Throughout most of the 19th century, crime detection in county police forces was undertaken by uniformed officers, rather than dedicated detectives. In the Lancashire Constabulary, Superintendent James Bent fully embraced ‘detective duties’, and his adventures included using some controversial detective methods to convict murderers, as well as saving thousands of children from the cold.
James Bent was born in Eccles, Salford on 3 February 1828. His father was a night watchman (a member of the ‘old’ police). At the tender age of seven, James started work in a silk mill, where his supervisor beat him repeatedly with a leather strap. Just before his 21st birthday he joined the Lancashire Constabulary, on 7 November 1848. Constable Bent was 5 feet 8 inches tall, with a fair complexion, grey eyes and sandy hair. He remained in the police force for over fifty years, rising through the ranks to superintendent. A married man with four children, he was transferred several times before being stationed at Old Trafford police station (close to my childhood home), from where he commanded the Manchester Division.
‘Always believe everybody guilty until you prove them innocent’ – James Bent, 1891
Superintendent Bent tackled many different types of crime, including theft, burglary, illegal gaming, assault and murder. On one occasion, he investigated a case of attempted murder by a hawker who tried to poison his wife, an inmate of Prestwich Lunatic Asylum. Whilst on a visit to the asylum, the itinerant salesman gave his wife some Eccles cakes, in which he had concealed a dozen pins twisted into the shape of fish hooks – fortunately she wasn’t seriously injured. Bent had the cakes analysed and found that they also contained the lead-based poison, antimony. Following his success, the police officer handed out the pins as souvenirs, to local crime enthusiasts.
Shortly afterwards, Superintendent Bent investigated another puzzling murder and employed a highly controversial method to identify the killer. Sarah Roberts, a nineteen-year-old maid, was killed in her employer’s house by an unknown assailant. In a desperate attempt to find the perpetrator, Bent resorted to having the victim’s eyes photographed, in case the attacker’s face had been imprinted on them before she died. The day before Sarah Jane’s funeral, the police lifted the coffin lid and took images of the corpse, in the hope that the figure of the murderer would appear under the examination of a powerful microscope. Despite their efforts, ‘there was nothing visible which would furnish the slightest evidence as to the features of the murderer’. Sarah Jane’s killer was never caught.
Superintendent Bent’s most high profile murder investigation was in 1876, when one of his young officers was murdered in cold blood. At midnight on 1 August, PC Nicholas Cock was fatally shot whilst walking his beat. As soon as he heard the news, Bent knew immediately who the killers were and he arrested the three Habron brothers shortly after the constable’s death. Labourer William Habron, aged 18, was convicted of the murder based on footprint evidence from the crime scene – Superintendent Bent had found the ‘most perfect footprint’ near the spot where PC Cock was killed and it matched William’s left boot. Habron received a death sentence, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. Three years later, his conviction was overturned when the real killer confessed. Superintendent Bent recounted this case in his memoirs, in which he blamed the witnesses for William Habron’s false conviction.
Although Victorian police detectives like James Bent may have been hardened law enforcers, there was a ‘soft’ side to the law too, especially as many of them had come from humble beginnings. Superintendent Bent was so touched by the plight of the people he encountered on the frozen streets of his city, that he resolved to do whatever he could to help them.
In the bitterly cold winter of 1878, Bent was walking in Gorton, in southeast Manchester, when he spotted a boy, who was about 14 years old, shivering in the snow – he was almost naked and without shoes. The child seemed to be begging on the frozen pavement and, when he saw the police officer, he looked frightened. Feeling sorry for the lad, Bent decided to take him to a nearby shop to buy him some clogs, but as he approached, the boy fled. When he returned to his own cosy home, Superintendent Bent couldn’t shake the image of the starving boy from his mind, so he decided that if couldn’t save that child, then he would try to relieve the suffering of others like him.
James Bent resolved to offer shelter from the freezing conditions to 20 children from the poorest quarters of the city. Accompanied by a sergeant, he bought some ham and beef bones to make a large quantity of soup at Old Trafford police station. All he needed now was to find some hungry children. However, this proved more difficult than expected.
A group of police officers went into ‘some of the most miserable dens that the imagination of man could conceive’, where they discovered children huddled together in the darkness shaking with cold, without even ‘a spark of fire’ to keep them warm, nor any food. Unfortunately, when the police tried to entice the children to go with them to the station, they refused as they thought they would be locked up. In the end, Superintendent resorted to bribing them with a penny each.
The first 18 children finally arrived at Old Trafford police station for soup. Their hands were so numb with cold that they could hardly hold the bowls of steaming broth. Replenished, the children ran home and spread the word. The next day, 180 hungry children appeared, and on the third day, 580 – Superintendent Bent’s soup kitchen was open for business. At the height of that freezing winter, he and his officers fed as many as 1,700 children on one day. The following year, the police purchased large boilers for making the soup and a local businessman supplied tables and benches, which were placed in the drill yard. Staffed by volunteers and off-duty police officers, one sitting could feed 320 children. Any leftovers were offered to unemployed adults.
By the end of its first decade, some one and a half million meals had been supplied, as well as thousands of pairs of clogs and sets of clothing. Soup kitchens had opened in other nearby districts, all supported by voluntary donations. In addition, every summer the police took some 2,000 of the poorest children on a boat trip and picnic. Christmas and New Year were indisputably the best times at the soup kitchen, as each child received an orange, an apple, some toffee and a new penny. In 1891, the Manchester Courier reported that the generosity of Superintendent Bent and his officers ‘prove that under the blue coat and metal buttons there beats a warm and sympathetic heart.’
James Bent died in 1901 (whilst still on active service), but his soup kitchen continued until the end of the First World War. His extraordinary initiative is now remembered by a blue plaque on the site of the Old Trafford soup kitchen.
You can find out more about how Superintendent Bent tackled the murder of PC Cock in my book, Who Killed Constable Cock?
