Detective Jerome Caminada, of the Manchester City police force, was a true Victorian super sleuth and a real-life Sherlock Holmes. A master of disguise and an expert in deduction, he tracked shady characters and nefarious criminals through his city’s dark underworld, including desperate thieves, clever con artists, expert forgers and even coldblooded murderers. A poor boy from the slums with immigrant parents, Detective Caminada rose through the ranks to become one of Manchester’s most legendary police officers.
Jerome Caminada was born on 15 March 1844 in Deansgate, Manchester, opposite the Free Trade Hall, which was built to commemorate the Peterloo Massacre, just 25 years earlier. Deansgate is one of the main thoroughfares through the city centre. Dubbed in the contemporary press as ‘Devils’ Gate’, the wide street had fashionable shops, mills and warehouses, but these soon gave way to a much more disreputable district. On both sides of Deansgate were inner-city slums, where poverty was endemic and crime rife. Caminada later described the streets of his childhood as, ‘a very hot-bed of social iniquity and vice’.
Jerome’s parents were Mary and Francis Caminada. Francis was a cabinetmaker, whose own father was Italian. Mary was a textile worker, with Irish roots. Caminada never lost his mixed cultural heritage: ‘He was in appearance a typical Italian with very strongly marked features, but he never lost his native Lancashire speech, and was in many ways very much a Lancashire man until the end of his days’.
The Caminadas had six children in total; four boys and two girls, and Jerome was the fifth. One brother died before Jerome was born and then, when he was three years old, a double tragedy shattered the family. His eldest brother, Francis, aged nine, died of enteritis and three months later, Jerome’s father followed him to the grave, leaving Mary and her four children utterly alone. Having survived his precarious childhood, and after spending time in the military and at an ironworks, Caminada joined the Manchester City Police Force in 1868, at the age of 23. His career in fighting crime had begun.
The Manchester Borough Police Force was founded in 1839, with 343 officers, for a population of 242,000. Most of the recruits were young and inexperienced like Jerome Caminada, and they earned 17 shillings a week, which was similar to that earned by a factory worker. PC Caminada was allocated to A Division and his beat was the very neighbourhood in which he had grown up, so he was well prepared for the challenges. As he set out in his uniform for the very first time, he was unaware that during his first week, he would be ridiculed, insulted and assaulted.
A policeman seldom forgets his first nights on duty…He has visions of future promotion, and being anxious to distinguish himself, his eyes and ears are on the alert to everything that passes around, for he is in search of his first case.’
PC Caminada’s first Saturday night on the beat was in February. It was a freezing cold night, with snow on the ground. Whilst patrolling Spinningfield, on the other side of Deansgate, he suddenly heard cries of, ‘Murder!’ He hurried off in the direction of the shouts and found a woman lying on the frozen pavement. A crowd had gathered round her and one person held a candle that dimly lit the scene. The snow was crimson with blood. The injured woman was known as ‘Fat Martha’ and she had been stabbed. PC Caminada summoned assistance with his police rattle and immediately the windows in the vicinity were pushed up, as the residents leaned out to see what was causing the commotion. As soon as they saw it was Martha, they closed them again and carried on with their business. However, three constables soon came to Caminada’s aid.
PC Caminada rushed to the nearest police station to get the handheld stretcher and eventually the officers managed to roll Martha. They then trudged through the falling snow to the Manchester Royal Infirmary, followed by the crowd. When the surgeon on duty realised that Martha was a ‘loose’ woman, he refused to treat her and so sent the exhausted police officers back across the city to the workhouse infirmary.
After struggling through the blizzard for another two miles with their heavy load, when they arrived at the workhouse gates, Martha regained consciousness. She sat up on the stretcher and demanded to know where they were taking her. When she realised where she was, she said, ‘Put me down you scoundrels. I’m not going to the workhouse.’ And with that, she rolled off the stretcher and disappeared into the night. As Caminada said later, the words of his companions were ‘better imagined than described.’
Martha had been stabbed by a man known as ‘Mangle Martin’, who lived with his sister, ‘Mangle Mary’ (they were the only people in the parish with a mangle). Martha had been drinking with the siblings, following Martin’s return from court where he had been fined for fighting, because of the theft of his roast dinner from the oven, while he was in the pub the previous Sunday. As the trio downed whisky, ‘a quarrelsome spirit arose amongst them’, which led to Martha’s injuries. Fortunately, in spite of PC Caminada’s efforts, she recovered and the friends were soon back out drinking again.
Undeterred by his first week, Jerome continued tackling crime on the streets of Victorian Manchester. His early cases included quack doctors, forgers, racecourse thieves and fake heir-hunters. Showing an aptitude for detective work, he was soon promoted to the detective department, which operated from Manchester Town Hall. Throughout his dazzling career, he investigated anarchists, Irish nationalists, killers and even a cross-dressing ball. In 1889, he solved the baffling case of the Manchester Cab Mystery, which catapulted him into national fame.
Detective Caminada’s fascinating cases bear all the hallmarks of the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Read about his sleuthing adventures here.
(Featured image reproduced with kind permission of the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives)