Northamptonshire Police Archives

[Marja]

robbo 43
  Glad to hear you managed to get the record you wanted. If you would like to give me his name, and particulars I might come across him during my travels as I have found some who have emigrated.

[carol8353]

Does anyone know if historical records of police officers are accessable anywhere?  I am trying to find information about a Charles Davey, born Tasburgh, Norfolk, 1883. In the 1911 census he was boarding with an Andrews family in Deanshanger and described as a Police Constable in the Northants Constabulary.

Robert

His name and particulars are in the original request Marja 

[robbo43]

I'm not sure that people who suffered from Encephalitis lethargica (sleepy sickness) are likely to have emigrated because of their health condition.

The most severe cases remained in a coma, often for decades.  Some of these patients responded to treatment with l-dopa in the 1960s (the 1990 film Awakenings dealt with this), but its effects were mostly short lived.

Symptoms included high fever, sore throat, headache, lethargy, double vision, delayed physical and mental response, sleep inversion and catatonia. Patients also experienced abnormal eye movements, parkinsonism, upper body weakness, muscular pains, tremors, neck rigidity, and behavioral changes including psychosis. Modern treatments including steroids and the drug Zolpidem may give some relief but in the past many cases deteriorated with brain damage similar to Parkinsons disease.

In Charles Henry Davey's case, the police review on 29 December 1923 stated that "Constable C H Davey was still an inmate of Berry Wood Mental Hospital ... That, while he still showed some signs of his recent mental derangement, Constable Davey was capable of carrying on a conversation but lacked initiative and was sluggish both physically and mentally ... Dr Robson would expect him to be forgettful and unreliable; on the other hand he found him civil, courteous, and desirous of resuming his duty should he be passed fit."

My guess is that he probably spent much of the rest of his life in institutions of one form or another.

Robert

[uptodat]

Hello Robert,

I am a former Northants Officer and I have recently volunteered to work on the Force Heritage Project. I don't yet have access to their material but most of their documents are now curated by the Northamptonshire Records Office, which, like Police Headquarters, is at Wootton Hall Park.
A request was passed to me today with the link to this thread, I think because it contained contact details, now obsolete.
However, in recent months I have been independently researching the officers of the then three separate forces in the County, who served in WW1, one of which was Davey.
My working notes on him may contain useful information for you, below. Your information about the nature of his illness is new to me.
I wonder if my speculation about his war service is relevant. Between 1915-1919 the Berrywood Asylum was Northampton War Hospital. I know that some soldiers remained there, even beyond WW2, after it returned to being a mental hospital.
Hitherto I have failed to identify which Army unit PC Davey served in. He is one of about 6 from a total of 92 County Constabulary men who served, whose units have not been identified. I am visiting NRO in the near future in search of clues, but perhaps you know?
Anyway, my notes follow; please correct me if I have erred:

Charles Henry Davey was born on 2/5/1883 in Tasburgh, Norfolk, & was a carpenter before he joined the Northamptonshire County Constabulary on 3/2/1908, & in 1911 was a PC at Deanshanger, where he lodged. He married Beatrice Elizabeth Riches, his home village schoolteacher in 1912. They had a son, Jack, 1913-2001. Charles' military service was from 1/1917-2/1919 but his unit has not yet been identified. He was medically pensioned from the force on 2/2/1924 (impact of war service?) and in 1939 the family were living at Bedford Road, Northampton. Charles died in 1957 & Beatrice 3 years later.

All the best,

Dave

[TonyV]

Hi Dave

I'm sure that many members of the forum who had Northants ancestors in the police force will be pleased to see your post. You might get a lot of enquiries!

You probably noticed that the last post on this subject was a few years ago so things have probably moved on since Robert started it. Nevertheless I'm pleased that you posted because I had not seen this thread before and I was interested to see that PC Davey contracted encephalitis lethargica, (sometimes called "sleepy sickness" because the victims often appeared comatose). My paternal grandfather moved from Leicestershire to Desborough and died of the same illness there in the same year that Charles Davey caught the disease (1923). While Robert's detailed description of the epidemic is correct there seems to be little or no memory of how it affected the population of Northamptonshire, or indeed the UK. It was, after all, a worldwide epidemic although nowhere near as widespread as the so-called Spanish Flu epidemic.

