and by people from many parts of India, and when all the officers of the Department were on duty nearly the whole of the day and night, the Magistrates had, if any thing, less work than on ordinary occasions. This result was due to excellent police arrangements.”[101] These eulogies were rendered possible by the hard work of successive Deputy Commissioners and of the non-gazetted officers of the police force. Apart from the numerical inadequacy of the force, to which reference has already been made, the most vital needs during the later years of Sir Frank Souter’s administration were the provision of police-buildings and the proper housing of the rank and file. In his reports for 1885 and 1886 the Commissioner explained that all except a fractional proportion of the constabulary were living in crowded and insanitary _chals_, the rent of the rooms which they occupied being much in excess of the monthly house allowance of one rupee, granted at that date to the lower ranks. The absence of sanitary barracks or lines was one of the chief reasons for the high percentage of men in hospital, and, coupled with the arduous duty demanded of a greatly undermanned force, had led directly to a decline in recruitment. The European police were in no better plight. In default of suitable official quarters they were forced to reside in cramped and inconvenient rooms, the owners of which were constantly raising the rents to a figure much higher than the monthly house allowance which the officers drew from the Government treasury. In some cases it was quite impossible for an officer to find accommodation in the area or section to which he was posted, and the discomfort was aggravated by his being obliged, in the absence of a proper police-station, to register complaints and interview parties in a portion of the verandah of his hired quarters. Some relief was afforded by the construction between 1871 and 1881 of the police-stations at Bazar Gate, facing the Victoria Terminus, and at Paidhoni, which commands the entrance to Parel road (Bhendy Bazar): while from 1868 the police were allowed the partial use of the old Maharbaudi building in Girgaum, which served for twenty-five years as the Court of the Second Magistrate.