PMCC Magazine 340

The Air Beat

Never throw anything away!

As the evenings lengthen so the northern summer is over and Autumn has arrived. cartoon

I trust that everyone has had a fruitful summer and is now looking forward to enjoying their hobbies over the coming winter.

Following the request for information about Plymouth City Police in issue, I have been working on another Monograph, this time to record the police stations, pillars and boxes of the city.

Later you can read about the research and download your own copy.

If you haven't used the National Library of Scotland Ordnance Survey maps database, it is well worth a visit.

With tens of thousands of maps, in every conceivable scale, there should be something to interest you, even if it is to look at how where you live has changed over the past 150 years.

The database includes some commonwealth maps as well.

As everyone who has done research knows, sometimes it is the details that are missing, which are the most difficult to authenticate!

Much valuable research can be undertaken using the British Newspaper Archive.

Before 1930, there were few photographs, however the archive included papers up to the 2000's, so if you are looking for an officer or family member, there may just be a published photograph.

In the earlier editions, the Watch Commitee and county Standing Joint Committee meetings were always good for news. So whatever you are looking for, you may just find it. In any case, the old newspapers are full of hidden gems.

So as the nights get noticeably longer now we are passed the northern Autumn Equinox, now might just be the time to start researching the history of some of those pieces of memorabilia you have, that you always promised you would look into the history of.....

Norman

Police Medals and Awards
(Part Nine (and Last))
By: David Picton-King

Warrington Borough Police 1911 Coronation Medal

Date: 1911.
Ribbon: 32 mm, white with a dark blue stripe at each edge. Metal: Silver and bronze versions, identical.
Size: 36 mm.

Description: (Obverse) circular medal with the twin effigies of King George V, and Queen Mary in the centre, and the words ‘King George V’ to the left circumference, and ‘& Queen Mary’ to the right. (Reverse) a raised circumference band with the words ‘To Commemorate The Coronation 22 June 1911’ at the top, and ‘Warrington County Borough Police’ below. The centre depicts the Arms of Warrington, with hallmarks to the left and right of the Arms. The medal has a straight bar suspender.

Comments: This medal was issued to all ranks to commemorate the coronation of King George V in 1911. Only 2 medals in silver were issued, named to a Magistrate and to the Chief Constable. One of these is in the Manchester Police Museum, and the second in a private collection. All other ranks received the unnamed bronze version. It is thought only about 68 bronze medals were awarded.

-o-O-o-

Wigan Police Good Service Medal

Buckle Brooch

Date: Unknown, possibly 1909.

Ribbon: 31 mm, royal blue with a red centre stripe.
Metal: Silver.
Size: 34 mm assumed.

Description: (Obverse) circular medal with a raised circumference band with the words ‘For Good Service’ above and ‘Wigan Borough Police’ below. The centre contains the Arms of Wigan. (Reverse) a laurel wreath joined at the base with a ribbon around the circumference, and the central area plain to receive engraved details- the year of presentation, name and rank of the recipient, and date of joining the force. At least two variations in the order and style of reverse inscription have been seen. Hallmarks are stamped below. The medal has an ornate Victorian-style suspender and was issued with a rectangular buckle pin brooch.

Comments: This medal was issued to recognise 25 years of good service by members of the Wigan Borough Police. It is believed it was awarded to all ranks.

-o-O-o-

Windsor Borough Police 1902 Coronation Medal

Date: 1902.
Ribbon: 32 mm assumed, red with a wide green stripe at each edge.
Metal: Bronze.
Size: 32 mm.

Description: (Obverse) circular medal with the effigies of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and their names shown around the circumference. (Reverse) the words ‘To Commemorate The Coronation 1902’ in a circumference band. The centre shows the Arms of Windsor, with the King’s crown above and the word ‘Police’ below. The medal has a swivelling straight bar suspender.

