After the concert, the anteroom filled with musicians. They leant their instruments against the piano box, while the librarian congratulated them. He bid them goodnight as they gradually left. Only Caminada remained and, when the gasman appeared to extinguish the lights, the detective realised that he was in a fix and needed help to get out of the box. Unable to think of a better plan, he cried out, ‘Shift these fiddles!’ his voice echoing in the confined space. Trembling and with his hair standing on end, the gasman stared at the violins in fright, before hurriedly lifting his stick to finish his nightly duties. Caminada called out again: ‘Shift these fiddles from the piano case, man, and let me out. I’m no ghost, but flesh and blood like yourself’.
With his mouth gaping open and perspiration on his brow, the gasman opened the box and watched in terror as the detective clambered out. The case solved, Caminada tried to explain the situation to the poor man, but he refused to listen and apparently never spoke of his ‘ghostly’ experience again. The fate of the light-fingered librarian is unknown.
Amongst the glitzy theatres and lively music halls of Manchester were many seedier venues of entertainment – gin shops, brothels, gambling dens and beerhouses – all of which enjoyed a flourishing trade. The Beerhouse Act of 1830 allowed anyone to brew and sell beer on purchase of a licence for two guineas, which led to the opening of numerous beerhouses, especially in the industrial north of England. Beersellers brewed barrels of beer, which they sold in the front room of their houses for a few pennies.
In the rookeries of Manchester there were several drinking dens on every street, many operating from the parlours of terraced houses. Beer was served from a rough counter and the drinkers sat at small tables on wooden benches. The rooms were dark and stuffy, the air acrid with tobacco smoke. Drinking would be accompanied by lively tunes on accordions, barrel organs and pianos, continuing into the early hours of the morning. The grander establishments held more organised entertainment, including musical and theatrical acts on a stage. Known as the ‘free and easy’, individuals would take turns to perform in an early form of variety show. The beerhouses, on the other hand, also offered less innocent activities, such as illegal prize fighting, dog fighting, gambling and prostitution.
In 1832 Dr James Kay reported in The moral and physical condition of the working classes employed in the cotton manufacture in Manchester, that there were 430 licensed tavern and innkeepers in the city and 322 gin shops, mostly in the poorest districts. Friedrich Engels recounted the aftermath of a typical night out at these establishments in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844:
On Saturday evenings, especially when wages are paid and work stops somewhat earlier than usual, when the whole working-class pours from its own poor quarters into the main thoroughfares, intemperance may be seen in all its brutality. I have rarely come out of Manchester on such an evening without meeting numbers of people staggering and seeing others lying in the gutter.
By 1853 the number of beerhouses in Manchester had risen to over 1,500 and it continued to increase throughout the century. Excessive drinking often led to crime and the police returns of 1874 reveal that drunkenness accounted for nearly a half of all offences committed. Other crimes such as breach of the peace, assault, wilful damage, and not least, prostitution, were also fuelled by alcohol consumption. The police had a real battle on their hands and Detective Caminada did not shrink from playing his part.
At 3am one Monday, Caminada was on duty. He was standing on the corner of Great Bridgewater Street, not far from the canal, when he saw two men coming towards him from an oyster shop across the street. The proprietor of the shop was known as ‘Flecky Sam’ (meaning ‘dirty’) because he always wore the same clothes. He and his pet monkey, an accomplished pickpocket, did a roaring trade after the pubs closed in the early hours.
The two intoxicated men, ‘Leeds Jemmy’ and ‘The Badger’, wished the detective a slurred ‘Good morning’, as they passed by. Caminada began to follow them and, thinking that he was a teetotaller or city missionary, the men hurled abuse at him. Caminada arrested them, but all he found in their pockets was an Irish harp halfpenny and a copper coin which had been defaced with a chisel. They were released with a caution.
Later that morning, Caminada received information about a burglary in a grocer’s shop. When he investigated, he discovered that the shop had been securely fastened and the cellar door tied with a rope. The burglars had entered the cellar via the street grid and then prised open the door, enough to throw a lighted piece of paper through the gap to burn through the rope. The grocer could not identify the robbers, but he recognised the coins that Caminada had confiscated earlier from the two drunken men. Leeds Jemmy and the Badger were both sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment and, from the dock, Jemmy vowed that he would ‘do’ for the detective on his release.
He was as good as his word and one Sunday morning, when Caminada was walking down Charter Street in the heart of the slums, Leeds Jemmy rushed out of the house of ‘Cabbage Ann’, a disreputable thief and receiver of stolen goods, and punched the detective in the head. A crowd gathered round, cheering as the two men fought in the street. In the middle of the battle, Joseph, the son of another fence, ‘One-Armed Kitty’, rushed out with a bottle and threw it at Caminada, who fortunately ducked at the right moment. The missile, however, struck the helmet of another police officer and he fell to the ground, with blood pouring from his head. Fearing that he had killed the officer, Joseph fled up a nearby alley, closely pursued by Caminada. The throng followed and surrounded the detective, punching him from all sides. Caminada somehow managed to escape, but by that time Leeds Jemmy had disappeared.
