The perils to which society is exposed when clever criminals and dishonest police officers conspire together had been forcibly exemplified when the celebrated bank-frauds came to light early in the nineteenth century. But the point of elaboration to which so obvious a criminal manoeuvre could be carried was not fully realised until 1877, when the details of what is commonly called the De Goncourt case were published to the world. Harry Benson and his confederate Kurr were a brace of criminals with a real genius for high-class swindling, such as, fortunately for gullible human nature, is rarely met with. After netting immense sums of money by means of bogus betting agencies and other nefarious schemes, Benson conceived the idea of insuring his ill-gotten gains by approaching the very police-officers (Meiklejohn and Druscovitch) who were charged with the duty of tracking him down, and of corrupting them with subsidies until they became his creatures and confederates. Once the proffered premium had been accepted, there was no limit to the audacity of the subsequent proceedings. Telegrams from Paris addressed to Scotland Yard were intercepted and handed to Benson, who was forewarned by his pursuers of every move intended against him. When the partners were eventually arrested in Holland, a forged telegram, purporting to come from the English headquarters of police, was addressed to the Dutch authorities ordering the release of the prisoners; but the artifice failed and the culprits were escorted home, in the custody, strangely enough, of Druscovitch, whose dishonesty was still unsuspected. Convicted and committed to Millbank, Benson at once proceeded to "give away" the policemen he had suborned, with the result that four inspectors were arraigned on charges of conspiring to defeat the ends of justice, and of complicity with the frauds of their late employer: three out of the four were found guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, but the matter was not allowed to end there. In order to guard against any recurrence of such a scandalous breach of trust, the organization of the whole detective department was overhauled, and its administration placed in other hands. The task of reorganization was entrusted to Mr Howard Vincent,[253] who devoted his energies towards raising the tone of the then discredited detective service. In 1878 what was practically a new department was formed at Scotland Yard under the title of "The Criminal Investigation Department," consisting of a chief superintendent and about thirty superior officers at headquarters, besides a local inspector assisted by from six to fifteen detectives in each of the town divisions--the whole under the control of the Director of Criminal Investigations,[254] who takes charge of all the criminal business of the Metropolis, and whose assistance, sometimes indispensable, is often solicited by the chiefs of rural and urban constabularies throughout the country.