Stephen Wade - Tracing Your Police Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians

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First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

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Copyright Stephen Wade 2009

ISBN 978 1 84415 878 2
Digital Edition ISBN: 978 1 84468 219 5

The right of Stephen Wade to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T hanks are due to Roger Appleby of the City of London Police Museum; Crispin Williams of Shaw & Sons, for permission to use the image of the Police and Constabulary Almanac; Lincolnshire Archives Illustrations Index, and the Essex Police Museum for the images as credited. The picture of the police ambulance is reprinted by permission of the Greater Manchester Police Museum. Staff at the East Riding Archives and at Lincolnshire Archives were most helpful in guiding me to the relevant material, and equally the staff at the London Metropolitan Archives took the time to answer queries. Conversations with retired officers proved useful also, as a certain element of oral history is clearly of great assistance in an enterprise such as this.

As always in writing history, there are pathfinders to thank as well, in this case Les Waters and his Police History Society monograph. This was the first publication that attempted to bring together the various strands of material involved in this research. Other progress is down to members of the Police History Society and individuals such as Fred Feather, Dr John Bond and Paul Williams, as mentioned in the Bibliography.

A TIME-LINE FOR POLICE HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

Survey of Sources

The history of the professional police force in Britain presents the historian of law and crime with a very full and detailed record. For the family historian, however, that is not the case. It is a simple matter to find out what the various police archives contain, but problems arise from the fact that many of the useful records are not where logic might dictate they should be found. Many police staff records, or even documents that contain information about constables, are either simply not available or perhaps dispersed across a range of sources.