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An occasional blog on the history of policing the railway and other transport undertakings.

As an amateur historian of transport policing I often come across snippets of information that I think are worth sharing. I am an active member of the British Transport Police History Group (BTPHG) but this is NOT an official product of that Group. BTPHG's website:  www.btphg.org.uk   is full of useful information and links and I recommend that anybody with an interest in the subject visits it regularly. I also intend to use this blog to give my own views on related subjects. The study of police history is not without controversy and it may be that I will sometimes touch on areas where there is not a general consensus. So be it, but I will always seek to avoid offence and  I will be interested in hearing alternative views.

The railways and docks of Great Britain have played, and continue to play, an important role in society.  It is rather surprising therefore that the policing of these locations is somehow seen as secondary to the history of crime and policing in the towns through which railways pass and docks serve.  It could be said that this is a product of the fact that the police that operated on railways and docks weren't (or aren't) 'real'.  I once heard a magistrate tell a defendant that he might not think that the police officer who arrested him wasn't real and, if it helped, he could pretend that the prison he was about to go to wasn't real either. He gave him six months to consider whether he should adopt the philosophical stance of Bishop Berkeley or that of Dr Johnson.  The defendant's response employed a number of phrases that might have been familiar to our Anglo Saxon forebears.

95% of the history and experience of policing is the same, whether it takes place on the street or on a railway platform.  For the purposes of this blog I am interested in the 5%.

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