Comments: This medal was issued to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VIII in 1902, and was awarded to all members of the Windsor Borough Police . At the time this medal was initiated the Windsor force had a strength of 21, so it is possible it was awarded more widely. Relatively few police forces issued their own coronation medals but the presence of Windsor Castle near Windsor Borough almost certainly influenced the decision to award this medal, and the later 1911 coronation medal for George V.

-o-O-o-

Windsor Borough Police 1911 Coronation Medal

Date: 1911.
Ribbon: 32 mm assumed, green with red edge stripes.
Metal: Bronze.
Size: 32 mm.

Description: (Obverse) circular medal with the effigies of King George V and Queen Mary, surrounded by a circumference band with the words ‘King George V And Queen Mary Crowned June 22 1911’. (Reverse) a circumference edge band with the words ‘To Commemorate The Coronation 1911’. The centre shows the Arms of Windsor, with a scroll below with the words ‘Windsor Borough Police’. The medal has a swivelling straight bar suspender.

Comments: This medal was issued to commemorate the coronation of King George V in 1911 and was awarded to all members of the Windsor Borough Police. At the time this medal was initiated the Windsor force had a strength of 22, so it is possible it was awarded more widely. Relatively few police forces issued their own coronation medals, but the presence of Windsor Castle near Windsor Borough almost certainly influenced the decision to award this medal.

-o-O-o-

York Special Constabulary Special Service Badge

Date: 1914-1919.
Ribbon: No ribbon known. Metal: Bronze and enamels. Size: 28 mm.
Metal: Bronze and enamels.
Size: 28 mm.

Description: (Obverse) circular medal with a blue enamel circumference edge band showing the words ‘Special Constables York’. The central area has the Arms of York in red and white enamel, on a stippled bronze or gilt ground. An integral small ring fitting attaches to a long rectangular pin brooch, having a blue enamel ground and the words ‘Special Service 1915’. (Reverse) plain.

Comments: This badge was issued to York Special Constables. The criteria for award are not clear, but it almost certainly was to recognise service during World War 1.Two examples have been seen with the ‘1915’ bar, although bars with other years in the war period may have been issued. This type of award in other forces quite often used an existing lapel badge adapted into a medal, although no similar lapel badges for York have been seen, so this was probably a bespoke design solely for this award.

-o-O-o-

To All PMCC readers: That concludes my series outlining those medals and awards awarded to Police officers by the local authorities of the UK- the Counties, Cities and Boroughs which had local Police Forces from the mid 19th century through to the present day.

I hope you found them of interest, and I would be pleased to hear from anyone who is seeking more information about them , or who knows of others which I have somehow missed!

Lastly, I am a collector of these awards so if anyone has examples of these to sell or swap, I would love to hear from you with a view to acquiring something I haven't yet collected.

Best regards

David Picton-King,

dpk@iinet.net.au

How are your Escutcheons?

Have you been to see your Chiropractor about your painful Escutcheons? Or maybe it should have been your Podiatrist. Carrying a heavy Escutcheon could affect both your back and your feet!

Seriously though, how much do you know about the police use of Escutcheons? Our member Michael Prevezer asked a question about Burnley Borough police officers in this photograph, and specifically, the epaulette crest the officers wore.

I was able to answer that from the 19th century, Burnley used a Heater engrailed top Escutcheon, containing the Borough Coat of Arms. The white metal 19th Century badge has much finer detail than the 20th Century chrome version.

This got me thinking about how we describe the heraldic devices which police forces have used since the mid 1800's.

Among collectors the term "Collar dog" is been used to refer to both the heraldic devices, once worn on the collars of closed neck tunics, and later on tunic lapels. But the same devices worn on epaulettes, even those of a closed neck tunic, have never been called "Epaulette dogs".

The same devices also moved around. I have photographs of some North Riding Constabulary officers wearing their "Queen's Crown" crest on their lapels and on their epaulettes.

Why we use the term "dog" I have not been able to discover, the "collar" part is obvious. These devices could be the crown of the current Monarch, a full coat of arms crest, or a shield, called an "Escutcheon" in heraldry, sometimes surmounted by a crown but more often not.

