Poster for the 1919 silent film The Third Degree
23 December 2022
There are many types of third degree. In many contexts, the phrase is simply a collocation of words designating a classification by stages, as in third-degree burn, the worst type of burn. But in law enforcement slang, the third degree refers to a police interrogation that involves torture. Usually, it is difficult to pin down the exact origin of a slang term, but in this case we can trace it to the New York City Police Department of the late nineteenth century and the methods employed by then Chief of Detectives Thomas F. Byrnes.
Byrnes labeled his interrogation technique the third degree, a name he apparently took from Freemasonry. Admission to the highest level, or third degree, of Masonry involves a ritual questioning that includes simulated violence. References to the third degree of Masonry date to at least the 1770s.
But it would be Byrnes who labeled his own brand of interrogation as the third degree. We have this account that appeared in the New York Tribune of 5 February 1883 of the arrest of several men who allegedly committed burglaries and then called in fire alarms to the locations they had robbed:
The Central Office detectives under the direction of Inspector Byrnes on Saturday arrested the gang of men who have been for two years sending out false fire alarms. They are all young, their ages ranging from seventeen to twenty-three years. When taken to Police Headquarters and put through what Inspector Byrnes styled “the third degree of initiation,” or “pumping process,” they all confessed their guilt.
I have not been able to determine if Byrnes was a Freemason, but his use of initiation here would seem to be an allusion to the Masonic ritual.
And there is this somewhat more detailed description of Bryne’s third degree in the New York Herald of 23 March 1887. The article does not specifically allege torture, strongly hints at it. The prisoner, Peter J. Inglis, was accused of murder and of shooting at two police officers, so one might expect the police to be rather unforgiving:
BYRNES’ THIRD DEGREE
Two Mysterious Prisoners Under Inquisition at Police Headquarters—Was Inglis One?
When Inspector Byrnes subjects a suspected criminal to the moral rack and thumbscrews in his private confessional at Police Headquarters he calls it putting the candidate through the “third degree.” It is a sort of hypnotic process, and real criminals seldom resist it.
The chief of detectives operated on two subjects last night. They were brought to his room by Detective Sergeants King and O’Connor. One was a tall slender young man who closely resembled Peter J. Inglis, and the other a large stout woman clad in a dark velvet dress and wearing a brocade shawl. At different times during the night, and after the prisoners had passed several hours in the gloomy dungeons below, they were brought up stairs one at a time.
Detectives O’Connor and King assisted in working the “third degree.” The young man was brought up and down again, but the woman was only afforded a single interview. She was led down stairs crying and when the bolts had been sprung on her cell her screams could be heard throughout the entire building.
What were they arrested for or the nature of the confession they had made? Inspector Byrnes had nothing to say. He looked cross as he drew his coat collar about his neck and started, as he said, for home. He admitted, however, that he had been giving the caged birds “the usual course,” but would not remain long enough to give the reporters a chance to try “third degree” hypnotism on him.
When the inspector’s doorbell was rung, an hour or so afterward, the servant said that Mr. Byrnes was not at home, and she did not expect him until very late.
Another article in the Herald the following day doesn’t use the term but again hints at torture through the use of euphemism:
Inspector Byrnes was as silent as the grave yesterday regarding the mysterious subjects he “hypnotized” the previous night. Still, it was learned that the young man thrice lead into the “confessional” was Peter J. Inglis, who the Brooklyn police think is the Weeks murderer. The returns of the Detective Bureau show that Inglis was the only young man locked up in the Police Central Office for several hours on Tuesday night. No record could be found, however, of the woman who was led sobbing and screaming down to the cell by Detectives King and O’Connor.
“On what charge was this weeping woman arrested?” asked a HERALD reporter of Inspector Byrnes yesterday.
The Inspector looked daggers at the reporter and scowled. Then he curtly replied:—“That woman came to see me about her wayward son. Of course she would weep under the circumstances”—and the Inspector strode away quickly.
Third degree implies that there are defined stages of interrogation, but in practice this is not the case. The phrase simply denotes police brutality during questioning.
Sources:
“Arrest of a Gang of Burglars. Their Capture by Inspector Byrnes.” New York Tribune, 5 February 1883, 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Byrnes’ Mysterious Methods.” New York Herald, 24 March 1887, 64. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Byrnes’ Third Degree.” New York Herald, 23 March 1887, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. third degree, n., third degree, v.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. third degree, n. and adj.
Preston, William. Illustrations of Masonry. London: Brother J. Williams, 1772, 205. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Image credit: 1919, Vitagraph Company. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.