Charles Forjett[60], who was appointed Superintendent of Police in 1855, was of Eurasian (now styled Anglo-Indian) parentage and was brought up in India. His father was an officer of the old Madras Fort Artillery and had been wounded at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. In Our Real Danger in India, which he published in 1877, some few years after his retirement, Forjett states that he served the Bombay Government for forty years, first as a topographical surveyor and then successively as official translator in Marathi and Hindustani, Sheriff, head of the Poona police, subordinate and chief uncovenanted assistant judge, superintendent of police in the Southern Maratha Country, and finally as Commissioner of Police, Bombay. He first earned the favourable notice of the Bombay Government by his reform and reorganization of the police in the Belgaum division of the Southern Maratha Country; and there is probably considerable justification for his own statement that the peace and security of the southern districts of the Presidency during the period of the Mutiny were chiefly due to his constructive work in this direction.

He owed his later success as a police-officer to three main factors, namely his great linguistic faculty, his wide knowledge of Indian caste-customs and habits, and his masterly capacity for assuming native disguises. Born and bred in India, he had learnt the vernaculars of the Bombay Presidency in his youth, and had been familiar from his earliest years with those subtle differences of belief and custom which the average home-bred Englishman knows nothing about and can never master. His black hair and sallow complexion—in brief, the strong “strain of the country” in his blood—enabled him, when disguised, to pass among natives of India as one of themselves. A story is told to illustrate his powers of disguise. He once told the Governor, Lord Elphinstone, that in spite of special orders prohibiting the entrance of any one and in defiance of the strongest military cordon that His Excellency could muster, he would effect his entrance to Government House, Parel, and appear at the Governor’s bedside at 6 a.m. Lord Elphinstone challenged him to fulfil his boast and took every precaution to prevent his ingress. Nevertheless Forjett duly appeared the following morning in the Governor’s bedroom—in the disguise of a mehtar (sweeper). With these special qualifications for police work were combined a strong will and great personal courage.

Forjett’s fame rests mainly upon his action during the Mutiny, and one is apt to overlook the great but less sensational services which he rendered to Government and the public in subduing lawlessness and crime in Bombay. As mentioned in the previous chapter, he was serving as Assistant or Deputy Superintendent of Police for some few months before Lord Elphinstone placed him in control of the force, and during that period he set himself to test the extent of the corruption which was believed to prevail widely among all ranks. By means of his disguises he managed to get into close touch with the men who were acting as go-betweens and receivers of bribes, and even dined with one of them, a high-caste Hindu, without betraying his identity. Through these men he also contrived on various occasions to test the integrity of individual members of the force. In consequence he was able in a very short time to expose the whole system of corruption and to furnish Government with the evidence they required for a drastic purging of the upper and lower grades.

That duty accomplished, he turned his attention to the criminal classes.[61] “At a time” wrote the late Mr. K. N. Kabraji in his Reminiscences of Fifty Years Ago, “when the public safety was quite insecure, when the city was infested by desperate gangs of thieves and other malefactors, Forjett had to use all his wonderful energy and acumen to break their power and rid the city of their presence. He strengthened and reformed the Police, which had been powerless to cope with them. There was a notorious band of athletic ruffians in Bazar Gate Street, consisting chiefly of Parsis. They used to occupy some rising ground, from which they swooped down on their prey. Their daily acts of crime and violence were committed with impunity, and their names were whispered by mothers to hush their children to silence.

“I may here give a personal instance of the insecurity of the times. As I was returning one night with my father from the Grant Road theatre in a carriage, a ruffian prowling about in the dark at Falkland road snatched my gold-embroidered cap and ran away with it. The road had been newly built and ran through fields and waste land. Khetwadi, as its name implies, was also an agricultural district. Grant road, Falkland road and Khetwadi were then lonely places on the outskirts of the City, and it is no wonder that wayfarers in these localities could never be secure of purse or person. But on the Esplanade, under the very walls of the Fort, occurred instances of violence and highway robbery, which went practically unchecked. Not a few of the offenders were soldiers. They used to lie in wait for a likely carriage with a rope thrown across the road, so that the horse stumbled and fell, and then they rifled the occupants of the carriage at their leisure. It was Mr. Forjett, whose vigilance and activity brought all this crying scandal to an end.”[62]