There are several standard Heraldic Escutcheon shapes

The word originates in Latin, from the word Scutum which meant 'shield'. Roman soldiers carried curved rectangular shields for their protection.

A thousand years later, this became 'escuchon' in Norman French. Think of the shields being carried by soldiers and displayed in the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the Battle of Hastings.

The different heraldic shapes come from the actual shields which were carried by Knights into combat. They varied over time from the Medieval period, through the Crusades and to the Wars of the Roses, and by the place of origin of the Knight. So different areas of the European continent developed different shapes and these are reflected in the names that we use today.

Unsurprisingly, the long pointed shields carried by King William's army in 1066, are known as "Norman". French shields are squarer, and then there are various kinds of "Heater" Escutcheons.

The top of shields can be "engrailed". Shields can have "ears", or they can have a "wedge" top. The top can be "nicked" or curved.

There are also "kite", "Iberian" and "lozenge" shape shields and Escutcheons with scrolls at the top and bottom.

Here are the main shapes and just a very few of the police forces which used the different shapes as their collar, lapel or epaulette device.


French Escutcheon	Derbyshire Constabulary	Modified French escutcheon	Guildford Borough Police


French Eared top Escutcheon	Grimsby Boro. Police	Heater Esacutcheon	Cornwall Constabulary


Heater Engrailed top	Lincoln City Police	Iberian Escutcheon	Glossop Borough Police


Norman Escutcheon	Cantebury City Police	Oval or Lozenger Escutcheon	Bath City Police


Eared top, lobed Esc.	Birkenhead Borough Police	Square eared, nicked top Esc.	Shrewsbury Borough Police

The rules of heraldry, applied in the UK by the College of Arms, allows for variations and combinations. But these are the key heraldic shapes which can be found in many of the British police force's collar insignia.

Social Media and history

There is an awful lot that is wrong with "Social Media", but there are different kinds of "Social Media". When the history of the first decades of the 21st Century are written, the historians will not write kindly about "Social Media". Possibly "antisocial media" would be a more accurate term?

But what do we mean when we talk about "Social Media"?

There are the video sharing platforms, like Tik-Tok and YouTube, there are photo sharing groups like Snapchat and Twitch, professional groups like LinkedIn and the 'wordy' sites like Facebook and X, and these are just the very common ones.

Long before any of the above, there were "Message Boards", run on the internet but before the World Wide Web, by companies like Compuserve.

I belonged to a Compuserve police 'board' in the late 1980's, long before the internet was anything more than a slow and costly word-only messaging service.

In 2025, these social media platforms serve diverse purposes, from video sharing and visual content creationn to professional networking and private messaging, with varying numbers of users worldwide and across different age groups.

Looking at Social Media in 2025, it can be good or bad. Sadly it is the bad which gets all the press. Whether that is people verbally abusing others; illegal photographs being shared; making threats; and sharing inappropriate content, to name just a few.

On the positive side, there are the groups on all these platforms, often with just a small number of members, that do a lot of positive work.

Almost every community in the UK has a local history or photo sharing group and members of these groups are bringing old photographs, often long hidden, into public view.

A few of these photographs are of police officers, or happen to include photographs of officers.

This photograph popped up on the Yorkshire Police Forces History Group and Virtual Police Museum group.

With a comment that it was the funeral of Dr Hargreaves, in Weatherby, West Yorkshire.

Using the Find My Past genealogy website, looking at both newspaper reports and census data, I was able to find out a lot. Sadly the photograph is of low quality, so the officer's collar numbers are not readable.

If they had been, it would have been possible to identify the individual officers.

oOo

It is February 1939 and men of the West Riding Constabulary from Weatherby are in front of the Funeral Cortege for local doctor, James A. Hargreaves.

Ceremonial uniform with medals and belt buckle are being worn. You seldom see belt buckles this late in the 20th Century.

