Hyde Park Police

Did you know that Hyde Park used to have its own police station?

The Police Station where I served has given way to a more commodious and modern building of that name. (Rebuilt 1902.) I will, however, give a brief description of the old place as far as I am able to relate. Anyone walking by the footpath through Hyde Park from the Marble Arch to the Magazine, and when about halfway, would pass on their left-hand side a quaint one- storied old brick building, with its long verandah and grass lawn, surrounded with iron rails; this was the Police Station,(Originally used as a Military guard-room.) certainly nothing to indicate it, being so different to the uniform building we see in the streets with the familiar blue glass lamp over the door; not one out of every dozen that passed this place - non-Londoners especially - ever dreamt that it was a Police Station; but a Police Station it had been for the last forty years at least. Yes, and some of the worst of characters have been marched under its portals, and placed in the iron oblong dock, from the "gentleman got-up" thief, with his dust-coat on his arm, who moves about Society on the side of Rotten Row, to the dirty cad pickpocket who attends large demonstrations and steals all, he can, from a pocket-handkerchief upwards; the cowardly bully who lives on the nightly immoral earnings of his paramour, and who, when she cannot give him the required sum he demands, knocks her with his fist flat to the ground. These and many more of a similar type have been brought to book in that old place. Happily the Park is better lighted now, and such characters as the last two mentioned are few and far between. 
...     About thirty of us single men resided in the old station, and, antiquated as it may have appeared outside, it was clean and comfortable inside. On entering the doorway, right and left were the Inspector's (or Enquiry) Office, Charge-room and cells respectively; passing a little further on the right, is the mess kitchen or dining-room; continuing through brings you into the library, a nice spacious room, with its full-size billiard table and well-stocked book cupboards; through another door on the left brings you into the cooking kitchen; following on leads along a passage down a few steps into the yard below, where we find the stables for the horses of the Mounted Police. This was the station I made my acquaintance with in April, 1874.

Edward Owen, Hyde Park, Select Narratives, Annual Event, etc,
during twenty years' Police Service in Hyde Park, 1906

R.D.Blumenfeld in Hyde Park

Wednesday, June 29th, 1887

I spent from five o'clock until seven this evening watching the spectacle of London society airing itself in Hyde Park. There can be no more wonderful sight anywhere. Certainly there is no place on this earth where there can be seen at one time so many gorgeous equipages, such beautiful horses, and such a display of elegance. Queen Victoria, who is said not to like London, and is therefore seldom seen in the capital, has been out every day of this momentous week. She drove into the Park at a quarter-past five - all traffic being waved to one side - in a great C-springed landau with outriders and gentlemen riding alongside. Shortly after she was followed by the Princess of Wales [Alexandra] a most beautiful woman whose great popularity with the people, especially the women, is in no doubt. There were hundreds of carriages, landaus, barouches, victorias, curricles and private hansoms, and such horses! The powdered and bewigged foot- men in front and behind the vehicles, the red, blue and yellow plush of breeches, the silk stockings of the flunkeys, the flashing buckles just like a fairy tale. The great thing to do, if you are a " blood " and in the swim, is to lean over the iron rails and be recognised by milady as equipage after equipage rolls by in lordly grandeur. There was not a shabby-looking turn-out to be seen. It is one of the worst of social misdemeanours to send a carriage and pair into the Park indifferently accoutred.

The Bridge of Sighs

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS

Suicide by drowning was, I think, more common in the Victorian era - perhaps because fewer other methods were available - and bridges over canals, rivers etc. were danger areas. Even Hyde Park was not immune, as this excerpt from Andrew Wynter's journalism shows:-

"A little farther on stands the boat-house belonging to the Royal Humane Society; and in it are seen the awful-looking "drags" with which the drowning are snatched from Death's black fingers. Across the road is the establishment for recovering those who have been rescued from the water. Over the door is the bas-relief of a child attempting to kindle with his breath an apparently extinguished torch, and around it is the motto: "Lateat forsan scintilla," — Perhaps a spark still lingers. Baths, hot-water beds, electrifying machines, and mechanism by which artificial breathing can be maintained, are ranged around the rooms. .
The majority of poor creatures carried beneath these portals are persons who have sought their own destruction. The bridge across the Serpentine is the Westminster "Bridge of Sighs." Who would think this bright and sunny spot could be the haunt of suicides? They are mostly women of the better order, who have been brought to shame and abandoned —at least five women to one man being the proportion. The servants of the Society, who form a kind of detective water-police, and are always on the look-out, scarcely ever fail to mark and to watch the women who contemplate self-destruction. They know them by their usually sitting all day long without food, grieving; towards evening they move. When they find they are watched, they sometimes contrive by hiding behind the trees to elude observation, and to find the solitude they desire. The men, less demonstrative and more determined, escape detection, and but too often succeed in accomplishing their purpose. Those who have been restored to life, after hours of attention in the receiving-house, frequently repay the attendants with, "Why should I live against my will?" Nevertheless, it very rarely happens, here, at least, that a second attempt at suicide is made."