The rapid change for the better which followed Forjett’s appointment to the office of Superintendent is illustrated by the fact that whereas in 1855 only 23 per cent of property stolen was recovered, in 1856 the percentage had risen to 59. Mr. W. Crawford, “Senior Magistrate of Police and Commissioner of Police”, in his annual return of crime for the year 1859 remarked that “the total continued absence of gang and highway robbery is most satisfactory”, and drew pointed attention to the efficiency of the “executive branch of the police” under Mr. Forjett.[63] In the following year, 1860, there were only three cases of burglary, and although the value of property stolen amounted to Rs. 187,000, the police managed to recover property worth Rs. 73,000. Serious offences against the person also seem to have decreased in number during Forjett’s régime. The Senior Magistrate observed with satisfaction that “the debasing spectacle of a public execution was not called for” during the year 1859; and such records as still exist of the later years of Forjett’s administration point to the same conclusion.[64]

It must not be assumed, however, that this period lacked causes célèbres. A brief reference to a few of the more important cases will serve to show the varied character of the enquiries carried out by the Police. In 1860 a European seaman, the chief mate of the Lady Canning, was arraigned before the Supreme Court for an attempt to administer poison to the Master and three others belonging to the vessel. The chief witness for the prosecution, however, though bound by recognizances to appear at the trial, sailed from Bombay before the proceedings commenced and could not be brought back. The prisoner was therefore acquitted. In the same year a Bene-Israel and two Hindus were convicted of piracy at the Sessions and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, for having plundered a vessel at anchor off Alibag of ten thousand rupees in silver. In 1861 a Parsi contractor was committed for trial on a charge of manslaughter. He was in charge of the work of digging foundations for a new cotton-spinning mill in Tardeo (probably one of Sir Dinshaw Petit’s mills), when an accident occurred in which five men lost their lives. The contractor was held to have shown a culpable lack of caution; but the Grand Jury threw out the bill against him, and further action was abandoned. A more famous case in the same year was the Bhattia Conspiracy Trial, connected with the famous Maharaja Libel Case of 1862, in which Gokuldas Liladhar and eight other Bhattias were accused of conspiracy to obstruct and defeat the course of justice, by intimidating witnesses and preventing them from giving evidence in the libel-suit brought by Jadunathji Brijratanji Maharaj against Karsondas Mulji and Nanabhai Ranina, editor and printer respectively of the Satya Prakash.[65] Forjett and one of his European constables, George Gahagan, gave evidence before the Supreme Court of the meeting of the conspirators. The accused were found guilty, and Sir Joseph Arnould sentenced the two leading members of the conspiracy to a fine of Rs. 1000 apiece, and the rest to a fine of Rs. 500 each. There was considerable disturbance in Court when these sentences were pronounced.

Forjett served as Superintendent of Police until the end of 1863 or the early part of 1864, with a period of leave to Europe in 1860, during which his work was carried on by Mr. Dunlop, Deputy Superintendent in charge of the Harbour or Water Police.[66] In addition to his duties as head of “the executive police,” he was a member of the old Board of Conservancy (1845-1858), and later one of the triumvirate of Municipal Commissioners, established by Act XXV of 1858, which was responsible for the entire conservancy and improvement of the town of Bombay until its supersession in 1865 by a full-time Municipal Commissioner and the body corporate of the Justices. It was in this capacity that Forjett in 1863 conceived and inaugurated the project of converting the old dirty and dusty Cotton Green into what later generations know as the Elphinstone Circle. The scheme was warmly supported in turn by Lord Elphinstone and Sir Bartle Frere. The Municipal Commissioners bought up the whole site and resold it at a considerable profit in building-lots to English business firms; and by the end of 1865, two years after Forjett had proposed the scheme, the Elphinstone Circle was practically completed and ready for occupation.[67]

In addition to regular police duties, the Superintendent of Police at this date was also in charge of the Fire Brigade—an arrangement which lasted until 1888, and which accounts for the fact that an annual return of fires signed by Forjett and his successor formed a regular feature of the annual crime return submitted to Government by the Senior Magistrate of Police. The officers and men of the brigade were members of the regular police force, the European officers performing both police and fire-brigade duties and the Indian ranks being restricted to fire-duty only.[68]

