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 4th 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 5th 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 3rd 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
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