Thomas F. Byrnes

Inspector Thomas F. Byrnes (1842-1910) was born in Dublin, Ireland and emigrated to New York as a child. He was head of the New York City Detective Bureau from 1880 until 1895. In 1862, Byrnes became a fireman, joining Hose Company No. 21. He remained as a fireman until December 10, 1863, when he was appointed a policeman.^[1] Byrnes rose in the ranks, becoming a sergeant in 1869 and a captain in 1870. He gained renown through solving the Manhattan Savings Bank robbery of 1878. He became Detective Bureau chief in 1880.^[2] To Byrnes' credit, he turned the Police Department into a modern force. He imposed absolute secrecy on the Department. In 1882, he obtained legislative approval of changes in the Department which gave him immense power. In 1886, Byrnes instituted the "Mulberry Street Morning Parade" of arrested suspects before the assembled detectives in the hope they would recognize suspects and link them to more crimes. Also that year, his book Professional Criminals of America^[3] was published. He built up a book of photographs of criminals, which he called the "Rogues Gallery". Byrnes was renowned as an investigator. Perhaps his methods of questioning suspects contributed to his success as an investigator, since his brutal questioning of suspected criminals popularized the term "the third degree,"^[4] which was apparently coined by Byrnes.^[5] From the descriptions, the third degree as practiced by Byrnes was a combination of physical and psychological torture.^[6] There can be little doubt that Byrnes was corrupt, but whether he was more corrupt than his times is questionable. On a salary of $2,000 a year, he built a fortune of over $350,000, attributing this to sound investment advice from his Wall Street patrons. In 1891, three years after publicly criticizing London police officials on the way they handled the Jack the Ripper investigations, Byrnes was faced with a similar crime in New York. Amid mammoth publicity, Byrnes accused an Algerian, Ameer Ben Ali (nicknamed Frenchy) of the crime. Although the evidence against him was, to say the least, doubtful, he was convicted but was pardoned eleven years later.^[7] In 1895, he was compelled to resign by the new president of the New York City Police Commission, Theodore Roosevelt, as part of his drive to rid the force of corruption.^[8] In later life, Byrnes became an insurance investigator, opening a detective agency on Wall Street.

In fiction

Byrnes was featured as a fictional character in Jack Finney's time travel novel, Time and Again, and has now and then been a character in other historical novels. In addition, he was a character in the juvenile detective series, Broadway Billy, as well as a number of other detective "dime novels".^[9] Caleb Carr's detective novels featuring Alienist Dr.Laszlo Kriesler feature Byrnes but portray him as quite stupid (and eager to pin cases on innocent victims by beating confessions out of them rather than trusting forensic evidence), as well as corrupt.

References