During Mr. Forjett’s tenure of office, the post of Senior Magistrate was held by Mr. W. Crawford, between whom and the Superintendent of Police the most amicable relations existed. The position of both officials was considerably strengthened by the passing of Act XLVIII of 1860, amending Act XIII of 1856, which gave the police wider powers for the regulation and prevention of nuisances, and enabled the magistracy to deal promptly and effectively with offences to which the old Act of 1856 did not extend.[69]

The period of the Mutiny (1857) was fraught with anxiety for the English residents of Bombay. Between May and September rumours and hints of the probability of a rising of the native population were constantly disseminated, and more than one Indian of standing narrowly escaped arrest for treason as the result of false complaints laid before the authorities by interested parties. Among those thus secretly impeached was the famous millionaire, Mr. Jagannath Shankarshet (1804-65), who might well have succumbed to the attacks of his accusers, had the Governor, Lord Elphinstone, been less calm, circumspect and resolute. Jagannath’s guilt was firmly believed in by several influential Englishmen, who brought their views to the notice of the Governor. He instructed Forjett to investigate the matter; and the latter was able to prove that the charges were wholly without foundation.[70] The belief in Jagannath’s treasonable dealings with the mutineers in Bengal may perhaps have resulted from action taken by Forjett immediately after the outbreak of the Mutiny. In the garden of Jagannath Shankarshet’s mansion was a large rest-house or dharamshala intended for the accommodation of wandering Brahman mendicants, who during the day begged food and alms in the town. Sanyasis and Bhikshuks from all parts of India visited this rest-house, bringing all kinds of information of events in Bengal and the upper Provinces: and Forjett lost no time in placing an intelligent up-country Brahman, disguised as a mendicant, on detective duty in the dharamshala. It is quite possible that this plan may have been partly responsible for the rumour that Jagannath was in collusion with the infamous Nana Saheb. On the other hand the detective must have supplied Forjett with much of the evidence which enabled him to disprove the Hindu millionaire’s complicity in the Sepoy rebellion.[71]

At this date the military forces in Bombay comprised three native regiments and one British force of 400 men under the command of Brigadier Shortt. The native troops were implicitly trusted by their officers, and the chief danger apprehended by the Bombay Government was from the Muhammadan population of the city, which numbered about 150,000. Forjett from the first combated this view and wrote a special letter to the Governor’s Private Secretary, warning him that the main danger was from the troops. His own inquiries had convinced him that the townspeople would not rise unless the native regiments gave them the lead, and that the latter were planning mutiny. Much to the disgust of General Shortt, he made no secret of his views, declaring that the sepoys were the real potential source of disturbance and danger. Forjett’s own force consisted of 60 European police and a number of Indian constables; but on the fidelity of the latter he could not implicitly rely. Consequently, after news reached Bombay of the disasters at Cawnpore and other centres, he obtained Lord Elphinstone’s special permission to enrol a body of 50 European mounted police.[72]

Meanwhile the Muharram, which was always an occasion of anxiety and frequently of disturbance, was drawing near. The plans made by the Government for maintaining order involved the division of the European troops and police into small parties, which were posted in various parts of the town.[73] Forjett disapproved wholly of this arrangement, as no considerable body of European troops or police would be at hand to quell a mutiny of the sepoys, which was certain to break out in the neighbourhood of their barracks. He was naturally not empowered to revise the arrangement of the military forces; but he definitely informed Lord Elphinstone that he felt bound to disobey the orders for the distribution of the police. “It is a very risky thing”, said the Governor, “to disobey orders; but I am sure you will do nothing rash.”[74]

Despite the risk, Forjett disobeyed the orders and concentrated all his efforts on outwitting the plotters. He summoned a meeting of the leading Muhammadans and addressed them in very strong terms on the subject of fomenting disorder—a step which earned Lord Elphinstone’s personal commendation. Then, night after night, both before and during the celebration of the festival, he wandered about the city in disguise, and whenever he heard anyone speaking of the mutineers’ successes in other parts of India in anything like a tone of exultation, he arrested him on the spot. A whistle brought up three or more of his detective police, who took charge of the culprit and marched him off to the lock-up. The bad characters of the town were so much alarmed by these mysterious arrests, which seemed to indicate that the authorities knew all that was afoot, that they relinquished their plans for an outbreak. In his dealings with the badmash element, Forjett received valuable assistance from the Kazi of Bombay, from a Muhammadan Subehdar of police, and from an Arab with whom he used, when disguised, to visit mosques, coffee-shops, and other places of popular resort.[75]

