In the year 1855 the post of Senior Magistrate was held by Mr. Corfield, Messrs. T. Thornton and N. W. Oliver being respectively Junior and Third Magistrates. In that year the public outcry against the police had become so great, and the general insecurity had been reflected in so constant a series of crimes against person and property, that Lord Elphinstone’s government determined to institute a searching enquiry into the whole subject. With this object they appointed to the immediate command of the force in 1856 Mr. Charles Forjett, who was serving at the moment as Deputy Superintendent. Through his energy and activity, they were able to satisfy themselves fully of the prevalence of wholesale corruption in the force. Drastic executive action was at once taken; and this was followed by the drafting and promulgation of Act XIII of 1856 for the future constitution and regulation of the Police Force. At the same time Mr. Corfield was succeeded as Senior Magistrate by Mr. W. Crawford. The credit for the introduction of the reforms and for the restoration of public confidence belongs wholly to Charles Forjett, whose successful administration during a period fraught with grave political dangers deserves to be recorded in a separate chapter. His appointment in 1855 may be said to inaugurate the _régime_ of the professional police official as distinguished from the purely military officer, and to mark the final disappearance of an antiquated system, under which inefficiency and crime flourished exceedingly. Henceforth a new standard of administration was imposed, whereby the Bombay Police Force was enabled to maintain the public peace effectively and also to acquire by degrees a larger share of the confidence and co-operation of the general body of citizens.[59] CHAPTER III MR. CHARLES FORJETT 1855-1863 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.