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Some Special Interests => Occupation Interests => Topic started by: merrymoo on Saturday 21 January 12 10:25 GMT (UK)
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Hi, I think my ancestor John Wilkinson b 1815 was a Police Constable and then a Police Inspector for the London and Birmingham railway.
In 1841 he was a police officer living at ' Between L & B Railway CamdenTown and Coke yard'. Because he was a Police Officer I went to the Proceedings of the Old Bailey website and found between 1839 and 1842 two instances of a John Wilkinson in court with arrests he had made on the Railway.
Because of his home address I feel fairly certain that this is my man but can anyone please give me anything tangible to confirm my suspicions or give me a contact who might have more info on this man.
Many thanks all :)
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As you are probably already aware, the L+B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_Birmingham_Railway became part of the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) in 1846. In due course that company became an integral part of the London Midland & Scottish (LMS).
I am not aware of the level of insformation which may have survived regarding L+B Railway Police, but I would suggest an email enquiry to the British Transport Police History Group via their website http://www.btphg.org.uk would be worth trying.
Dave
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Thanks Dave :)
I will give them a try
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Hi Merrymoo
I am a member of the BTPHG and whilst I do not have access to the full nominal roll I am the project manager for our census project.....collating all the UK Census for entries relating to railway, dock and canal police. There are two entries relating to a John Wilkinson both with differing dates of birth both working for the London North Western Railway, one was born in 1790 and the other in 1811, the first being a Constable based at Linslade in Befordshire in 1851 and the other was an Inspector based in Wolverton in 1841.
Please note that the above is not an official reply from the History Group but merely my notes from the project I am working on.
Regards
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Thank you for your reply. The John Wilkinson b 1790 you mention is my 4th g grandfather. He seems to have joined the transport police after he was pensioned out of the 2nd Life Guards in 1833. I have him in the 1851 census, as you say, living in Linslade.
You may be interested to know that he was a career soldier and was at the Battles of Vittoria and Waterloo and subsequently a Chelsea Pensioner.
I did contact the BTPHG as advised in my earlier posting, but have not yet received a reply.
Is there a way I could find out more details of John's career with the police?
I also suspect that his son, also John Wilkinson b 1816 was, albeit briefly, in the transport police. In 1841 he is described as a police officer living 'Between L & B Railway Camden Town and Coke yard' but by 1851 he is a coal dealer in Luton, Beds, not far from his father in Linslade.
Hope to hear more
Diane Kelly
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Hi Diane
You will receive a reply but the person who deals with enquiries is away for a couple of weeks. I doubt whether you will receive a great deal of information from our own records, as many were destroyed a long time ago, that is why we have projects attemtpting recapture what we can.
Sadly I really have nothing further to help you, other than letting you know that Ancestry.com have a recently intriduced data base showing railway staff for a number of railway companies.....you will probably find further information on John Wilkinson from there. The information for John Wilkinson, may be discovered there.....it is however a long and laborious process as often the police officers details are hidden within a number of railway departments - coaching & police is quite normal.
Finally please note that the early railway policemen spent a lot of their time undertaking signalling duties, managing crossing points and checking the track for trespassers. Some railway companies did not in fact have their constables sworn in but were dressed in recongisable police uniform (for the day)...the whole area can be a bit grey. However saying that I do know and as you discovered in the Old Bailey records, that many railway police after the first decade or so were undertaking what we would readily recognise as police work.
My interest is in the railway town of Wolverton which was policed by railway police for around 2 decades.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
I did think that may be the case when I got an out of office email but I wasn't sure who it was from so thanks for letting me know. I hope they have a good time.
Also thanks for the info about Ancestry, I will look there.
Good luck with your reseach
Diane
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Hi Diane Kelly!