The Muharram would have ended peacefully but for the stupidity of a drunken Christian drummer, belonging to one of the native regiments, who towards the end of the festival insulted a religious procession of Hindus by knocking down the idol which they were escorting. He was at once arrested and locked up. The men of his regiment, incensed at the action of the police, whom they detested on account of Forjett’s known distrust of themselves, hurried to the lock-up, released the drummer and carried him off, together with two police-guards, to their lines. An English constable and four Indian police-sepoys, who went to demand the surrender of the drummer and the release of their two comrades, were resisted by force. A struggle ensued, and the police had to fight their way out, leaving two of their number seriously wounded. The excitement was intense, and the sepoys of the native regiments were bent upon breaking out of their lines. On receiving news of the disturbance, Forjett galloped to the scene, leaving orders for his assistant, Mr. Edginton, and the European police to follow him. He found the native troops trying to force their way out of the lines, and their officers with drawn swords endeavouring to hold them back. At the sight of Forjett the anger of the men rose to white heat. “For God’s sake Mr. Forjett,” cried the officers, “go away”. “If your men are bent on mischief” was the reply, “the sooner it is over the better.” The sepoys hesitated, while Forjett sat on his horse confronting them. A minute or two later Mr. Edginton and fifty-four European police rode up; and Forjett cried, “Throw open the gates. I am ready for them.” The native troops were unprepared for this prompt action, and judging discretion to be the better part of valour, remained in their lines and gradually recovered their senses.[76]

But the trouble, though scotched, was not killed. A few days later Forjett erected a gibbet in the compound of the Police Office, summoned the chief citizens whom he knew to be disaffected, and, pointing to the gibbet, warned them that on the slightest sign that they meditated an outbreak, they would be seized and hanged. This forcible demonstration had the desired effect. Forjett had quashed all chance of a rising in the bazar. But the danger from the native troops remained. Forjett redoubled his detective activities and soon discovered that a number of them were regularly holding secret meetings in the house of one Ganga Prasad, who had gained the confidence of the sepoys in the triple rôle of priest, devotee and physician.[77] Forjett had this man arrested and induced him to confess all he knew. The next night he went in disguise to the house in Sonapur (Dhobi Talao) and listened to the sepoys’ conversation. He learnt that they intended to mutiny during the Hindu festival of Divali in October, pillage the city, and then escape from the Island. He reported the facts at once to the military officers, who received them with incredulity. But Forjett eventually persuaded Major Barrow, the commandant of one of the regiments, to accompany him in disguise to the house and hear the details of the plot from a convenient hiding-place. Major Barrow was convinced and reported the facts to General Shortt, who exclaimed:—“Mr. Forjett has caught us at last!” Court-martials were promptly held: the two ringleaders—a native officer of the Marine Battalion and a private of the 10th N. I.—were blown from guns on the Esplanade, and six of their accomplices were transported for life. According to James Douglas, thirty men deserved the same fate as the ringleaders, but owed their reprieve to the clemency of Lord Elphinstone.[78]

Thus by his energy, courage and detective ability did Forjett save Bombay from a mutiny of the garrison. His services had more than local effect, for in Lord Elphinstone’s opinion, if the Mutiny in Bombay had been successful, nothing could have saved Hyderabad, Poona and the rest of the Presidency, and after that “Madras was sure to go too.”[79] The formal thanks of the Bombay Government were conveyed to Forjett in a letter from the Secretary, Judicial Department, No. 1681 of May 23rd, 1859, nearly six months after the Queen’s Proclamation announcing the end of the East India Company’s rule. The words of the letter were as follows:—

“The Right Honourable the Governor in Council avails himself of this opportunity of expressing his sense of the very valuable services rendered by the Deputy Commissioner of Police,[80] Mr. Forjett, in the detection of the plot in Bombay in the autumn of 1857. His duties demanded great courage, great acuteness, and great judgment, all of which qualities were conspicuously displayed by Mr. Forjett at that trying period.”

