Among the many studies of the vaunted Bureau of Municipal Research, police organization was one of the earliest. On this topic, the Bureau assembled a large body of printed materials in English and half a dozen other languages — the collection includes many such rare volumes.  Among them: a set of Russian police books from the time of Tsar Nicholas II, the last Russian Emperor, dealing with subjects from phrenology to police dog training.

One of the more curious items was a small autographed handbook  intended for police officers.

In it, the author championed advances in law enforcement in the second half of the 19th century, among them the Bertillion System, which stressed the detailed measurements of a criminal’s physiognomy for signs of his supposed outlaw proclivities and ease of identification. A number of mugshots were included as examples.

In the back of the manual, the author included a brief list of code words any good policeman had to know in order to understand the criminal world. Among them: “guitar”, which meant “crowbar”; “long” which translated as “smart”; “to buy” which meant “to steal”;  and “grave”, which was an apartment used at night.

Individuals had their own slang names: a police officer was called a” spirit” or “ghost”; a “puppeteer” was a person who sold counterfeit currency; and a “washer” was someone who robbed sleeping train passengers.