Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

  I recently gave way to temptation and bought a couple of cheap historic items on ebay.   The first is a cyclostyled letter from the General Manager’s office of the Midland Railway at Derby dated December 1910.   It advises the recipient that Major J A Henderson had been appointed as Superintendent of Police for the Midland Railway in place of Major L Sandwith.   Clearly the outgoing and incoming Chiefs knew each other – 8 years earlier Major Sandwith had taken over the post held by Henderson in the 8 th Hussars (1).   Henderson had served in the Boar War and had been a career soldier.     Major Sandwith appears to have continued with the Midland Railway in an administrative role after retiring as Chief of Police. Major John Acheson Henderson DSO OBE (always know as J A Henderson) served as Chief of Police for the Midland until 1923.   After the creation of the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) he was, for a short period, in command ...

 Amateur historians are not very good at contemporary history.  By this I mean that we stand on the sidelines urging organisations to preserve their current stories for the future but, largely,  we are powerless to capture the present.  Of all the things that have occurred in the last decade the Sars-Cov 2 pandemic had a massive impact on policing (as it did on all aspects of life and death).  We really could do with a project to record the stories and challenges of those involved in trying to police under dreadful circumstances.  Are individual force history groups/societies working on this?  I must find out.  I don't think that anything is being done in respect of the British Transport Police. The Influenza epidemic that hit so hard just after the Great War made policing very difficult - but how difficult and how the issue was managed is not that well documented.  There appears to be little about the impact on the railway police and passing...

    An RAF Sopwith Dolphin 1918.  This was one of the aircraft flown by 13 Sqn (Picture:  RAF Museum) The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the oldest independent air force in the world.   It was founded on 1 st April 1918 on the merger of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC).   One of the officers that transferred from the RFC was temporary second lieutenant James Seymour STRINGER, he was 25 years of age (1) (2). STRINGER was no stranger to life in uniform.   At the outbreak of the war he was a constable in the Hull and Barnsley Railway Police.   We know very little of his time with the force except that it was very short. At the age of 14 STRINGER joined the East Yorkshire Regiment at Beverley giving his previous occupation as clerk.   He was 5 feet 2 and "a quarter" inches tall and weighed about 7 stone.   In 1910 he became a Drummer and served in India.   His service record tells us that he contracted ...

  It appear that Horwood's decorations ended up in a sale in the USA in 2018 - this image (Copyright owner unknown) is from a set of images posted on line by the purchaser together with pictures of Horwood's  sword and original army commission.   Note this image will be removed at the request of the copyright owner. We are used to seeing senior officers bearing a few medals and decorations but none in living memory have been in the same league as the most famous railway police chief. By the time of the First World War the North Eastern Railway Police were among the best organised in the country.   At   start of war the Chief,   Captain William T F HORWOOD, was soon back in the army and rose quickly through the ranks ending up as Provost Marshall with the rank of Brigadier General.   His swift upward progress during the war is frequently mentioned in the newspapers.   The NER kept his job open until the end of the war but he was headhunted i...

  The new road named after Lord Hamilton of the Great Eastern Railway The newish road outside Hertford East railway Station is named after a former chairman of the Great Eastern Railway; Claud HAMILTON.   I recall that there was a large building at Liverpool Street Station (demolished in the 1980s) that was also named after him.   His reputation looms large in railway history.   He was also a Member of Parliament and a peer.   When I see the new road sign I think not of Hamilton himself but of his role in a sorry tale that led to a well respected railway policeman losing his job. We often celebrate the coming of the police federation in general and the railway police federation in particular.   The early pioneers of representation faced many challenges but were only allowed to exist because of the chaos brought about by agitation in the police service after the First World War.   The idea that police officers could be members of trades unions seems a...

  The attitude of local forces to BTP and its predecessor forces has always been rather mixed.   In recent years I rarely have cause to tell groups I work with that I once served in BTP.   As they are mostly police officers I am speaking to their reaction to mention of the railway police (current and historic) is often negative.   I have always found the Police History Society rather sniffy about the history of the railway and dock police.   Somehow in the minds of many the sacrifice of railway, dock and canal police does quite score so highly as that to be found in other forces.   In one respect geographic forces were (and perhaps still are) united.   That is in opposing any extension of the powers of RDC officers. The fact that officers from other geographic forces have powers in their area does not seem to offer any threat but the prospect of RDC officers exercising the power of constable on their patch might bring about the end of civilisation. ...

The GER Memorial at Liverpool Street in its current location.  William Henry WILSON is recorded in the main list of names.  The Memorial was opened by Field Marshal Sir Henry WILSON (no relation) in 1922.  He was murdered by the IRA on the same day and a separate plaque to him can be seen on the bottom right of the photograph. The huge cyber attack on the British Library has brought a halt to my slow trawl through Police Review but I have been able to find a couple of volumes from 1914 and 1915. The impact of the declaration of war in August 1914 on the police forces of the United Kingdon was immediate and massive.  Large number of police officers who were reservists left their jobs to re-join the armed forces.  They were replaced by hastily attested Special Constables.  This was true of the railway police forces as it was for the county, metropolitan and borough constabularies. Inevitably it wasn’t long before Police Review is full of reports of polic...