The scars left by the Mutiny in India were barely healed, when Bombay entered upon that extraordinary era of prosperity, engendered by the outbreak of the American Civil war and the consequent stoppage of the American cotton-supply, which gave her in five years 81 millions sterling more than she had regarded in previous years as a fair price for her cotton, and which eventually led, after a period of great inflation, to the financial disasters of 1865. An enormous influx of population took place; the occupied area rapidly expanded; and the burden thrown upon the police force, which was numerically inadequate, must have been excessive. It redounds to Forjett’s credit that in spite of all difficulties, and in conjunction with his duties as a Municipal Commissioner in a time of feverish urban progress, he contrived to keep crime within reasonable bounds, and put an end finally to the hordes of ruffians who infested the skirts of the town and nightly lay in wait for passers-by.[81]

The Indian merchants of Bombay were not slow to recognise his services to the city, and showed their gratitude for the security which he had afforded to them by presenting him in 1859 with an address, and subscribing at the same time “a sum of upwards of £1300 sterling for the purpose of offering to him a more enduring token of their esteem.”[82] That was not all. After his retirement to England early in 1864, the Indian cotton-merchants sent him a purse of £1500, “in token of their strong gratitude for one whose almost despotic powers and zealous energy had so quelled the explosive forces of native society that they seem to have become permanently subdued:” while the Back Bay Reclamation Company, which was formed at the height of the share mania, allotted him five shares in his absence, and when the price reached a high point, sold them and sent him the proceeds in the form of a draft for £13,580.[83] These large sums, presented to Forjett after his final departure from India, form a striking testimony to the value of his work as a police-officer and to the great impression left by his personality upon Indians of all classes in Bombay.

Forjett’s services at the time of the Mutiny were separately acknowledged. From the public he received various addresses and a purse of £3,850, subscribed by both English and Indian residents. The Government, whose eulogy of his action has already been quoted, granted him an extra pension and also bestowed a commission in the Army upon his son, F. H. Forjett, who was in command of one of the native regiments in Bombay at the time of the great Hindu-Muhammadan riots of 1893.[84] Yet Forjett is said to have regarded himself as slighted by Government in not having received from them any decoration.[85] It certainly seems curious that so admirable a public servant should not have been rewarded with a Knighthood or admitted to one of the Orders of Chivalry. But in Forjett’s day the Government bestowed decorations very sparingly, and it may have been thought that this faithful servant of the vanished East India Company was sufficiently recompensed by the grant of a commission to his son and by permission to accept the handsome pecuniary rewards offered to him by a grateful urban population.

After his retirement, Forjett purchased a property near Hughenden, which he called “Cowasjee Jehangir Hall” after the well-known Parsi philanthropist, who gave so largely to educational and charitable institutions in Western India.[86] In 1877 he published Our Real Danger in India, in which he sought to explain the lesson of his own experience during the Mutiny and gave an account of the events of that period in Bombay. He died in London on January 27th 1890, but at what age is unknown, as the date of his birth has never been satisfactorily determined. He can hardly have been less than thirty-five years of age when he was appointed Superintendent of the Bombay Police in 1855, and was possibly older. Sir Lees Knowles of Westwood, Pendlebury, met him in 1886, and describes him at that date as “a man of middle height, with a very pale olive complexion, and highly nervous: he could not without shaking raise a glass of water to his lips.”[87] Forjett’s pension was paid in rupees, and after the more or less permanent decline in the exchange-value of the rupee, he requested the British Government on more than one occasion to permit him to draw his pension in sterling, but failed to obtain sanction to his request.

Here it is well to take leave of Charles Forjett, the first efficient chief that the Bombay Police ever had. One hesitates to imagine what might have happened in Bombay, if a man of less courage and ability had been in charge of the force in 1857: and looking back upon all that he achieved during his nine years of office, one realizes why Lord Elphinstone trusted him so implicitly, and why the Indian and European public regarded him with so much respect and admiration. His name still lives in Forjett Street, a thoroughfare of minor importance leading from Cumballa hill into the mill-area of Tardeo. He himself will live for ever in the history of the “First City in India” as the man who raised the whole tone of police administration, brought the criminal classes of Bombay for the first time under stern control, and saved the city from the horrors and excesses which must inevitably have attended a rebellion of the native garrison.