Skip to main content

A Date For the Diary

 

The British Transport Police History Group (BTPHG) is to hold a modest Open Day on Thursday 13th October 2022.  Full details will be available nearer the time, but it will be an opportunity for the Group to display items that represent the history of policing the railways, docks and canals of the UK. 

BTPHG holds its own collection of material (as distinct from anything in the possession of the British Transport Police) because small groups of volunteers have worked over many years to save paperwork and artefacts that the force wanted to throw away.  Since those dark days additions to the collection have been acquired by donation and purchase.  Although far from being comprehensive the collections give an insight into the long and difficult history of policing the country’s transport networks.

 It is likely that the Open Day will also include a number of talks and short presentations.  This will not be an event open to the general public, but admission is probably going to be possible for those with an interest in the subject.  Full information will appear on the BTPHG website nearer the time.

I am looking forward to it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

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 ...