28th February Anniversary Updates

After writing the post about the anniversaries that fall on 28th February I had an opportunity to look in the BTP Hisotry Group Archive. There isn't much about Stechford, only a couple of newspaper items. But there was also this letter from the Coroner pointing to the high quality of statement taking. These days such an incident would have attracted a much larger inquiry but in 1967 the work of a few officers in investigating the incident and establishing the underlying reasons was crucial and, as demonstrated by the letter, essential for the purposes of a public hearing.

Letter from HM Coroner to BTP Divisional Commander re investigation into the Stechford Railway accident 1967. Ref BTPHG D/Stech

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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...

The Oldest Railway Policeman?

Photograph: Police Review and Parade Gossip 03 Sep 1897 In 1898 Superintendent James WRIGHT, Chief of the Great Central Railway Police, died. He was 77 years old, (but see below). At the time of his death the newspapers proclaimed that he was the oldest serving railway policemen in the country. It’s a well know fact that Superintendents have an easy life but 77 is a bit much, especially in a time when the average life expectancy for a male infant aged one year was 46. Of course, life expectancy figures are skewed by high rates of infant mortality. At birth James WRIGHT had a life expectancy of just 41 years. The railway police were not covered by the pension provisions of the Police Act 1890 and instead each railway company made its own arrangements with special benevolent funds bei...

GWR Police and the Local Magistrates 1839

Fig One: Copy of Letter to the Reading Justices found in the correspondance of the Home Secretary 183 9 Last week I was at the National Archives working on some papers relating to an RAF Bomb Disposal Flight during the Second World War. Naturally I found myself reading the Home Secretary’s correspondence file for 1839. These research leaps will be very familiar to those who spend time in archives and libraries. I have (mostly) given up researching the history of the railway police but it is hard to resist the temptation of surfing a catalogue and ordering a few extra files to pad out the task in hand. On this occasion I found myself reading letters that had been sent to Lord John Russell (1) and in particular a of a letter sent by the Great Western Railway to the Justices of the Peace in Reading which had been copied to the Home Secretary. Fig Two: Lord John Russell (1792-1878): later The Earl Russell. Photo 1861. The early days of ...

Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

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