From the 1939 Register, the Inspector at the back is George Frederick Hatt, B.09.10.1891. He died in July 1973.

The Sergeant is William G Cooper, of 12, Woodhill View, Weatherby.

Two of the officers with the three WWI medals are PC Tom Hawkins, B.12.04.1896, of 12 Clyde Terrace, Weatherby and PC Claude A Leather B.06.08.1895, living at the Police House, South View, Weatherby

I have struggled to find the other Weatherby officer old enough to have received the WWI medals, but officers living in Weatherby in 1939 were:

William A M Kitson PC 581 B.14.12.1912
18, West End, Weatherby

William A Sleight B. 11.10.1914
7 Sandringham Terrace, Weatherby

Harry Saville B.13.08.1914
Rose Dene, Weatherby

So likely some if not all are in the photo...

Doctor Hargreaves served the town for many years as a well respected GP residing at number 7, Market Place. As Medical Officer of Health for over forty years on Weatherby Rural District Council he was very much involved with issues of public health. In the early days his persistent concern over the quality of the town's dubious water supply led to a clean piped water installation in 1900. Because of the police escort, I am guessing he was the local Police Surgeon, but I cannot confirm this.

The Yorkshire Post on 16 February 1939 tells us -

Dr James Arthur Hargreaves was the first doctor in the area to use a bicycle on his rounds, and the first person in the district to use a motor car.

In 1894, he married Miss Annie Paten, of Wakefield, daughter of Rev John Edward Paten. She died in 1924.
Their eldest son was killed at Paschendaele Ridge in 1917.

Researching the Plymouth pillars and boxes

This project started when Peter Hinchliffe asked on the PMCC Police Pillars and Boxes Facebook Group if anyone had any information on the Plymouth City Police Box system. No one answered.

The Plymouth City Police, formed in 1836, was part of a Home Office compulsory amalgamation scheme, joining the Devon and Exeter Constabulary, and the Cornwall Constabulary on 1st June 1967, to become the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

There was great antipathy within the city force to their amalgamation partners and few city records were handed over, so few have been preserved.

Several primary on-line research tools have been used. The British Newspaper Archive holds millions of pages of local, regional and national newspapers from the UK.

This is where these newspaper cuttings about Plymouth have come from.

Beginning in the late 1920's, the Ordnance Survey began to mark the location of police boxes on the large scale 25 inch to a mile maps, with the legend P.C.B. or PC Box with a dot or square to indicate the location.

The National Library of Scotland has the only on-line collection of these very large scale maps. This one shows the Police Box at Mill Bridge, Plymouth, marked as "PC Box" in the middle centre of the map.

In the 1940's, the Ordnance Survey began to photo enlarge the 25" maps to create what was known as the 50 inch series, at a scale of 1:1,250.

These were published from 1944 onwards. Once again, the National Library of Scotland has a very large number of the 1:1,250 series available on line. There are twelve 1:1.250 scale maps to every 25" map.

The National Library of Scotland collection is not complete. For example the 25” map series covering Devonport only goes up to 1912, whereas for eastern Plymouth, the series goes to 1933.

This makes researching difficult where the later maps in the series are not available. Maps printed after 1974 are still in copyright.

The map key for these maps now included FAP = Fire Alarm Point, PTP = Police Telephone Pillar, and the now familiar PCB = Police Call Box, amongst all the street furniture symbology which can be found on these maps.

It takes time and a keen eye (and a large screen) to search maps for these symbols, so using information from the period newspapers to help identify where pillars and boxes were located helps speed up the process.

The City of Plymouth was somewhat unusual for cities of that size because of the number of police stations which were in use.

A valuable historic document is the Police and Constabulary Almanac. This book was published annually from 1857 until 2015 and over time provides, in the case of Plymouth, lists of all the police stations. This is the entry for 1937.

Two sets of documents are unavailable/missing though. These are Watch Committee Minutes, and Police Beat Books.

