The Met Dockyard Divisions 1860 -1934
The Met’s Dockyard Divisions – 1860 - 1934
Mike Waldren QPM
There is a commonly held belief that police officers on mainland UK have always been unarmed. This is not only untrue (see Armed Burglars – The 1880s) there have been several substantial bodies of police officers who regularly performed their duty permanently carrying a firearm and high on the list of these were some members of the Met’s dockyard divisions.
The first of the Royal Dockyards to be built was at Portsmouth in 1496. Additional yards were established at Woolwich in 1512, at Deptford in 1513, at Chatham in 1570, at Sheerness in 1665 and at Plymouth in 1690 (renamed Devonport in 1843). There was a huge growth in the size of the dockyards as a result of the Napoleonic Wars culminating in the establishment of another yard at Pembroke in 1814. During the 1860s and 70s there was another expansion of all the yards with the exception of Deptford and Woolwich which were thought to be inconveniently situated and were closed in 1869.
From the beginning there was the problem of theft from ships in the yards, particularly those that were in for refitting or repair. There was widespread and endemic pilfering from vessels because there was no complete record of what was aboard them. A system of ‘porters, rounders, warders and watchmen’ was introduced in the 1680s but this was largely ineffective and after the creation of the Met in 1829 the Admiralty saw the benefit of having a properly organised police force. Following the advice of a Met Superintendent the first of the Admiralty dockyard police forces was formed in 1834. However, the policing of Deptford and Woolwich dockyards became the responsibility of ‘R’ Division of the Met in 1841 and the Royal Woolwich Arsenal, which was established as an ordnance storage depot in 1671, was included in the arrangements for Woolwich Dockyard in 1843.
Having some dockyards policed by the Met, and others by ‘civilian’ police, was not very satisfactory and the Admiralty seems to have been less than impressed with its police forces anyway. It called for an independent review of their efficiency and this reported a number of serious weaknesses. On the other hand the Met’s policing of Deptford and Woolwich was considered to be exemplary and in the end the Metropolitan Police Act 1860 authorised the Commissioner of the Met, Sir Richard Mayne, to employ constables in all of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s dockyards and military stations.
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In addition, the Act authorised the exercise of police powers within ‘fifteen miles of such yards or stations ... as well as on seas as in harbours and havens, and on rivers and other waters as on land, and shall act within such yards, stations, and limits as fully as in any part of the Metropolitan Police District: Provided always, that the powers and privileges of the constables of the Metropolitan Police, when without the yards, naval and marine hospitals and infirmaries, and marine barracks or stations, and not on board or in any ship, vessel, or boat belonging to Her Majesty or in Her Majesty’s service, shall only be used in respect of the property of the Crown or of persons subject to naval or marine or military discipline’.
The Admiralty’s dockyard forces were disbanded (with some of the members opting to join the Met) and the Admiralty Powers Act 1865 made the Admiralty Superintendent (an Admiral, a Commodore or, in the case of Pembroke, a Captain) of each yard a magistrate thus giving him the authority to hear cases brought before him. He could also issue warrants and sentence prisoners to a fine or a term of imprisonment.
Portsmouth and Devonport were the first to be taken over followed by Chatham on Monday 3 December 1860 and Pembroke a short time later. Initially about 128 Met officers were employed at Deptford and Woolwich, with about another 400 in other Admiralty establishments, the whole forming the Met’s dockyard divisions. By 1870 the number had risen to 630 despite the closing of the yards at Deptford and Woolwich with 159 being in No. 1 Division at the Royal Woolwich Arsenal, 165 in No. 2 Division at Portsmouth, 156 in No. 3 Division at Devonport, 124 in No. 4 Division at Chatham (which included Sheerness as a sub-division) and 26 in No. 5 Division at Pembroke.
Since the Royal Navy had historically been Great Britain’s dominant armed force requiring guns and ammunition, the dockyards were also the primary location for ordnance depots. As had been the case with the Royal Woolwich Arsenal, some of these were gradually included within the remit of the dockyard divisions with the primary ones being at Chatham (Upnor), Portsmouth (Priddy’s Hard, with Marchwood being added in about 1900) and Devonport (Bull Point), as well as on the Thames estuary at Purfleet in Essex (believed to have been as a sub-division of No.1 Division in about 1883). At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 it was decided that the Royal Navy needed its own independent supply of cordite for shells and the Royal Navy Cordite Factory at Holton Heath in Dorset was established for the duration of the war. During its construction and after it was built security was provided by Met officers, probably as a sub-division of No. 2 Division. The 1860 Act only applied in England and Wales but it was amended to include Scotland by the Metropolitan Police (Employment in Scotland) Act 1914. In 1916 a sixth dockyard division was created at Rosyth with sub-divisions at the ordnance depot at Crombie and at the fuel depot at Invergordon.