I contacted the Desborough Historical Society a few years ago. They were very helpful but my contacts there knew nothing about the epidemic or how many people in Desborough became ill, died or were incarcerated in the local mental hospital, as they were called in those days.

I certainly think that you are correct to discount the theory that Charles was retired because of his wartime experiences, horrific though they would probably have been, if, as Robert has discovered, he contracted this illness. There was no coming back from it - you either died, as in my grandfather's case or you were permanently and seriously mentally impaired for as long as you subsequently lived.

Incidentally while there is quite a lot of speculation about what caused the disease this has never properly been identified and neither is there a cure as such even today. So it could come back at some stage and cause serious problems for the population, particularly now that so many antibiotics are ineffective.

Incidentally my grandfather, also called Charles, had two sons who became policemen, but they moved to Leicester to join the force there.   

cheers

Tony

[uptodat]

Hi Tony,
I knew nothing of the sleeping sickness epidemic in Northants, but have since done a bit of googling & delving in BNA. As you say, with uncertainty about origins & treatment, let's hope it doesn't make a comeback!
I'm a very new volunteer and it will be a while before I get my feet under the table but having previously researched lots of names - mainly around WW1, I know where & how to search, & will try to help if any questions are raised here.
All the best,
Dave

[seahall]

The deaths for Charles and Beatrice seem to be in the Brixworth Registration District.

Sandy

[uptodat]

Until 1974, the Brixworth District covered a wide rural area to the north & west of Northampton Borough boundaries. Looking again at the 1939 Register, Charles, Beatrice & son Jack were actually living at Bedford Road, Brafield, a village not far from Northampton on the east side.
If the diagnosis was correct, it seems remarkable that Charles apparently recovered and lived so long Perhaps he had been re-admitted to Berrywood.

[robbo43]

Hi Dave, thanks for the update, I had tried to contact the original archivist again and failed, so I assumed that the contact had changed.

I tried to get hold of the medical records for Charles as the records for Berry Wood should still exist. However they have been shunted from one organisation to another and it seems that his records have been lost in the process.

The 1939 Register, when it became available, revealed that he was still alive and no longer in the hospital. From there it was possible to trace his death at The Cottage, 168 Bedford Road, Little Houghton in 1957 and his wife Beatrice, died in 1960 at the same address. Beatrice was Charles executor and their son Jack was Beatrice's. At that time Jack was described as a hospital porter, he died in 2001.

Beatrice Riches was born in Metfield, Norfolk, in 1879. She became a teacher and moved to Tasburgh to teach in the school there. In 1901 she was living a few doors away from Charles. By 1911 she had moved back to Metfield and, still a teacher, was living with her parents. Charles and Beatrice were married in Metfield in 1912.

Annoyingly although two of his brothers and a sister are mentioned in family documents and letters there is no reference to Charles. This leaves three main puzzles.

1. Why did he suddenly up sticks in 1908, moving from Norfolk to Northamptonshire to become a police officer? He was recommended for the post by Mr A E Fuller, Chief Constable of Norfolk but I can't find a connection. Many of the family were tenant farmers or tenants or worked for local estates, mainly Rainthorpe Hall but a few for Tasburgh Hall but Fuller had nothing to do with either of these as far as I can see. The only other known family police connection is with a cousin who joined the Metropolitan Police in 1895

2. Information about his wartime service. I have not been able to find records that are conclusively him.

3. Anything about his time in Berry Wood, when he was released and what his health was like thereafter. The only reference to what is probably him in a newspaper search is in the Northampton Mercury 20 January 1950 (page 9) "Charles Davey of Little Houghton was admitted to Northampton General Hospital with a fractured thigh."

The fact that Berry Wood had been a War Hospital is interesting. He was diagnosed with Encephalitis lethargica but could he in fact have been suffering from shell shock/PTSD? Sleepy Sickness affected people from a wide range of backgrounds not just with those with military service. At one time it was believed to have a connection with Spanish Flu, but I think that has been disproved.

Time might tell!

Good luck with the Force Heritage Project
Robert