The Press: Story of a Police Reporter

Kenneth George Bellairs at 71 still covered the St. Louis police department for the Star-Times. In two more months Jock Bellairs would have celebrated his 51st year as a reporter. But one morning last fortnight, at 6:30 in a drafty room at headquarters, after phoning in a story about a $100 burglary, Jock told his city editor he was ill. Last week he died.

Jock, son of a British Army captain in India, was sitting in police headquarters one day in 1898 when four bombs went off: signal that the Spanish-American War had begun. Said Jock: "In a few minutes the phone will ring and it'll be Tarbell telling me that I'm to cover the war." In a few minutes the phone rang. It was Tarbell telling him to cover the war.

Back from the war, a newsman's hero, he might have had a better job, but Jock Bellairs went on covering police. He helped to break in Herbert Bayard Swope, Theodore Dreiser, Paul Y. Anderson—all cubs when Jock was already a veteran. His exploits were legend in St. Louis. Once, with some friends, he dragged a dead Chinese to a bar, drank heartily, left the Chinese to pay the bill. Once he tried to drive a horse and buggy across the Mississippi River.

Jock was an able drinker until his wife lost her leg. That day he swore off liquor, settled down to a steady, solid newspaper career. At least once he was offered a place on the Board of Police Commissioners, turned it down. For relaxation he cultivated roses in his garden. Jock knew more about the police department than most of its chiefs, and more about criminals. Of one bad man, who was shot by police, Jock said: "He had some splendid traits." Jock always meant to write his memoirs one day when he had time. Naturally that day never came.