“It’s A Fair Cop” Cribb, Bucket and the Working Class Detective in Victorian Fiction

By Will Barber Taylor

Detectives, particularly those that are most recognisable to us, are not often from working class backgrounds. Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, the list is nearly endless of classic detectives. Yet, the majority of the most recognisable detectives, the ones that particularly stick in the imagination aren’t working class. Indeed, of all those I have listed neither are working class or conventional detectives — they aren’t professionals. They are all private or “consulting detectives”.

This may be said to be because neither were their authors but that is perhaps not the true explanation. In fact, it is more due to the perception, eloquently articulated by Alfred Hitchcock that “the police are boring.” Whilst this certainly isn’t true, for detective story writers of the late 19th and early 20th century there was something cumbersome about them, some inelegance that meant they were relegated to supporting roles. Whether it be Lestrade, Japp or Oates they are a mixture of plot convenience and foils for the amateur sleuth. They are usually either portrayed as bumbling incompetents or as useful in helping the “real” detectives.

This, of course, was far from the reality of early policing. Both the Detective Branch and the Uniformed Branch of the early police was largely made up of men from working class backgrounds. For most middle-class people, the idea of becoming a policeman seemed not only absurd but it garnered connotations of impropriety and associations with the dark underbelly of Victorian fiction.

This is also perhaps why amateur sleuths became so popular in fiction — they did not need to rely on catching everyday criminals but rather they could spend time cracking fiendish puzzles set by elusive genius criminals. Yet, because of this desire to focus on the amateur sleuth, depictions of realistic policemen as protagonists were few and far between. Two that stand out, whilst they are separated by genre and decades are Inspector Bucket and Sergeant Crib.

Whilst it is certainly true that Bucket is not the central focus of Bleak House or even the most pivotal supporting character, Dickens’s great talent for creating ingeniously vivid characters has ensured that Bucket sticks out in our minds. He is remarkable not just as the first of his kind but because he is truly a fish out of water. In the world of the complex legal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the intertwining questions about the past of Lady Deadlock, Bucket represents the agent of authority but he is an agent that is not a part of the world he is investigating. In contrast to the gentleman detective, Bucket is not “one” with the people he’s investigating.

In the Golden Age of detective fiction the personal relationships between the detective and the myriad cast of characters often serves as both motivation for the detective and a source of conflict because there is the worry that by discovering the truth, they will harm the relationship they have with those characters.

This distinction helps Bucket work better in Bleak House than if he had been part of the same class or was familiar with the characters. If Bucket had known Lady Deadlock personally the dramatic impetuous of him suspecting her of murder would be lost as it would have been less likely that he’d have realistically suspected her.

Had Bucket been of the same class it would not only have been unrealistic for the time but introduced a level of potential complicity into the novel which would have changed the internal dynamic and impacted Dickens’ message about the relentless nature of the law — a point he makes via Bucket and the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. Dickens is, by doing this, commenting on the changing dynamic between the elite and the law — that with a more qualified police service that is not in the pocket of the landed gentry like the thief takers of previous decades, justice will be more likely to be done. This was, of course, the theory though often not the practise. Twenty years after Dickens began serialising Bleak House this would be demonstrated by the 1877 Old Bailey trials of members of the detective branch for corruption.

This shift is further reflected upon in Peter Lovesey’s Cribb novels. The titular Cribb is a Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police assisted by his flatfooted assistant Constable Thackeray and overseen by the bumbling Chief Inspector Jowett.

In both the novels and the Granada TV adaptation, Cribb is depicted as a wily working class policeman whose intellectual curiosity leads him to become trained in dealing with explosives — a significant plot point in Invitation to a Dynamite Party — as well as an astute judge of character and evidence. This is in contrast to his superior Jowett, a bungling former minor public-school boy who takes credit for Cribb’s leaps of logical deduction.

This is utilised by Lovesey in both the TV series and the novels for comedic effect but also to highlight changes occurring within the Police. By the time of the Cribb series (1870s — 1880s) the police were seen as generally more respectable by the middle class — this was in part because more individuals like Jowett were present in its ranks. Though the majority of police officers remained from working class stock, this late 19th century rise in police officers from more privileged backgrounds helped make the police seem as much of a threat to those civilians in higher socio-economic positions.

Yet, this did not change the make up of literary detectives — they remained from the end of the 19th century until the end of the Golden Age predominantly from upper class or at least comfortably middle-class backgrounds. Indeed, whilst the Cribb novels are set during the Victorian period, they were in fact written in the 1970s. Since then most detectives in novels or on TV are from a more mixed bag of backgrounds.

The desires of readers of detective fiction has changed with growing literacy rates and an increased diversity in the overall population. Readers want a more reflective range of detectives and they now have them. However, it is worth considering the trailblazers who made the police not only more interesting but more authentic to the time they appeared. So, it is perhaps time we recognise them, tip our hats, and say “it’s a fair cop” to those two truly great literary investigators — Bucket and Cribb.