Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  The Birth Certificate of the Railways? This month saw the 200 th anniversary of the operation of the railways in the UK.   Am I alone in thinking that this celebration of human ingenuity has been a little under egged? There are parts of our history that leave me feeling rather uncomfortable but the amazing achievement that was the ‘invention’ of powered railways is something which we can all be proud of.   What a gift to the world and to the future!   200 hundred years of railways and many exciting things still to come.   A form of transport that is green, effective and capable of endless improvement. I am not a train spotter (insert some less pejorative phrase if preferred) but I have worked in close partnership with the railway industry for most of my life and have come to admire the individuals who really understand the system and who put safety before profit and the needs of the public before the corporate imperative.    I would have thought...

  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 ...