Skip to main content

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.uk/collections/item/object/1060021257

 

Of most interest to any readers of this blog is the film of the opening of the Railway Police Training School at Tadworth.  Unfortunately, this is not available on the IWM website.  But a copy is held by the BTPHG in the archive.  Quite why this ended up with the IWM is a bit of a mystery.  The school opened some years after the war and was originally purchased by the Southern Railway on behalf of the mainline railway police forces.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060012896 

 

This seems like a good place to mention some of the other bits that are available online:

 

Pathe 1951 showing a BTC officer and police dog at work:

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/railway-police-dogs/query/railway+police

 

Pathe 1933 LNER officers and dogs at Hull:

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/watch-dogs-real-ones-at-hull/query/railway+police

 

BTC officers at Euston for a royal visit:

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/royal-family-leave-for-balmoral/query/railway+police

 

The aftermath of a terrorist bomb at Leicester Square Station 1939 showing LPTB officers (possibly – could be Met)

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/VLVA2MQT6HO5CZ5B5GLCW526NKHYH-TERRORISM-SEVEN-WOUNDED-IN-TRAIN-STATION-BOMBINGS/query/railway+police

A 2 part programme by British Transport Films (late 1960s?)_about the problem of theft from the railway that includes footage of BTP officers and an interview with an unnamed superintendent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TWtYKZZawA

 

More to follow.

 

 

 

Comments

  1. The opening of Tadworth film is available to view on the BTPHG website: https://www.btphg.org.uk/?page_id=5210

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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 ...

Second World War 3: A Letter From a Cocked hat

                                       LNER Police Dog Handlers Carrying Revolvers at Hull 1941 (Photo BTPHG) Stories get passed down from generation to generation and often get changed on the way.   Often though, when the evidence is examined, our valued stories are found to be gross distortions of what actually happened.   I was therefore rather pleased recently to have one of these tales of Railway, Dock and Canal (RDC) policing to be fully based in fact. In 2011/12 I led   the project to re-introduce armed policing to BTP.   It was a challenging task that required attention to lots of different issues – not least the need to get the law changed to allow BTP officers to have firearms at all.   The project left me with an interest into the history of armed policing and in the legal position of the RDC police forces. T...