Pre-War Policing

 

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The Victoria Police Patrol Wagon in 1914, likely at a public exhibition in Beacon Hill Park. Source: Image Courtesy of the Victoria Police Historical Society. Date: 1914.

The Victoria Police Patrol Wagon in 1914, likely at a public exhibition in Beacon Hill Park.
Source: Image Courtesy of the Victoria Police Historical Society.Date: 1914.

In 1910, Victoria Police’s 54 officers, clerks and jailers were caught between the desires of different social groups as they enforced the law in the rowdy downtown core.[1] Social Gospel reformers wanting to reorder society on Christian principles urged police to crack down on criminals. Many Victorians, however, participated in illegal gambling, lotteries, and mah-jong, pai-gow, and chuckaluck in Chinatown. The police were relatively unconcerned about these activities, and so managed, rather than eradicated, crime by occasional raids.[2]  Consequently, many Victorians speculated that police officers were taking exorbitant bribes from criminals, a conclusion that the1910 Commission on Victoria City Police Commissioners did not dismiss.[3]

The locking mechanism at Victoria Gaol. Now on display at the Victoria Police Historical Society Museum, 850 Caledonia Avenue. Source: Image Courtesy of the Victoria Police Historical Society. Date: [Between 1880s and 1912]

The locking mechanism at Victoria Gaol. Now on display at the Victoria Police Historical Society Museum, 850 Caledonia Avenue.
Source: Image Courtesy of the Victoria Police Historical Society.Date: [Between 1880s and 1912]

In 1912, male prisoners were moved to a 25 acre property on Wilkinson Road in Saanich, where they were overseen by Warden John Munro.[10] During the war, the Royal Canadian Navy operated Saanich Prison Farm as a military detention barracks.[11] The treatment militia deserters received at Saanich Prison Farm paled compared to what deserters received at the front; J W Roberts, who had worked for four years as a sailor in the Royal Naval Reserve in Esquimalt before the war, was one of the twenty-five Canadians shot for desertion under the British Army Act.

Although reformers wanted to end prostitution, the police regarded it as “a necessary evil” and felt prostitutes could not be “morally reformed.” [4]  Prostitution flourished within a restricted district on Chatham and Herald Street, but the Chief of Police claimed that there were only 88 prostitutes in Victoria in 1910, down from 275 in 1900. Many women actually managed their own trade, and were vocal when they felt their rights were being impinged upon. One woman, Frances Smith, objected to having a summons issued against her, and told police they could not interfere with the brothel she operated on Discovery Street because it was quiet and caused no public disorder. The police withdrew the summons.[5]

At times, local authorities tried to cooperate, rather than conflict, with Chinese merchants by working with one of the many distinguished residents of Chinatown. For instance, Mayor Morley once approached prominent businessman Mr. Lee Mong Kow, and asked him to persuade the proprietors of gambling houses to shut them down. The police followed a different strategy. Police Chief John Langley and Inspector John Palmer traveled around Chinatown with an interpreter, and issued stern warnings that gambling would no longer be tolerated.[6] The police continued to raid secret gambling dens in wartime. After one raid in 1915, the public protested the money spent feeding and transporting the prisoners while they were in jail.[7]

Before the war, convicted criminals were sent to Hillside Gaol, a 20 acre property bordered by a stone wall 13 feet high and two feet thick.[8] The Gaol housed both prisoners facing capital punishments, and less serious offenders, such as the sailors held for 90 days under the Naval Discharge Act.[9]

By Hannah Anderson


[1]   Valerie Green, Upstarts and Outcasts: Victoria’s Not-So-Proper Past (Nanoose Bay, B.C.: Touchwood Editions, 2000), 127; “Victoria Police Department: About Us: History: Overview,” https://vicpd.ca/history (accessed July 2, 2013). Michael Kluckner, Victoria: The Way It Was (Altona, Manitoba: Whitecap Books, 1986), 99; Ron Baird, Success Story: The History of Oak Bay (Victoria, B.C.: Daniel Hefferman, James Borsman Publishers, 1979), 70. Victoria was also the home of the headquarters of B.C. Provincial Police, and Oak Bay had its own constable. Victoria Police Headquarters was in City Hall in Centennial Square.

