Police Raid - 1887

“About three o’clock yesterday afternoon a telephone message was received from the Hamilton Sewer Pipe works near the coal oil inlet saying that a gang of roughs were indulging in a cockfight or dogfight in that neighbourhood.”

Spectator March 28,1887

 Upon receipt of a call that a possible illegal activity was underway in a remote area in the far east end of Hamilton, the police swung into action by forming a posse consisting of several uniformed constables led Sergeant-Major Smith and Sergeant Prentice and accompanied by a Spectator reporter.

They all piled into the patrol wagon and proceeded hurriedly down King street on the way to the scene of the disturbance. After a long run over the rough roads in the northeastern part of the city, the party reached the sewer pipe works.

Arriving in the vicinity of the coal oil inlet, no one was to be seen in the vicinity.

Sergeant-Major Smith proceeded to distribute his force as to completely surround a large frame building overlooking the ravine in the rear of the works in which the lawbreakers were supposed to be congregated.

As later described by the Spectator reporter who accompanied the police, the police proceeded in an manner not unlike an army attack :

“Having thrown forward a strong skirmish line, the word to advance was given, and the grey-coated guardians of the peace moved stealthily forward and surrounded the building. Not a sound was heard from the interior and the attacking party began to fear that their prey had escaped when one of the officers signalled that he had discovered them, and led by the gallant Sergeant-Major they moved in a body on a low dark doorway at the end of the building.

“Passing through this door into a dark stable, they approached a small double door through which the sound of voices was plainly audible. Cautiously opening this door, the voices of men and boys could be heard, and the scuffle of heavy bodies rolling over on the floor, with occasional loud bursts of coarse laughter. Opening the door wider, the policemen found themselves in a dark passage and the long line moved slowly forward with aspect stern and gloomy stride like the policeman’s chorus in Penzance, and each man held his breath and felt for his club as they neared the foe. “

After quietly tiptoeing along a passage way towards the location from which the sounds were emanating, the drama of the moment was captured verbally by the young man from the Spectator:

“When the head of the procession reached the door, the excitement ran high in the ranks, the Sergeant-Major whispered a few hurried words of command, the men grasped their clubs, the reporter’s versatile brain began feeling around for a good, effective three word heading for his report, and stepping forward into the light, they found twenty or thirty young men and boys innocently tumbling around in the straw on the floor.

“The martial aspect of the policemen wilted, and they started to get out without letting the boys onto the snap, but they had caught sight of the uniforms, and when the party reached the open air again, they could see the affrighted youths dropping out of a back window and streaming off across the fields carrying their garments with them.”

It was a forlorn posse which slowly made its return to the police station :

 “They rode back – back, but not with the dog-fighters, and as the quiet east end flocks flocked to the windows to view the unusual sight of a patrol wagon loaded with policemen, the pitying mothers pointed out the reporter to their rising offspring as an ‘orrible example of the hardness of the transgressor’s way, and many marvelled to think that one so young should so early become such a desperado as to require ‘steen peelers to run him in.”