Constable by the Sea

by Nicholas Rhea

  We took no action in that case, except to tell the fellow that he was the centre of some attention from a lady pimper who had to stand on a chair in order to view him in his naked splendour.

  The other occasion was more serious and baffling because we came to appreciate that we had a cunning and persistent flasher on our patch. Even though he never physically touched his victims, he fitted the traditional image because he did wear an old raincoat and he did confront lone women on the streets, whereupon he would fling open his raincoat to display his impressive wares.

  He operated both in daylight and in the darkness, and his behaviour became very frightening for two reasons – first, he wore a woollen balaclava mask over his face, and secondly, he always operated in thick fog. After making his victim scream with shock, he would vanish, leaving her with the terrifying task of making her solitary way home in that same, dense, clinging fog.

  In all cases, he used the streets, and in all cases the state of his rampant ‘person’ provided ample evidence of his intention to insult a female. This meant that, when we caught him, he would be proceeded against under the provisions of the Vagrancy Act 1824. This gave the police the power to arrest him, and the magistrates’ court the power to declare him a Rogue and Vagabond!

  The link with the fog rapidly dawned upon us because whenever there descended one of those dense coastal sea frets, known locally as roaks, he would emerge. Dawn, noon or night made no difference, but he did seem to know precisely where to locate women who were either working alone or walking alone in the town. Examples included a cinema usherette walking home after work, two girls from a small factory walking home at lunchtime, a shop assistant locking up her premises, a visitor walking down the pier, a fish-and-chip-shop lady tidying up after closing time …

  In all cases, it had been foggy, and the fog horn had been wailing in the dense white blanket which suppressed most of the other sounds. We did wonder if the sombre blasting of the fog horn affected his horn in this odd way, but his activities reached a stage where something positive had to be done, and done efficiently. We had to hunt him down, rather than wait until we discovered him in action.

  But in a large area of a town, with all its streets, shops, houses, factories and other premises, and with twenty-four hours at one’s disposal, how could we begin to trace him? Other than the fog links, there were no indications that he operated to a system. It seemed he simply roamed in the fog and selected his victims at random.

  We missed him three times. One night we were positioned at several strategic locations in town, places where women would be alone. I was concealed near a local pub whose barmaid cycled home alone at closing time, but he did not strike that night. Instead he went into the suburbs and flashed himself at a woman walking her dog in the fog.

  In spite of the nature of his operations, we never publicized them in the Press; if we had, we might have stopped him for a time, but we would never have caught him. That discreet silence probably meant he was unaware of our growing dossier on him, and it would, we hoped, encourage him to be careless. We were sure that one day he would make an error.

  Another aspect of this patience was that, by our silence, we did not unduly terrify the ladies of the town. It was true that the victims did talk about it to their friends, and that some very localized rumours did spread – rumours that suggested a sexual maniac was lurking in every shadowy side street with intent to ravish every female in the town – but the lack of general publicity was to our advantage, and it prevented widespread alarm in the town.

  But due to the growing list of complaints, the Superintendent decided that a decoy must be used. A policeman was clearly of no value because our flasher would never operate if there was a man in the vicinity, so the Superintendent sought the co-operation of Scarborough Police. The Superintendent at Scarborough agreed his policewoman should help.

  The outcome was that, whenever a sea fog descended upon Strensford, we had to ring Scarborough Police and they would immediately send an available policewoman to Strensford, a matter of thirty minutes’ drive. She would patrol in plain clothes in an attempt to tempt and then trap ‘The Strensford Flasher’. It was all we could do – there was no resident policewoman at Strensford, and we felt it was not a job we dared entrust to the keenest of civilian volunteers, however well backed up she might be with our own reinforcements.

  The problem was that the Scarborough policewoman was with us only for about six hours out of the twenty-four and only on the days when she could come to Strensford. It was a forlorn hope that she would ever be in the right place at the right time. The chances of a policewoman being his victim were remote to say the least. There were tens of thousands of vulnerable women in the town.

  Sure enough, at eleven o’clock one night, an hour after she had left to return to her own station, he flashed at a waitress as she was leaving a restaurant. On another occasion, our policewoman was patrolling the area near the laundry. She had been told to patrol there, in civilian clothes and in the fog, because the laundry workers were due to depart at the end of their shift. He had never been reported in action at that location, and it was thought highly likely that sooner or later he would turn up there. But he didn’t, at least not on that occasion. He performed outside a fancy-goods shop whose manageress was quick enough to throw a cheap plaster ornament at him. But she missed. The ornament smashed on the pavement, and he vanished into the all-embracing mist.

  We could not give up now. Sooner or later someone from the town council or from the Townswomen’s Guild or some other formal organization would be making an official complaint about our lack of success. The resultant publicity would frighten him into lying low for a long time, and he’d emerge later to continue a new series of flashings. While it was true that a halt to his activities could be beneficial in the short term, we needed to catch him and arraign him before the magistrates because of all his stupidity and the terror he was creating. And we were still confident he did not know that we were aware of all his previous behaviour.

