Another (Very) Old Railway Policeman

Further to my post about James WRIGHT and the claim, in 1898, that he was the oldest railway policeman I am indebted to the BTPHG Webmaster, Martin McKay, for drawing my attention to the excellent article by Kevin Gordon about an officer who carried on serving until he was 80 in 1935.

Another correspondent warns me that with the demands on the pension system growing year on year serving until the age of 80 might become routine!

Kevin's article is well worth reading:

https://www.btphg.org.uk/?page_id=5634

Comments

Why Do Non Home Department Police Forces Get Missed When Legislation is Being Drafted

WHY DO NON HOME DEPARTMENT POLICE FORCES GET MISSED WHEN LEGISLATION IS BEING DRAFTED? Note: The Home Department is the traditional name for the Home Office and the Home Secretary is technically the Secretary of State for the Home Department. In this and other pieces I tend to use the titles interchangeably. I hope that by confusing my readers I can distract them from the boring nature of the blog itself. One part of my work lies in the field of research. This is not well paid and is a somewhat lonely pastime, but I do enjoy the thrill of tracking down information in archives, dusty corners of the internet and guiding people around bits of London. I find that there is often an overlap between the past and present, indeed life is a continuum. The present is a product of the past. The influence of what has come before is often apparent in what is done today. Frequently to understand the modern operating context we have to get pa...

Films for Thought

While searching the index to the material held by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) I stumbled across a couple of items relevant to this blog. Film footage can sometimes feel like a peep hole into the past. Each individual that appears would have had their own story to tell. Perhaps this is a theme I will return to in relation to the footage which catches – sometimes only in passing – railway, dock or canal police officers. The two IWM clips that caught my eye were: A 1942 film showing war work being carried out by women on the Southern Railway. Includes a shot of a member of WPC, Southern Railway Police directing traffic at Waterloo. The commentary reflects the social assumptions of the time. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060021182 A silent 1940 film about the evacuation of children. Shows footage at the front of St Pancras Station with police officers including an LMS Sergeant. https://www.iwm.org...

Second World War 4: Trapped in the Railway Police

Sergeant Phil Longland: Southampton Docks June 1943 (Photo: British Transport Police History Group) In the National Archives sits a rather tatty file from the Railway Executive Committee (1939-1945). It is accompanied by a note that says that the conservation department has been advised of its condition and that it will be subject of further evaluation. The note was added over twenty years ago. Looking after our national records is a long term process. The contents of the file shed much light on the under researched subject of the arrangements for policing the railways and docks of the UK during the Second World War. National emergencies create the need for emergency legislation. This was not an area of government that was particularly well handled in the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic but a war that included a very real risk of invasion meant that the scale of emergency powers granted to government ministers and officials is hard now to imagine. Not...

Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

Search This Blog