I have just registered on RootsChat.com to chat with you, so I don't really know what i am doing, hope you get this. My name is Grant Wilkinson and I live in New Zealand. my parents have passed away, so time has passed now and today I decided to go through all my Mum and Dad's boxes that have been in storage, I came across a few boxes of antique silver from Bristol, some date back to mid 18 hundreds and I must say, pretty ugly stuff, but hand made an all. This is when things get a little interesting, in one of the boxes there was a leather case, as a child I remember this case on a shelf at my Grandmothers house, I opened it and yes, more ugly silver, a tea set, also made in Bristol, I picked up the sugar bowl and opened the lid, inside there was little jug that didn't look like it belong to the set, I think mum may have stuck it in there to keep it safe maybe, then I noticed some writing on the not so ugly little jug, it read.... John.B.Wilkinson Year 1846. Birmingham Railway. thank you for your effort. that is engraved on it. My Grandfather was from Cambridge England, he was a shoe maker I think? The jug being so old, who knows, what a strange day, jumped on Google for hours and came across your post, I want to know more now, My Dad was a very private man, all I know is my Grandfather was Charles Wilkinson from Cambridge. this little jug has became very personal to me now, I think I will sell the ugly stuff though :) hope you can suggest how i could find out more about the story of this little jug.
Cheers
Grant
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Railwaybill has provided a good reply, but to add to it I have searched my railway history library and it seems that as late as 1850 railway companies were still using the term Railway Policeman in their official rules book to describe what we now call signalmen.
"A history of railway signalling, author Michael Vanns"
mike
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Hi Grant, nice to see your message and I'm sorry you have lost your parents :(
You have been very lucky to have boxes of information to go through :), it's amazing how much info you can get from these things, don't forget to look at the back of postcards, letters, photos etc. as there is often info there that you might miss. If you have albums of photos be careful to look at the back of those photos but be careful when you remove them. This seems obvious but it's surprising how many photos I have that have been torn off the album hiding all the important stuff. I found my dad's leather WW2 personal hygiene case, he was an officer and they had such things. Inside a tube was his dog tags and a note. You never know where things are hiding, check for secret compartments!
I'm not sure how to check the details of the presentation of this jug but the National Archives have just released some information on railway workers, it came up on my email from them as I registered with them and I get newsletters.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/railway-overview
It might be worth pasting this link and seeing what they have. Also as Mazi said, Railway Bill was very helpful and the BTPHG http://www.btphg.org.uk were also helpful.
It goes without saying that in my experience everyone on Rootschat is very helpful!!
Sadly I don't think your Wilkinsons and mine are closely related as my family originate from Ticknall, Derbyshire and came to London through the Army, (2nd Life Guards, John was at the Battle of Waterloo) and then he joined the London and Birmingham Railway eventually based at Linslade, Buckinghamshire. Linslade was later, in 1963, to become famous for the bridge where "The Great Train Robbery" took place.
My only other suggestion is that the National Railway Museum in York might be interested in your find. If you photograph it and send them a picture who knows it might interest them.
Good luck with the family history and have fun using Rootschat.
Diane
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Thank you Diane!
Also for your advice. I still have lots of boxes to go through and a big suitcase of photos too, I plan to visit my Fathers sister, hopefully she will remember some of the people in the photos, that have no names, the albums are very old, but the photos are good, whoever did them must have put the photos in straight away. Really glad I have come across RootsChat, people on Chat have been very helpful, just got to get my head around the whole process, I am very interested to find out more,
Cheers
Grant
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it seems that as late as 1850 railway companies were still using the term Railway Policeman in their official rules book to describe what we now call signalmen.
This is correct.
The railway policemen were responsible for the security of the line (and goods in transit) and for the regulation of traffic movements.
Within living memory, signalmen were referred to as "bobbies" by railwaymen (see e.g. the writings of Adrian Vaughan)
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I am always happy to help those with railway police enquiries or the btphg.org.uk site can be checked and an enquiry raised. This is the site for the History Group of the British Transport Police and its 250+ constituent railway, dock and canal forces from 1829.
Some of the answers on rootschat regarding the railway, dock or canal police can be misleading or plainly incorrect...the history group do not necessarily have all the answers but the ones they do have are accurate.
The history of the railway, dock and canal police is long and complex.
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I might also add ... most of the records of the LMS and its constituent companies were lost in a fire at Derby in 1951.
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Useful information JBML...thank you