A fortnight later, Leeds Jemmy and The Badger were arrested, after breaking into a house next door to Henshaw’s Blind Asylum. They had led the police a merry dance, including diving into the Bridgewater Canal. This time, they both received seven years’ penal servitude.
Like most working-class men at the time, Detective Caminada enjoyed a drink and often invited an informant or a prospective witness to an alehouse, to exchange information over a glass of beer. Although he was resolute in his condemnation of beerhouses, he had sympathy for those who resorted to alcohol to escape their lot in life:
I yield to none in my advocacy of temperance, but I say there is a poverty in our midst which is not caused by drink. I do not say that there is not a great deal of poverty caused by drink, or greatly increased by drink, but where we have people living like this we must not be surprised if they are attracted to the glittering gin-palaces for their warmth and company. I often wonder that things are not ten times worse than they are.
Sadly, Caminada would experience the effect of alcohol closer to home, when his older brother, John Baptiste, died in 1902, of ‘disease caused by excessive drinking’.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the police had begun in earnest to tackle the problems of drink-related crime on the streets of Manchester. Detective Caminada was singlehandedly responsible for closing more than 400 disreputable beerhouses. However, many drinking establishments masqueraded as respectable social clubs but were, in reality, illegal gambling dens. To combat this Caminada masterminded a raid on the city’s clubs, which was unprecedented in scale and effectiveness, and significantly contributed to reducing alcohol-fuelled offences.
Hailed in the local newspapers as ‘The Great Raid’, this ‘masterly attack’ on illegal gambling clubs was a first in the history of the city. According to the Manchester Courier, it was also long overdue: ‘These houses have been a crying nuisance and a shameful disgrace to the city for some years’. Detective Inspector Caminada had been preparing for the raid for months, by placing informants throughout the network of 22 betting clubs. On 21 May 1885, the second day of the Newmarket Spring race meeting, when many of the gambling clubs would be in full swing, Caminada gathered 400 officers together at 1pm, ready for the raid. The operation relied on surprise and precise timing, as the clubs were connected by tele
phone and would be able to alert each other of a raid within minutes. Leading the largest contingent of 170 officers, Caminada had organised a special task force for each club headed by a detective, so that the attack would be simultaneous.
The betting clubs were usually run by one individual, often a well-to-do businessman. Each syndicate had 300 to 400 members, paying an annual subscription of between one and three shillings, many including women and children as subscribers. On the premises, there would be typically a bar selling beer and spirits, billiard tables, comfortable chairs and telegraphic equipment. As well as betting on horses, there were other gambling games, such as cards. These clubs were unregulated, unregistered and entirely illegal.
On the afternoon of 21 May, the atmosphere was tense as Caminada and his squad arrived at the first two clubs: the Rous and the Falmouth. Both clubs occupied the same premises, on the ground and first floors of a building next to the Falstaff Hotel, near the old marketplace. Caminada broke down the door and uniformed officers entered first, causing complete chaos as bookmakers and managers tried to hide their books and betting sheets. Plain-clothes detectives climbed the winding staircase, meeting the owners as they tried to leave and there was considerable damage to ‘hats and heads’ in the scramble for freedom. Several individuals tried to escape by jumping out of windows. As one unfortunate man leaped onto a skylight the roof fell in, landing him straight back in the clubroom. He then jumped through a window and sustained a serious cut to his leg.
Nearly all the windows were smashed, as 200 gamblers sought to evade the police. In a loud voice over the mayhem, Caminada read out the warrant reassuring the punters that they would not be arrested and were free to leave. Order was restored and the officials of the clubs were apprehended, while the clients made their exit. Around 20 men were taken into custody and escorted to the town hall.
Outside, the whole city had been roused and a large crowd had gathered. Excitement mounted as the police departed with their prisoners. The horde surged through the streets, shouting and jeering after Caminada and his colleagues, as they made their way to their next target. The officers swept through several more clubs during the course of the afternoon, arresting the operators. One of the largest betting houses was The Russel Club, which had about 700 members. As he entered, Caminada identified the owner and gave the order: ‘Handcuff the man in the Cardigan jacket’. The next on the list was the Devonshire. Located over a stable and accessed via a wooden stepladder from a coach house, it was a favourite haunt of the wives of workingmen and they made up a substantial number of its 370 members.
One of the worst gambling dens was the Central Club in Back Lad Lane, Deansgate. Housed in a large room that opened out onto the roof, it had a dirty floor covered in sawdust and a rickety billiard table. The dank air was blue with cigarette smoke. About 70 rough characters were there, almost all shabbily dressed. As one of the bookmakers, known as ‘Young Cheeky’, was taken into custody, he insisted on helping himself to a thick cigar and a drink, tucking a meat pie under his arm for later.
Towards the end of the day the police officers arrived at the Lancashire Club on the edge of the city. By this time the crowd was immense and the detectives led the prisoners from the club, accompanied by street musicians playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and ‘We’ll Run Them In’, from the ‘Gendarmes Duet’ by Offenbach. Local newspapers like the Manchester Courier were full of praise for the city’s police: ‘If this raid is the means of stopping even this most degrading system, it will have secured an end worthy of double such an effort’.