The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 required Boroughs and County Boroughs to establish a "Watch Committee", to appoint Constables for their areas to maintain the "Queen's Peace". "Peace" was defined as the normal state of civil society, and any disruption to that normal state of peace and tranquillity was determined to be a "Breach of the Peace". The offence is still charged today.

Watch committees were required to keep records of their meetings, to receive reports of the local Chief Constable and were responsible for the pay and accoutrements of their Constables.

The minutes of the Plymouth Watch Committee being public records, are held at the Plymouth Archives.

However the Watch Committee Minutes from 1914 to 1940 are not listed as being available.

Having read a newspaper report following a Watch Committee meeting, I would usually go to the actual committee minutes for the meeting to get full details of the Chief Constable's report.

So for example, the January 1937 meeting minutes, where the committee approved the extension of the pillars by 22, should have provided me with the list of where these pillars were to be placed. That information is not available.

The second source document I usually use is what are known as police "Beat Books".

Within the city boundary, Plymouth was at various times, divided up into two or three divisions. Within each division, the police stations would have their own boundaries and these would be divided again down the individual beats where constables worked.

In urban areas, the more dense the buildings, the smaller the beats.

Usually each beat would have a police box or pillar, generally at a prominent landmark or junction. Further away from the city centre, pillars and boxes were often on the boundary of adjoining beats, so one box or pillar could be used by two or more officers on adjoining beats.

Detailed instructions would exist about how a beat should be worked, on a particular shift or day of the month.

Also where Constables should report on and off duty and the times they could take a rest break. It would include the exact times that Constables should be present at a police box or pillar to make a "Point", to be available, if/when needed.

Points would usually be made every hour at night and perhaps every two hours during day light. Being off your beat or missing a point without reasonable excuse was a disciplinary offence.

The instructions could include which side of the road was to be walked upon, and whether on a particular day the beat would be worked in a clockwise or counter clockwise direction.

Many examples of "Beat Books" from other towns and cities exist, but none can be found for Plymouth. I expect that were beat books and some may still be with retired officers! The Devon and Cornwall Police Museum doesn't have any. This is an example from just along the coast, the Portsmouth City Police.

A beat book would list all the boxes and pillars. So because of missing information, although the exact number of police boxes (15 in 1937) and Pillars (28 in 1937) is known, some locations are missing from the Monograph.

Any help with photographs, filling in the gaps and reminiscences about the boxes and pillars would be greatly appreciated.

Photo gallery

(click on photograph to enlarge)

Kirkcudbrightshire Constabulary taken around the late 1930s in Kirkcudbright. (Photograph submitted by: David M. Kirkwood).

Salisbury City Police, 1905. (Photograph from the book: 'The oldest and the Best')

West Hartlepool Section, Docks & Railways, British Transport Commission, 1952. (Photograph: British Transport Police History Group).

Women's Auxiliary Police Corps, undertaking training at Dyffryn House, St. Nicholas. c.1940/41. Photograph: 'Virtual Museum of Police in Wales' Facebook Page.

Whooooops: Police car smashes through wall and into couple's front garden in Lincoln. 24 September 2025 From Lincolnshire Live.

Send your photos to Jim admin@pmcc-club.co.uk

In this issue we feature

Our Continental colleagues - Spain

By Brian Homans

Girona - Ford Transit

Girona - Honda Deauvilles

Guardia Civil - Renault Megane

L'Amettla de Mar - Nissan Patrol

Tarragona - Honda Deauville

Tarragona - Nissan Primera

Tarragona - Peugeot 406

Tenerife - Land Rover 90

Tenerife - Talbot Horizon

Tenerife, Adeje - Toyota Landcruiser vehicle removal unit

Click on article title	Editorial	Warrington Borough Police Insignia	Medals and Awards	How are your Escutcheons?
Our One Thousandth Member!	Social Media and history	Researching the Plymouth pillars and boxes	Monograph No.5	Photo Gallery
	Motor Patrolling		Pam's Postcards