Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

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 w...

  At a hearing of the North London Juvenile Court in early 1939 the Chairman told the court that “railway police evidence is proverbially unreliable”.   The case involved two boys charged with causing damage to property belonging to the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS).   We do not know the outcome of the case or the details of alleged offence.   The comments from the bench caused outrage.   Police Review ran a piece by Jack Hayes, their Parliamentary Correspondent, which decried the comments and suggested that they …”make an invidious distinction between the railway police and the regular police”.   He describes the difficult duties that fall to the railway police and ends by saying:   “I have always found the railway police good fellows, courteous and obliging, attentive to their duties, and with these qualities they are as good as anyone else as witnesses in a court of law”. Fifty years later I recall a BTP officer making an application...