The Big Five was a nickname given to five
superintendent
Superintendent may refer to:
*Superintendent (police), Superintendent of Police (SP), or Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), a police rank
*Prison warden or Superintendent, a prison administrator
*Superintendent (ecclesiastical), a church exec ...
s in charge of the
Criminal Investigation Department
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is the branch of a police force to which most plainclothes detectives belong in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth nations. A force's CID is distinct from its Special Branch (though officers of b ...
at
Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the
Metropolitan Police, from about 1906 onwards. The first five to be appointed were: Charles John Arrow, Paul Crane,
Walter Dew
Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew (17 April 1863 – 16 December 1947) was a British Metropolitan Police officer who was involved in the hunt for both Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen.
Early life
Dew was born at Far Cotton, in Hardingstone ...
, Frederick Fox and Frank Frost. These men and their successors, with their subordinate inspectors, regularly worked on high-profile murder cases through the British Isles. By the 1970s, the term was dropping from currency.
While the crime reporters of British newspapers were the first to use the epithet ''The Big Five'', the team's activities became a popular trope with writers of crime fiction, including
Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was a British writer.
Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during th ...
. As well as inspiring conventional detective fiction, "The Big Five" suggested the title for ''
The Big Six'', a children's novel in
Arthur Ransome's
Swallows and Amazons series
The ''Swallows and Amazons'' series is a series of twelve children's adventure novels by English author Arthur Ransome. Set in the interwar period, the novels involve group adventures by children, mainly in the school holidays and mainly in Eng ...
about group of young detectives.
References
{{Reflist
Types of police unit of the United Kingdom
Criminal investigation
Criminology organizations
History of the Metropolitan Police
Detective fiction