Policing Public Transport: A Neglected History

A Modern View: Looking Towards the Scene of the Accident: Photo Chris West      I often lament that that we fail to preserve the present for the future.   If only a few officers (and former officers) who were involved in the major incidents touching the railways over the last 40 years were to set down what they saw and what they did we would be handing on a wonderful gift to future historians.   In this regard I was disappointed that suggestions for a project to capture the experience of BTP officers (and staff) during the pandemic did not get off the ground.   The history of policing the railways and docks of the UK is a fragile thing.   If it is not preserved it will be suffocated by the histories of bigger organisations. With this at the back of mind I have been looking at some of the early railway accidents.   The reports of HM Railway Inspectorate provide an invaluable source.   The very first report for the Board of Trade by an Inspec...

  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 ...

  WHY DO NON HOME DEPARTMENT POLICE FORCES GET MISSED WHEN LEGISLATION IS BEING DRAFTED? Note: The Home Department is the traditional name for the Home Office and the Home Secretary is technically the Secretary of State for the Home Department.   In this and other pieces I tend to use the titles interchangeably.   I hope that by confusing my readers I can distract them from the boring nature of the blog itself.   One part of my work lies in the field of research.   This is not well paid and is a somewhat lonely pastime, but I do enjoy the thrill of tracking down information in archives, dusty corners of the internet and guiding people around bits of London. I find that there is often an overlap between the past and present, indeed life is a continuum.    The present is a product of the past.   The influence of what has come before is often apparent in what is done today. Frequently to understand the modern operating context we have to get pa...

  Research can be boring.   Not always of course.   Most of the time there is nothing better than wading through stacks of documents looking for the needle that provokes joy on discovery.   However researching legislation is particularly challenging and can be both tedious and difficult.   However there is no way around it.   Either we just tell stories about our history and in doing so reinforce the many myths of police history or we slog away.   I paint this rather glum picture because I have spent the last few weeks (in between more exciting activities and trying to earn a living) wading through the legislation that touches the jurisdiction of the British Transport Police.   In particular I have been trying to find the point when jurisdiction was expanded to cover places beyond the premises of the ‘Boards’   (ie railways, docks canals etc) in matter ‘affecting the Board’.   Why is this important?   Well it isn’t, this is niche ...