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 ...