The ensuing police proceedings were widely reported and the Sporting Chronicle printed a rare description of Detective Caminada:
The celebrated Manchester detective, whose name and fame are known from one end of England to the other, is nothing very dreadful to look at; indeed, some people might describe him – and with truth – as a pleasant little man. He might be a trifle over 5ft 7in in height, but not much more, while his weight, at a rough guess, would be 12st or 13st. Caminada wears a moustache, and a thin fringing beard and whiskers give the impression that a razor has seldom, if ever, visited his broad, good-humoured face, while he parts his hair down the centre, and does not appear to have a particle of ill-nature about him.
Under examination Caminada’s answers come out short, sharp and decisive, with a certain “snap” about his words as if he was putting handcuffs on everything he says, to make his replies thoroughly secure. He has in every instance a clear tale to tell, with powers of terse description, and a condensed summing up of what he sees and does which are simply perfect.
On 30 July, the watch committee awarded Caminada a £50 bonus ‘in consideration of his valuable services’ and his salary was increased from £150 to £200 per annum. He had carried out one of the most successful police raids in the history of the city, but there was one other notable raid still to come, the like of which he and his fellow officers had never experienced before.
The police received a tip-off that an event ‘of an immoral character’ was about to take place in the Temperance Hall in Hulme. An unknown party, supposedly acting under the auspices of the Association of Pawnbrokers’ Assistants had hired the building, which seated 120 people, for a ball. When the chief constable obtained confidential information as to the nature of the evening’s entertainment, he instructed Detective Caminada to keep a sharp watch on the proceedings.
Late on a Friday evening, Caminada positioned plain-clothes and uniformed officers in the vicinity of the hall. At 9pm cabs began to arrive, the occupants of which were all male. Many of them were carrying portmanteaus or large tin boxes which they dragged into the building. Some were dressed in female attire, including low-cut ball gowns, whilst others were wearing theatrical costumes of a historical nature: this was no ordinary ball. Caminada counted 47 men attending the dance, 22 of whom were dressed as women. Dancing began at 10pm, accompanied by an orchestra conducted by a blind harmonium player. The windows of the hall had been screened with calico and paper to prevent onlookers, except for one that was left partially uncovered for ventilation. Caminada climbed the roof of an adjoining building where, from behind a chimneystack, he observed the dancers’ activities through the open window. The Nottingham Evening Post reported that the company was engaged in ‘grotesque dances, such as are familiar at low-class music halls’.
Satisfied that crimes were being committed, Caminada gave the signal for a raid at just before 1am. A dozen officers surrounded the building and when they were in place Caminada knocked several times at the door, until someone called out, ‘Who’s there?’ The detective replied in a feminine voice with the password ‘Sister’ and a man dressed as a Sister of Mercy opened the door. The police rushed in, only to be attacked by several of the dancers and even Caminada was hurled backwards. Quickly regaining his composure, he seized the two men nearest to him and set about making arrests. Some of the men had managed to remove their dresses in the fracas. Others tried to escape through the windows, but were foiled by police on the ground. Calling on the services of some workingmen nearby, Caminada rounded up the prisoners, who were handcuffed and taken in small groups to the town hall, along with several cab-loads of clothing as evidence.
Later that day in court, Detective Caminada confirmed the identity of the prisoners, whom he considered were mainly ‘of vicious character’. Although their friends had supplied them with ordinary clothes, some of the defendants still had dyed hair. The prosecuting barrister, Mr Cobbett, called the event ‘one of the foulest and most disgraceful orgies that ever reproached a town’. The presiding magistrate commented that he was relieved to discover that the majority of the men were from Sheffield, rather than Manchester. The participants of the cross-dressing ball were charged with misdemeanour and remanded in custody.
As male homosexual acts were then still illegal – carrying the death penalty until 1861 – illicit meetings had to be held underground. ‘Molly houses’ had been in existence since the eighteenth century. Thes
e were held in private rooms, coffee houses or taverns, where cross-dressing men could socialise in safety. Homosexual men and transvestites also met in theatrical public houses and private gentlemen’s clubs, particularly in places like the West End of London. Such a large-scale occasion as the cross-dressing ball in Manchester was quite rare, as the risk of exposure was high even though punishment for the offence, by this time, had been downgraded to imprisonment.
This unusual experience must have afforded Detective Caminada a lighter moment in his otherwise intense and often dangerous police work. Following the dazzling success of the betting club raids in 1885, he would come up against the challenging case of the Birmingham Forger. This long-running saga would lead to a personal vendetta by a witness and a series of complex trials, where the detective would eventually find himself in the dock.
Chapter Eight
The Birmingham Forger
(1886–1887)
An extremely smart capture was made yesterday in this city by Chief Detective Inspector Caminada, of the Manchester force. About noon, as the officer was standing near the Bank of England, King-street, his attention was attracted to a man who was loitering about the bank. The man appeared to Caminada to resemble an individual whose portrait appeared in last week’s Police Gazette, and who was wanted by the Birmingham police on serious charges of forgery and theft.
The Real Sherlock Holmes Page 8