Officers did not just guard the gates, investigate crime and patrol the grounds. In 1864 a Water Police Branch was formed and at Devonport the whole of that branch lived (together with their wives and children if they had any) in an old hulk once commissioned as the 46-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Leda. Chatham dockyard division formed its own police band and this was often called upon when new ships were launched. In 1882 the Police Fire Brigade had its busiest year since its formation with six major fires to deal with. Fires in the dockyards were considered to be so serious that by the Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772 ‘persons who shall wilfully set on fire, burn or destroy ships of war, or aid or assist in so doing, in any of His Majesty's [King George III’s] dockyards, arsenals, magazines etc, or shall set fire to any buildings, timber or material there placed, or any military, naval or victualling stores etc, shall suffer death as a felon, without benefit of clergy’. The offence and the accompanying death penalty remained on the statute books until 1971, becoming one of the last of the capital offences to be repealed.
The dockyard divisions were also responsible for putting into effect the Contagious Diseases Act in their areas when it became law in 1864. The Admiralty and the Army top brass had become increasingly concerned about the number of their personnel who were contracting sexually transmitted diseases (in 1857 three-quarters of the sick of the Scots Fusilier Guards consisted of venereal cases) and the Act named selected garrison and naval ports, which initially included Chatham, Portsmouth and Woolwich, around which common prostitutes were from then on required to submit to a ‘voluntary’ examination every fortnight. If they were diagnosed as suffering from gonorrhoea or syphilis they were made the subject of compulsory hospitalisation in a ‘Lock Hospital’ until ‘cured’. Initially this enforced restriction on their liberty was for a period of up to three months but this was gradually increased until it became twelve months in 1869. Devonport was added to the list of named naval ports in 1866 and the identification and registering of the unfortunate women to whom the Act applied was undertaken by dockyard officers working in plain clothes.
Inspector Silas Rendle Anniss at Devonport seems to have been particularly diligent in enforcing the Act (perhaps, on occasions, displaying an excess of zeal) and he became a recognised authority on the subject but in the process he became a hate figure around Plymouth. On one occasion he was ‘set upon by an excited crowd, and hissed and hooted at with all kinds of execrations and threats and even pelted with missiles’. The Act was repealed in 1886 but the bogeyman threat that ‘Silas Anniss will come and get you’ was used to ensure the good behaviour of children even after the turn of the century in sharp contrast to the avuncular ‘George Dixon’ image that would be carefully fostered by the police service after World War II.
On 2 September 1876 the Admiral Superintendent at Chatham heard of a rumoured attack during the next night on Chatham Convict Prison (which was next to the dockyard) to release Fenian prisoners. It was less than nine years since the attempt to free Burke and Casey by Fenians blowing up a wall of Clerkenwell Prison in Corporation Row in London (see Early Police Firearms – The 1860s) and such threats had to be taken seriously. There were about 1,500 convicts in the prison and a large number of them were employed as convict labour building an extension to the dockyard. According to the Evening Post: ‘Information having been received by the Governor of St Mary’s Convict Prison at Chatham that an attempt was to be made to effect the release of Fenian convicts, a strong body of military was detailed for duty, and a chain of sentries is posted round the exterior of the prison walls. There are five Fenian prisoners at Chatham, some of whom were concerned in the murder of Police Sergeant Brett at Manchester. ... Both the military and the civil guard were armed with loaded carbines and bayonets, and supplied with rounds of ammunition’.
Superintendent John Smith, who was in charge of Chatham dockyard division, reported that he: ‘at once made special Police arrangements with a view of protecting the Dockyard by supplementing the ordinary duty reliefs by 20 men who remained on duty till after daylight this morning. The whole men were armed with swords’. He was reassured by the head of the Criminal Department at the Home Office that the threat was not specific to Chatham but ‘that information was received that an attempt to rescue Fenian Convicts in custody in this country was in contemplation’.
For full document click HERE
The ‘swords’ would have been cutlasses and they had been available to the Met since its formation but in 1885 Superintendent Sherlock of Islington Division queried why he still had 605 cutlasses when they had not be issued for years. This prompted a survey of all divisions of the Met, which was completed on 19 March, resulting in the discovery that there were 5,427 cutlasses still held in various divisions including the dockyards. A later recount increased this to 5,441. A firm of auctioneers suggested that they could easily be sold because of their police association but in June the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, ‘decided to adhere to the rule which has been settled since the year 1880 with regard to the sale of old arms and that arrangements should be made with the War Office ... for the removal of the old cutlasses now in question to the Woolwich Arsenal with a view to their being broken up’.
The Commissioner, Sir Edmund Henderson, directed that ten cutlasses should be retained in each division, plus 107 by the officers at Woolwich Arsenal and 421 by the other dockyard divisions – Portsmouth 151, Devonport 131, Chatham 111 and Pembroke 28. A total of 4,713 cutlasses were then scrapped at Woolwich but no record has been found to date of the other 728 ever being officially withdrawn.
