another, not a shop, factory, school, church or other building. These are all catered for in other sections of the Larceny Act 1916. Houses broken into during the daytime are separate offences.
That, then, was burglary as learned by young constables until 1968 and as we patrolled our beats during those long night-hours we were always alert for the possibility of houses being burgled or were seeking incidents which would exercise the practical side of our instruction.
For example, did ‘breaking’ include climbing down a chimney, or was the lifting of a cellar-flap within that meaning? In one case the burglar got struck in a chimney because it was of inadequate proportions and he had to be pulled clear. Certainly entry via a chimney was ‘entry’ for burglaries, but could it, in all honesty, be regarded as a ‘break in’?
If a person smashed a window in order to climb in, that is actual breaking, but the legal fiction of criminal law was stretched to its limit by calling some entries constructive breaking. For example, if our enterprising burglar tricked his way into a house or bullied his way in and thus got someone else to open the doors and break the continuity of the building, that was known as constructive breaking. We were told that this properly fell within the maxim ‘qui facit per alium facit per se’, which was probably very important. But suppose the criminal climbed through a window that had not been glazed, or simply opened a door which was not locked? And suppose he broke into a cupboard?
These, and many more imponderables, exercised our minds at Training School and provided marvellous ammunition for examination questions. Having studied all aspects of the crime and learned the value of all the words in the definition we were presented with baffling questions — we were asked about evil-doers who broke into houses with an intent to rest their weary limbs and not commit felonious deeds therein. Were they burglars? Should we consider some other form of nocturnal illegality? One enterprising felon said he’d entered a house at night to see the ghosts which were said to haunt it, while another said he’d entered to attack a horse. The latter raised the question of whether a stable is a dwelling-house. It might be, if it is attached to a dwelling-house… but the fellow did not intend to kill the horse, but merely to stop it winning a race. Is that felony? And suppose a boy broke into a house to wind up all the clocks?
Thus our mental gymnastics continued in the shape of examination questions and finally, having studied past centuries of case law, we were cast out to apprehend real burglars.
In truth they were very few. If such offences did occur they were usually recorded as ‘housebreaking’ because it is not easy to prove beyond all doubt that the crime had been committed during the night. Apart from making the police station statistics less alarming by revealing a spate of illegal nocturnal ‘enterings’ at the houses of others it was far easier to prove that a housebreaker had paid a visit. For example, if a householder woke up at 6.05 a.m. to find his house had been broken into during the night, how could he prove it had occurred before 6 a.m.? Not a chance! It might have happened at 6.02 a.m., so it was recorded as housebreaking, an infinitely less serious breach of the law. By this method, the police prevented many burglaries.
On my rural beat at Aidensfield I could ponder upon Gilbert and Sullivan’s burglars and cut-throats, gurgling brooks and merry village chimes, but I did wonder if such evil-doers ever paid visits to my beat. The first indication that they did visit me came one lovely summer evening.
I was patrolling in Eltering, performing one of my periodic night-shifts in the small market town and made my midnight point outside the post office. It was known to the telephone operators who occupied the first floor that policemen stood outside that kiosk at approximately midnight. Sometimes, if a friendly operator was on duty, we would be invited in for a cup of tea, always taking care to dodge the sergeant.
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On such an evening, therefore, I was studiously loitering beside the silent kiosk when the upper-floor window opened and a man’s head appeared, framed in the light.
“Officer,” he said, not recognising me as a local policeman. “There’s burglars, I think.”
“Burglars!” Horror made little mice with chilly feet run up and down my spine. “Where?”
“Either in the Youth Hostel or at the Youth Club,” he said. “I’m not sure which.”
My mind rattled off the definition. A Youth Hostel could be a dwelling-house, but a youth club? Could that be classified as a store? School? Warehouse? Or even a dwelling-house if someone lived on the premises?
“Why can’t you be sure?” I asked from below.
“They’ve a party line,” he said. “They’ve knocked the telephone off the hook and I can hear them — they’re talking and I’ve heard money rattling.”
“And you don’t know which place it is?”
“No,” he said, and at that moment Sergeant Bairstow appeared adventitiously from the shadows.
“Trouble, Nicholas?” he asked.
“Burglars, Sergeant,” and I gave a brief account of my puzzling conversation with the telephone operator, who still dangled from the upper window, waiting for instant action from us.
“We can’t ring them to find out, can we?” He rubbed his chin.
“No, Sergeant,” I agreed with this diagnosis.
“So it’s either the Youth Club or the Youth Hostel,” he said, still rubbing his chin. “And they’re still inside, eh? This will be great, Nicholas, if we catch ’em red-handed. Right, we’ll investigate,” and he turned his eyes heavenwards. The operator had, in the meantime, vanished inside, but returned to announce, “They’re still there, and they’re smashing something open. I can hear them.”
Constable on the Prowl (The Constable Nick Series Book 2) Page 15