Crimes of Violence - The Wounding of Two Midland Railway Police Officers

Sir Archibald Bodkin KCB

By http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw110761/Sir-Archibald-Henry-Bodkin, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33709801

“CRIMES OF VIOLENCE ON THE INCREASE”

Such was the headline in The Times on 4^th February 1920.  Sir Archibald Bodkin prosecuting a case at the Old Bailey  told the jury:

“The case was another illustration of the violence now employed by persons who were out to commit crimes,  It is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the fact that violence was resorted to far more frequently than it used to be” (1)

Bodkin was on the verge of being appointed Director of Public Prosecutions and was a lawyer who was particularly worried about literature which,  in his view, promoted immorality.  But of relevance here is the fact that the case he was prosecuting was one that featured the Midland Railway Police (whose Chief appeared in blog earlier this week).

West Ham station must have seemed like a long way from the headquarters of the force in Derby.  But the Midland Railway owned the London Tilbury and Southend railway and therefore the stations on the LTS were the responsibility of MR Police.  West Ham has always had its challenges.  It sits in an area largely resistant to gentrification. In 1920 it was a very poor area indeed and with a high crime rate.  It is not therefore surprising that the station had been burgled five times in one year.  It is also not a surprise that the railway police were conducting regular observations at the station. 

Thus, on 5^th January 1920 two MR Police officers: Sergeant Edmund Jones and Constable Alfred James Ingram were on watch in the booking office.  They heard four men come down the stairs and attack the door and the window of the office.  After 40 minutes they smashed a hole large enough for one of them, John Shotton, 27, to climb in.  Before he could open the door to admit his fellows he was tackled by the officers.  A struggle ensued.  The other suspects made off and Shotton indicated that he would allow himself to be taken to the police station.  As Sergeant Jones looked for the light switch Shotton leapt forward and pulled the truncheon from the pocket of Pc Ingram and immediately struck him with it around the head, knocking him to the ground.  He then set upon Sergeant Jones and hit him on the head seven times with the truncheon, most of the blows landing when he was on the floor.  However between them the officers were able to subdue Shotton, using the Sergeant’s truncheon, to good effect and he was arrested.  All three, but especially Sergeant Jones, sustained injuries.

Shotton was not a local man by any means and gave an address in Newcastle where he was employed as a motor mechanic.  He claimed that his actions where due to the fact that he was drunk.  He pleaded guilty to breaking and entering the station, theft of a pickaxe and two counts of wounding the police officers (s18 Offences Against the Person Act 1861).  He was remanded in custody and appeared at the Old Bailey on 3^rd February 1920.  Sir Archibald emphasised the seriousness of the offending.  He was sentenced to 9 months in prison with hard labour.

There are several things which are striking to the modern observer.  Most obviously policing was a dangerous activity in 1920.  No radios, no telephones, (at least not at West Ham railway station), and no personal protective equipment.  Each generation of police officers identifies itself as the most threatened and the most overworked.  I suspect that the prize in those categories falls to those officers who served in the first half of the twentieth century.  The level of violence shown to the police was very high indeed.  In many areas the idea of policing by consent was as much a fiction then as it is now.  The speed with which the case was disposed of was most impressive by modern standards.  Now such a case would be at least eighteen months before reaching a Crown Court.  Finally, the sentence seems lenient.  In fact it was about average for the time. To check this I read through a dozen or so contemporary cases to check my understanding of this.  The Hard Labour element did not, by this period, count for very much.  Most convicts laboured in one way or another in their working lives and the prison system could not produce enough ‘Hard Labour’ opportunities to keep everybody busy.  Early release was also a common feature but we do not know how long this offender served.  It is commonly assumed that sentences were longer in the past.  This is not true – at least from the end of the nineteenth century.  We have become stuck in a cycle of seeing the answer to offending as every increasing sentences, without much evidence to support the deterrent effect.   Having said this it is also right to point to a culture that saw assaults on police officers as part of being in the service.  Bad pay, violence, boredom and an absence of basic rights (the right to strike had just been lost) typified the lot of officers in the 1920s.

Sergeant Jones was 50 at the time he was injured in the fracas at West Ham.  He lived at Poplar Dock – a small dock on the River Thames that was owned by the North London railway company, not far from West Ham.  It was the only dock that was not policed by the Port of London Authority Police (a force that survives today as the Port of Tilbury Police – under the command of an ex BTP officer).  Jones went on to serve in the new LMS Police after the mergers of 1923.  There doesn’t seem to be anything further known about Pc Ingram.

An assault on a police officer is an assault on justice itself.  Although I do not share a general belief in long sentences I do think that people who attack police officers and their civilian helpers (PCSOs etc) should be punished in a manner that sends a strong message that society will not tolerate assaults on those whose job it is to uphold the law.

 

Philip Trendall

May 2024