Copenhagen was a city on the rise, with a growing sense of self-assurance. It aspired to be a metropolis, but its size didn’t quite match up. Demolishing the ramparts had helped, but it wasn’t that long ago. Nevertheless, the half million Copenhageners were quick to embrace all things modern: electricity, trams, cars, telephones…
Cars, electric motors, steamships, and airplanes were built in the city, and there was a new vitality, a sense of being part of something bigger, even though it came with the price of stress, automobile accidents, and roadworks that never seemed to end. The air was thick with telephone wires, electrical cables, and tramlines.
Entertainment was diverse; everything from Tivoli to theatres, dance halls, cinemas… and, of course, all sorts of pubs. Brothels had almost disappeared with a new law in 1906 that banned them, but the business had not.
It was a city of upstairs and downstairs, of nobility that still had mansions in the city and came into town for the season; a city with new political movements – anarchists and revolutionaries – and numerous paupers.
New sewers were constructed, but night soil collectors still operated. There were fine houses with water closets and city blocks with backyard privies. There was still horse manure in the streets, but no longer cows on the second floor spreading smallpox through the milk.
Hygiene and carbolic soap were invented, but both had passed a large part of the population by. There were districts finer than others, but no outright ghettos.
Copenhagen was simultaneously a small town and very international. Several newspapers published two editions a day, some in multiple languages: you could read Berlingske in Danish, German, or French – and the news came from all over the world. People cared about what their neighbours were doing. If they were Jensens or Johnsons didn’t matter much.
The new railways had connected the country – and the country with the rest of Scandinavia and Europe, and everyone travelled, not least the criminals, who had quickly become international. The police kept up well. In Copenhagen, the Central Bureau of Identification had been established, and the police had been divided into several departments, including a special detective branch, housed in the Courthouse on Nytorv. The city was rapidly moving away from the time when the police had been the long arm of the rulers, to becoming the long arm of the law. This required a lot of changes in the ranks and a fresh approach to police work, where words like ‘conduct’ and ‘manners’ suddenly came into play. The new recruitment policies reflected this.
The Copenhagen Police could now present a detective corps larger than Scotland Yard in proportion to the population and a clearance rate of 100 per cent for several years running. The Central Bureau was state-of-the-art. They had started taking photos of criminals as early as 1867 – long before most other countries – and it was now standard procedure to take photos and fingerprints of criminals in addition to the Bertillon measurements, which were otherwise the standard in Europe.
Science also thrived in the city. New professorships in physics and chemistry were established, and the level of both research and teaching was so high, other countries took notice. The Carnegie Foundation had a keen eye on Copenhagen.

Women had obtained the right to vote in local elections just a few years ago and were still fighting for universal suffrage. The labour movement was growing stronger; personal freedom was still put to the test. People worried about morality but also about large families. The debate could get heated, and a new moral association had quickly grown large and strong, constantly haranguing the authorities to crack down on immorality. However, a definition of immorality was not readily available, and this mostly meant avoiding action from the authorities in this department. The commissioner of police had once declared that what people got up to in their own bedrooms was not police business.
It was legal to sell and use contraception – just not to advertise it as such in public for the sake of decency. The convoluted descriptions needed to ensure legality were continually tested, as especially religious associations reported everything. They could see indecency everywhere. Even where it wasn’t.
It was a city where anything could happen.
This movie is from 1906 but it gives a god impression of Copenhagen in the days
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