  Then one summer afternoon, soon after lunch, a thick fog descended. It completely enveloped the town for it was a chilling sea roak of very dense proportions. It saturated everything with its droplets of clinging cold moisture. People came in from the beach, and others evacuated the town centre to go to their hotels, boarding houses or homes. Some sought shelter in the shops and amusement arcades, while the cafés did a roaring trade in hot drinks.

  As the people moved about the place, their heads were covered with the droplets, their clothes were saturated and their flesh was chilled to the proverbial bone. It was a thorough pea-souper of a fog, a fog to end all fogs, and the fog horn high on the cliff was bellowing its sombre warning to ships off shore.

  But this weather was ideal for the Strensford Flasher; it was his kind of afternoon, if a little cold for long exposures, and so we urgently requested a policewoman from Scarborough. She came by train because of the fog-bound condition of the coastal road, and she arrived just before four o’clock.

  This was Monica Wilson, a nice-looking and very capable girl of about twenty-eight. In her civilian clothes she was highly attractive and she knew the town fairly well as she had been with us on some previous Flashing assignments.

  I was on duty that afternoon, and during a small conference in the muster room we discussed the Flasher’s previous venues and the action we would take if Monica called for assistance. For urgent communication we had to rely on shouts or whistles; Monica was capable of fully utilizing both.

  One thing of some importance did emerge from that conference. We learned that the Flasher had never used a venue more than once. He had zoomed in, flashed and left, never to return to the same place. This helped a great deal because it meant we could eliminate a lot of possible venues.

  Monica listened and made notes, and then suggested she patrol near the railway station. Her logic was that many office workers would be making their way to the station for the 5.35 p.m. train to Middlesbrough, and s
o would many miserable holiday-makers whose day out had been curtailed by the chilling fog. It seemed a good idea, and everyone agreed.

  She was backed by six uniformed constables, one plain-clothes detective, two sergeants and the Inspector, and we all had had our orders in the event of a call from Monica.

  We had a feeling he would arrive; there was that tingling air of expectancy as we vanished into yards, alleys, shops; we lurked behind the portals of the railway station and the bus station, and we realized that today we did have a possible timetable for what we hoped would be his last great flash.

  We were all in position by five o’clock. The train left at 5.35 p.m. and so provided Monica with a period of thirty-five minutes in which to make a name for herself by capturing the Strensford Flasher.

  It was an eerie sensation, waiting in the silence of that great cold roak, with visibility only a very few feet, but this time we were successful. Or rather, Monica was.

  We heard her shout; we rushed to her aid, and there in the fog she had arrested the Flasher. Of all the people he could have selected, he had flashed before Monica, who, unimpressed by his credentials, had rushed at him and now had him in a strong, firm grip. She was proudly marching him towards the police station.

  With her free hand, she had removed his balaclava, but I did not recognize him, and so, before a growing crowd of well-wishers and sightseers, she towed him toward the police station.

  But it was her mode of seizure which impressed everyone, because Monica, thinking fast and acting as quickly, had seized him by that collection of male equipment the Victorians had christened ‘the person’.

  He had tears in his eyes as we allowed her to steer him to his just rewards. The Strensford Flasher had flashed his last.

  Another recurring problem of a similar type was that of pimpers, those who peep secretly at courting couples or peer through gaping curtains at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of bare flesh or ladies’ underwear.

  One such man received swift punishment when he was peering into a ground-floor flat. He was intent on watching a woman undress for bed and became so excited at what he saw that he wished to share his experience with passers-by. He broke cover and beckoned a man who was walking his dog along the adjacent street, and the man, who showed some interest in this event, padded across the lawn to have a look. Having looked and understood, he promptly felled the pimper with one swift blow of a very powerful fist. The pimper had been observing that man’s rather luscious wife.

  Because there was no law which expressly forbade this obnoxious conduct, the police (if they caught a pimper) had to rely on the six-hundred-year-old Justice of the Peace Act of 1361 (34 Edw. III cl. 1360–1). This gave the magistrates a wonderfully flexible power to bind over those who were guilty of conduct which was likely to cause a breach of the peace. Many would argue that peeping through curtained windows at night was conduct which was very likely to cause a breach of the peace, as was illustrated by the judicial flattening of the pimper I’ve mentioned above. And so, if and when we caught anyone behaving in this way, we took him to court, where we presented all the salacious facts for the benefit of the magistrates, the Press and ultimately the public. And we smiled as the court publicly bound over the pimper to be of good behaviour. This usually did the trick, the resultant publicity being more than an adequate deterrent to others.

  We all reckoned Edward III was a very wise man when he made this highly flexible preventative law. It is still widely used to bind over silly people to be of good behaviour, or to keep the peace, sometimes with a penalty if they fail or refuse to abide by the court’s ruling.

  In many ways, 34 Edw. III cl. 1360–1 was tailor-made for dealing with pimpers, but there was one little snag – we had to catch the pimpers in the act.

  The one place which gave us more problems than any other, because of its compulsive attraction to pimpers, was the Nurses’ Home. Situated just behind the police station, it was a new brick-built construction designed to be the home of forty-eight single nurses who worked at Strensford Memorial Hospital. But the truth was that only a dozen or so required this kind of accommodation, and so the home was greatly under-used. Owing to their long shifts, only some six or eight nurses were present in the building at any one time, and the authorities had closed off the top two storeys.

