Howard Vincent, 'Criminal Investigation'

Leslie Ward's plate for Vanity Fair presents Charles Edward Howard Vincent — founder and first Director of London's Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard — in full evening dress: white waistcoat, bow tie, dark tail coat, gloves tucked behind his back. The side-profile pose, a Ward signature, emphasises a neat ginger moustache and slightly forward-thrusting chin, lending him a terrier-like alertness appropriate to a detective chief. The caption 'Criminal Investigation' is dryly factual rather than satirical, suggesting the magazine's mild admiration for Vincent's professionalisation of the Metropolitan Police's detective branch, itself still recovering from the 1877 corruption scandal that had prompted its creation.