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The Railway Police as Witnesses: 1939

 

At a hearing of the North London Juvenile Court in early 1939 the Chairman told the court that “railway police evidence is proverbially unreliable”.  The case involved two boys charged with causing damage to property belonging to the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS).  We do not know the outcome of the case or the details of alleged offence. 

The comments from the bench caused outrage.  Police Review ran a piece by Jack Hayes, their Parliamentary Correspondent, which decried the comments and suggested that they …”make an invidious distinction between the railway police and the regular police”.  He describes the difficult duties that fall to the railway police and ends by saying:  “I have always found the railway police good fellows, courteous and obliging, attentive to their duties, and with these qualities they are as good as anyone else as witnesses in a court of law”.

Fifty years later I recall a BTP officer making an application for a warrant at the Guildhall Justice Rooms in the City of London.  The Chairman of the bench asked if there was a ‘normal’ police officer who could be sworn to support the information as he was not content with the evidence of a ‘railway policeman’.  The officer politely declined the suggestion and withdraw the information. He walked over to Clerkenwell Magistrates Court and obtained the warrant under the hand of the Stipendiary (a District Judge in modern terms).

Back in 1939 the Chairman of the Juvenile Bench did withdraw his comments and apologise.  This might have been connected with the fact that although the LMS was the victim, the prosecution was mounted by, and the police witnesses were from, the Metropolitan Police.

Jack HAYES (1887-1941), the outraged author of the parliamentary column in Police Review was a former Member of Parliament.  He had been General Secretary of the National Union of Police and Prison Officers after resigning from the Metropolitan Police in which he had served as a sergeant.  The Union was effectively banned in 1919.  He was the first ex police officer to sit in the House of Commons.  

 

Phil Trendall

January 2024

 

NOTES

 

Police Review 24 March 1939 p 278

 

Jack Hayes:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hayes_(politician)  


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