  It was argued that eventually, when the hospital expanded to its full potential, the whole of the building would be utilized, but when I was at Strensford, there was no likelihood of this. So the upper floors were closed, and left undecorated, unheated and far from welcoming. This meant that the small band of resident nurses used the ground floor, which boasted such facilities as the kitchen, lounge, laundry and other offices.

  Because they slept at ground level, and because women are notoriously poor at properly closing their bedroom curtains, the narrow slits of light which emanated therefrom, were just too much for the town’s army of pimpers. Like moths being drawn to a flame, they crossed the lawns and pushed through shrubs in the hope they would see something more thrilling than last time. Quite often they did catch glimpses of female flesh which thrilled them, and the word got around. At any one time, several pimpers might be concealed in the shrubbery, all breathing heavily as the nurses went about their personal and private tasks.

  The police station, therefore, received regular panic calls from the matron, as a result of which patrols were organized from time to time. The girls were advised how to close their curtains and why to close their curtains, and for a short time afterwards the pimpers turned their attentions elsewhere. But, within a week or so, they were back because some curtains had been left an inch or so open, so the whole circus started anew.

  We never did catch a pimper at the Nurses’ Home, for the simple reason that its hilltop site meant that the lurking lechers could observe the approach of any constable well in advance of his arrival, and so vanish until another time. This being so, there was always the possibility that a nurse would peer out just in time to observe the timely arrival of a policeman, and so come to believe that the town’s constables were pimping. Such are the risks of police duty.

  But we did have the last laugh.

  During one weekend that summer, the whole of the county constabulary was ordered to take part in a joint military and police exercise. It was called Exercise Viking, the idea that army volunteers would attempt to enter several unspecified police stations throughout the county. It was being done so that the security procedures at all police stations would be thoroughly tested. Forty-five soldiers were to act as infiltrators and they were to begin their subversive mission at 6 a.m. one Sunday. For reasons which we failed to understand, they were to operate from a base at Strensford, a factor which meant that our police station was not a target.

  The CO came to the Superintendent to ask if there was any premises which would provide primitive accommodation for his men during that Saturday night. A church hall would be ideal, as they’d bring sleeping-bags. But the Superintendent, being a man of imagination, had a brainwave which was due somewhat to another call from the matron of the Memorial Hospital. She had a further complaint about pimpers.

  ‘Matron,’ he oozed, ‘I know that beneath that starched front of yours, there is a heart of gold. Now, I need help – can you accommodate forty-five young men next Saturday night? I need beds for them between about 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. They’ll be out by six next morning at the latest. They’re soldiers, and they’ll bring sleeping-bags.’

  ‘Soldiers? In the hospital? You must be joking! They’re not ill, are they?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of the hospital, matron. I was thinking of your Nurses’ Home, all that empty space. That would be ideal. Haven’t you a large number of empty beds?’

  ‘But I can’t mix soldiers with my nurses, in the same building!’

  ‘I thought each floor was self-contained,’ he continued.

  ‘Well, up to a point, but there are common areas, such as the lounge, kitchen and so on, and there are internal
linking staircases.’

  ‘I thought these men might help us catch those pimpers,’ he added shrewdly. ‘I can imagine a pimper finding a soldier there instead of a nurse …’

  ‘You could make use of the room, I’m sure, Superintendent, if they were not being used by my girls. With the consent of the hospital authorities, of course, but …’

  ‘I’ve accommodation for ten people in the police station, matron. We’ve good, warm, cosy beds. They used to be the single men’s quarters, so they’re very well appointed. We keep them in case of emergencies … ten men could sleep here, and thirty-five could come to your spacious home and use the upper floors.’

  ‘I cannot have mixed sexes under one roof, Superintendent. That is final. But I have had a thought. I might persuade those girls who are here on that Saturday to come down to the police station, under supervision, of course …’

  ‘I would arrange for a woman police officer to be on duty,’ he said, craftily smiling to himself.

  ‘And if I had an emergency at the hospital, your men would run any nurse to the wards, to be in attendance just as if she had been in the Home?’

  ‘Of course,’ he beamed. ‘And then all the soldiers could make use of your premises, just for one night. There is no question of feeding them, or supplying bed linen. They just need a bed to support their sleeping-bags, nothing more.’

  ‘I’ll have to put it to the nurses in question,’ she said.

  They thought it was a marvellous idea. The prospect of all those men so near was a thrill too, so the nurses, only eight of them, agreed to use the single men’s quarters at the police station for just one night while their own beds, on all floors, were utilized by the soldiers.

  The officer in charge, a young captain, was asked to visit the Superintendent, who sought assurance that there would be decorum from all ranks. The matron must not be upset.

  ‘Oh, and Captain,’ said the Superintendent. ‘There is one other matter. Over the recent months we have had bother from pimpers around that Nurses’ Home. Ask your fellows to close their curtains, eh? Especially those on the ground floor? We don’t want pimpers spying upon a lot hairy soldiers, do we?’