Howard Vincent - Lawyer, Soldier and Policeman

Lawyer, Soldier and Policeman

He was called to the bar on 20 January 1876 and joined the South-Eastern Circuit in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, although he never really devoted himself to the law. On the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, the Daily Telegraph sent him to report on the Russian Army, but he was refused permission to accompany the army into the field, as the Russians were suspicious that he spoke Russian and suspected him of being a Turkish sympathiser.

In 1877 he enrolled as a student at the Faculté de Droit in Paris and investigated the Parisian police. When, later that year, the Metropolitan Police Detective Branch was hit by a scandal in which several senior officers were dismissed, Vincent was asked to report on the Paris detective system. This so impressed R. A. Cross, the Home Secretary, that in 1878 he was appointed to the new post of Director of Criminal Investigation to head the new Criminal Investigation Department. Although without the official status of Assistant Commissioner, this post was equivalent to the two Assistant Commissioners in almost every way. Vincent answered directly to the Home Secretary and not to the Commissioner, which put him in a rather strange position, as his deputy, Adolphus Williamson, and his men did answer to the Commissioner (luckily Vincent and Commissioner Sir Edmund Henderson had a good relationship). Vincent completely reorganised the department. From 1883 he also edited the Police Gazette.

In 1884, however, realising that his police post offered little chance of further advancement, he resigned to enter politics. That year he was also appointed Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Queen's Westminster Volunteers, holding the post for twenty years until 1904. He was rewarded for his police service by being appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1885.