When Mr. Kennedy left Bombay on furlough preparatory to retirement, his place was taken by Mr. Herbert G. Gell, who had held the substantive appointment of Deputy Commissioner since 1884, and on three occasions had acted for short periods as Commissioner. “Jel Saheb,” as the Indian constables called him, was thus no stranger to the police-force or to Bombay, when he took charge of the Commissioner’s office. So far as personal popularity with all classes was concerned, the Government could not have made a happier selection. In his younger days Mr. Gell had been a good cricketer and the best racket-player in Bombay; and while this counted in his favour chiefly with his own countrymen, his genial address and straight-forwardness commended themselves equally to Europeans and Indians. During his term of office, which lasted a little more than seven years, he was granted furlough twice—in 1904 when Mr. Michael Kennedy, afterwards Inspector-General of Police, Bombay Presidency, carried on his duties, and again in 1906 when Mr. W. L. B. Souter, a son of Sir Frank Souter, acted as _locum tenens_. During Mr. Gell’s first year of office, the Deputy Commissioner’s post was filled by Superintendent J. Crummy, a good police officer of the old type, who joined the force as a constable in 1866 and finally retired from the service in 1903. He was succeeded by Mr. R. P. Lambert (1903-1905), Mr. Reinold, who died prematurely, and Mr. R. M. Phillips (1905-09), all of whom belonged to the Imperial Indian Police service. [Illustration: MR. H. G. GELL] The years of Mr. Gell’s administration were fraught with anxiety and difficulties of various kinds. Social and semi-political events like the festivities in connexion with the Coronation of King Edward VII and the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1903, the arrival of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905, and the visit of the Amir Habibullah of Afghanistan in 1907, imposed much extra work upon the force. On the whole, however, they probably caused the Commissioner less real anxiety than the Muharram riots of 1904, the Bombay Postal strike of 1906, the mill-hand strikes of 1907 and 1908, the serious Tilak riots of 1908, and last but not least the strike of the Bombay Indian constabulary in 1907. Besides these symptoms of local discontent, the Commissioner and his somewhat old-fashioned detective agency had to grapple with a constantly growing stream of enquiries, reports and references, arising out of the spread of the dangerous Indian revolutionary movement, which was partly fostered and directed by men of extreme views living in France and America.