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Of Epidemics and Pandemics

 Amateur historians are not very good at contemporary history.  By this I mean that we stand on the sidelines urging organisations to preserve their current stories for the future but, largely,  we are powerless to capture the present.  Of all the things that have occurred in the last decade the Sars-Cov 2 pandemic had a massive impact on policing (as it did on all aspects of life and death).  We really could do with a project to record the stories and challenges of those involved in trying to police under dreadful circumstances.  Are individual force history groups/societies working on this?  I must find out.  I don't think that anything is being done in respect of the British Transport Police.

The Influenza epidemic that hit so hard just after the Great War made policing very difficult - but how difficult and how the issue was managed is not that well documented.  There appears to be little about the impact on the railway police and passing references to other forces can be found in books and papers.  That epidemic (although it was a pandemic under modern classifications) and the Covid pandemic both killed a similar number of people in the UK (although the population itself has grown of course) - around 228,000.  Police officers were among the victims and there are generally things in place to remember those who died in the Covid era.  But should we not take steps now to preserve information, papers, digital artefacts, legislation and oral histories?

My eye was drawn to an item in Police Review 1 November 1918 (and therefore in the first wave of the influenza plague).  It reported that the Metropolitan Police had 1,430 men off sick, mostly from the 'flu.  At the time the force had around  17000 officers and was seeing a period of industrial unrest with the force.  On 22 Nov the magazine reported: "Our space will only permit us to report in brief the many deaths of policemen from pneumonia following influenza....." (p375)

Does anybody know of any good sources on how police forces (especially the railway ones) managed influenza in the period 1918-1920 and what work is underway to preserve and report in the contribution of the police service during Covid?


Phil Trendall 

Feb 2024

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