[2]  Douglas L. Hamilton, Sobering Dilemma: A History of Prohibition in British Columbia (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2004), 63-64; Greg Marquis, “Vancouver Vice:  The Police and the Negotiation of Morality, 1904-1914,” in Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume 6, ed. David H. Flaherty, John McLaren, Hamar Foster, 242-243, 247. Nancy Kay Parker, “The Capillary Level of Power: Methods and Hypotheses For the Study of Law and Society in Late-Nineteenth Century Victoria, British Columbia,” (MA Thesis, University of Victoria, 1987), 146.

[3]   British Columbia Archives (hereafter BCA), British Columbia Commission on Victoria City Police Commissioners 1910, GR-784. Newspaper editorials were based on these rumours. The Commission found, however, that the Police Commissioners had not taken bribes.

[4]  Ibid., 4-5, 8.

[5]  Green, Upstarts and Outcasts, 113. BCA,  British Columbia Commission on Victoria City Police Commissioners 1910, GR-784, 6. In 1913, a policewoman was hired, perhaps to prevent genteel women from succumbing to this career path.  Derek Pethic, Summer of Promise: Victoria, 1864-1914 (Victoria, B.C.: Sono Nis Press, 1980), 178.

[6]  BCA,  British Columbia Commission on Victoria City Police Commissioners 1910, GR-784. This was not an uncommon occurrence. Members of the Police Board often informally made policies after speaking with the Chief, and would fail to let the other Commissioners know. It seems that the lines of authority over the police were still being negotiated in 1910.

[7]  Kluckner, Victoria, 56.

[8]  The Gaol was located where S.J. Willis Elementary now stands.  Cecil Clark, BC Provincial Police Stories, Volume Three (Nanoose Bay, B.C.: Heritage House Publishing, 1986), 42.

[9]   BCA, Victoria Gaol Office Diary, GR-308, Volume 51, page 9, 31. BCA Victoria Gaol Office Diary, GR-308, Volume 51, loose document between pages 28 and 29,  “Capacity Return for Provincial Gaol Victoria 1910-11-11.”

[10]  This building is still in use as a correctional center.

[11]  Robert Menzies, “The Making of Criminal Insanity in British Columbia: Granby Farrant and the Provincial Mental Home, Coloquitz, 1919-1933,” in Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume 6, ed. David H. Flaherty, John McLaren, Hamar Foster (Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 1995), 274.

Archives:

Victoria Police Museum and Archives.

The Maritime Museum

B.C. Archives

Greater Victoria Archives.

Sources:

Baird, Ron. Success Story: The History of Oak Bay. Victoria, B.C.: Daniel Hefferman, James Borsman Publishers, 1979.

British Columbia Archives (hereafter BCA), British Columbia Commission on Victoria City Police Commissioners 1910, GR-784.

BCA, Victoria Gaol Office Diary, GR-308, Volume 51, pages 9, 31.

BCA, Victoria Gaol Office Diary, GR-308, Volume 51, loose document between pages 28 and 29. “Capacity Return for Provincial Gaol Victoria 1910-11-11.”

Cecil Clark, BC Provincial Police Stories, Volume Three. Nanoose Bay, B.C.: Heritage House Publishing, 1986.

Green, Valerie. Upstarts and Outcasts: Victoria’s Not-So-Proper Past.  Nanoose Bay, B.C.: Touchwood Editions, 2000.

Hamilton, Douglas L. Sobering Dilemma: A History of Prohibition in British Columbia. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2004.

Kluckner, Michael. Victoria: The Way It Was. Altona, Manitoba: Whitecap Books, 1986.

Marquis, Greg. “Vancouver Vice:  The Police and the Negotiation of Morality, 1904-1914.” In Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume 6, edited by David H. Flaherty, John McLaren, and Hamar Foster, 242-273. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Menzies, Robert. “The Making of Criminal Insanity in British Columbia: Granby Farrant and the Provincial Mental Home, Coloquitz, 1919-1933.” In Essays in the History of Canadian Law Volume 6, edited by David H. Flaherty, John McLaren, and Hamar Foster, 274-312. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Pethic, Derek. Summer of Promise: Victoria, 1864-1914. Victoria, B.C.: Sono Nis Press, 1980.

Victoria Police Department. “About Us: History: Overview.” Victoria Police Department. https://vicpd.ca/history (accessed 2 July 2013).

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