Walter Dinnie
Walter Dinnie (26 December 1850[1] – 7 May 1923) was a British and New Zealand police officer, private detective and land board chairman.
Life
[edit]Brother of the strongman Donald Dinnie,[2] he was born in Aboyne to Robert and Celia Dinnie (nee Hay).[1] His father worked as a contractor but also as a poet and local historian in his spare time.[1] After Aberdeen Grammar School and time as a bank clerk, in 1873 he became a clerk for the West Riding of Yorkshire Constabulary before three years later becoming an officer in the Metropolitan Police in London.[1]
In the latter he moved from clerical to detective work, specialising in forgeries and fraud, such as extraditing Charles Wells in late 1892[3] and the 'Harry the Valet' case of 1898, the latter alongside Frank Froest and Walter Dew.[4] After retirement from that he was appointed Police Commissioner of New Zealand.[2][1] In 1901 he collaborated with Edward Henry to set up the Met's Fingerprint Department before two years later being headhunted by government of New Zealand to head their police force.[1]
In the meantime, on 18 October 1883, he had married Frederica Matilda Kemp at Croydon. He left the Met on 6 April 1903[5] and landed at Wellington with his wife and their five children on 8 June, from which his predecessor John Bennett Tunbridge took him on an inspection tour.[1] Dinnie imported not only the Met's fingerprint classification system (New Zealand's head of fingerprints from 1904 was Walter's son Edmund) but also opened a New Zealand police museum, probably influenced by the Met's Crime Museum.[1]
Confidence in Dinnie had dropped by 1907 and reached a low point in 1909, leading him to request a Royal Commission, which painted the force as "thoroughly efficient" but him as incompetent.[1] He fought back in the press but ultimately the prime minister announced Dinnie's resignation on 22 December 1909.[1] He remained in the country as president of the Tokerau District Māori Land Board, based in Auckland, in a role that lasted until 1914, when he moved into private detection.[1] He declined an offer to be Assistant Commissioner of Police in Samoa in 1916. He died in Wellington.[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Hill, Richard S. "Walter Dinnie". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
- ^ a b Dundee Evening Telegraph, 6 April 1903, page 4
- ^ 'The Extradition of the Monte Carlo Plunger', Liverpool Echo, 11 January 1893, page 3
- ^ Nicholas Connell, Walter Dew - The Man Who Caught Crippen (Sutton Publishing, 2005), pages 44-48
- ^ "Register of leavers from the Metropolitan Police (MEPO 4/342/53)". The National Archives.
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