Captain Samuel Meredith, a distinguished Royal Navy officer. An advertisement was placed to recruit 200 constables who were paid 17/6d a week. In those first years, new constables were simply given their uniform and an instruction booklet and then sent off to work without any training or guidance. Wiltshire Constabulary started operating from January 1840 and had filled almost all its posts by the summer. The Chief Constable spent the first months of his time visiting all the boroughs in Wiltshire, spending almost all his £400 salary on travel. The first ranks were only Constable and Superintendent, but Sergeant, Inspector, Detectives and five classes of Constable were later introduced. The force did not have a true Criminal Investigation Department until 1936. On 30 June 1857, the Magistrates Committee that oversaw the force expressed interest in forming an investigation department which was founded with three of the 'most intelligent constables'. In 1936, three Detective Constables and a Detective Sergeant were appointed, but it was not until 1939 that an official head of the department was appointed, and a Detective Sergeant was appointed to take charge of new equipment such as that for the Photographic, Printing and Fingerprinting departments. CID remained stagnant in its development until after the war, after which it slowly expanded, and in 1997 it had 170 detectives. In 1909, His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary raised concerns over the lack of a mounted division in the force. As a result, six constables were transferred to the new mounted division, which doubled to 12 the next year. Although the mounted division was not active every day, they were of particular use at the Salisbury Races, ceremonial duties such as escorting judges, and guarding the royal carriage. They were also occasionally loaned to neighbouring forces. The fate of the mounted division is unknown, but it most likely was ended during the introduction of motor vehicles in the 1920s. A Roads Policing Unit was founded on 7 May 1939 at the urging of the Home Secretary. Notable events for Wiltshire Police include the Rode Hill House murder in 1860, the bomb explosion outside Salisbury Guildhall in September 1884, the Trowbridge Christmas Eve murder in 1925 and escorting Louis Blériot when displaying his famous cross-channel aeroplane. Salisbury continued to have a separate police force, Salisbury City Police, to the rest of Wiltshire until World War II, when the two were merged. The merger