Whenever it was necessary for dockyard officers to carry something more useful than a cutlass they were not issued with Metropolitan Police weapons. They carried whatever the Royal Navy was using as its service sidearm at the time, although until 1867 this varied according to which dockyard they were at. As a result, in the early 1860s the weapon could have been a .36 calibre Colt ‘Navy’ percussion revolver which, despite its US heritage, was made in London. In 1856 there were 9,600 on issue to the Royal Navy, including those for use by the Admiralty dockyard police forces. Alternatively it could have been a 54-bore (.442 calibre) Beaumont-Adams percussion revolver made by Deane, Adams and Deane. The popularity of the Beaumont-Adams was such that Samuel Colt closed his London factory and in 1867 the .450 calibre Adams breech-loading revolver was officially adopted by the Royal Navy to the exclusion of all others. Between 1867 and 1880 various models were taken into use and in 1887 the Adams revolvers were replaced by .455 calibre Webley Mark I ‘top-break’ revolvers. These had a distinctive ‘birds beak’ butt which makes them easier to identify and this is repeated in all the .455 versions up to the Mark IV which was adopted in 1899.
The date at which the officers in the dockyard divisions went from being armed occasionally to some of them carrying firearms permanently is not recorded but it was probably during the period of the renewed Fenian attacks in the 1880s. On 15 March 1883 a bomb exploded beside the Local Government building in Charles Street in London. Later that evening another device was found outside the offices of The Times newspaper. Armed police were assigned to guard the more important Government offices including all London bridges and other public buildings. According to ‘Scotland Yard and The Metropolitan Police’ by John Moylan (1929): ‘When the dynamite outrages began in London, members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were thought to be more competent for the protection of public buildings and the persons of Cabinet ministers than London’s own police, and in their green uniforms and rifles they were seen for a time on sentry-go in the Whitehall neighbourhood’.
There are records showing that at Newgate prison in September 1883, ‘3 sergeants and 24 constables [from the Met’s ‘A’ Division] are employed daily ... in consequence of the detention there of [Patrick] O’Donnell charged with the murder of James Carey; the men are armed with the [Adams] Service revolver’.
For full document click HERE
Carey was a leading Fenian who was arrested with others in 1883 and charged with conspiracy to murder public officials after the ‘Phoenix Park Murders’ in Dublin of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke in May 1882. He turned Queen’s evidence and five of his erstwhile associates were hanged. He was shot and killed by O’Donnell on board a ship travelling from Cape Town to Natal where Carey was hoping to start a new life well out of reach of his former comrades. O’Donnell was brought back to England for trial and he was executed at Newgate in December 1883.
On 22 September the Home Office gave authority for the officers on duty at Millbank Prison, where more Fenian prisoners were being held, to be armed with revolvers ‘except those employed in the public thoroughfare’.
For full document click HERE
Over the next two years there were twenty-two bomb attacks against buildings and monuments including the Tower of London, Nelson’s Column and Scotland Yard itself.
It is therefore highly likely that some officers of the dockyard divisions were also permanently armed during the crisis. Officers from ‘A’ Division of the Met soon replaced the RIC personnel and they continued to provide armed security on government and other buildings even after the emergency was over. As the dockyard officers were not usually employed ‘in the public thoroughfare’ there could have been no Home Office objection to them continuing to be armed as well.
The jurisdiction of the Met did not include ‘on board or in any ship, vessel, or boat belonging to Her Majesty or in Her Majesty’s service’. Guard duty actually on ships was the responsibility of the Admiralty, formalised by the Home Dockyard Regulations 1904 which required that: ‘A Guard of Marines consisting of a non-commissioned officer and four privates is to be placed on all battleships and cruisers in the Dockyard Reserve which are moored in the stream; and also in any lying alongside the dockyard, or in dock, which have valuable portable stores on board, and where special precautions against irregularities are necessary’.
However, in May 1911 Colonel C. H. Kennedy, the officer commanding the Royal Marine Barracks at Gosport, tried to get this changed. He had six guard parties totalling six corporals and 30 privates guarding ships and he could ‘ill spare their services in our present depleted condition at Head Quarters’. He suggested that Marine guard parties should be replaced by officers of the dockyard divisions and he was supported by the Admiralty Superintendent at Portsmouth, Commodore Alexander Duff. The Police Superintendent in charge of the dockyard division at Portsmouth objected strongly saying that: ‘It cannot be considered that a Constable on beat duty, having probably one or more ships out of commission on his beat, can take the place of such a guard as has hitherto been considered necessary, or that the guard would be as efficiently performed by a constable specially detailed for each ship, under which circumstances there would only be one constable on board at a time as against three or four Marines under the present arrangement. ... I beg to inform the Commissioner that ships on being put out of commission, especially for refit in [the] Dockyard, are often found to be short of fittings. It would be impossible for Police to check and take over the fittings and stores, although they would probably be held responsible for any subsequently missed. ... During the refit ... it would be impossible for a single constable to exercise any appreciable supervision over [some hundreds of men employed on all parts of the ship] and during silent hours and darkness he could do little more than guard the gangway’. The matter was settled on 31 May when Duff was informed that: ‘Their Lordships [at the Admiralty] have decided ... that Marine Guards are to be embarked in ships undergoing long refit only in cases where Care and Maintenance parties do not actually live on board’.
In November 1911 the instructions on when officers in the dockyards and ordnance depots could actually use the firearms they were carrying were published in force orders for the first time. Headed ‘Dockyards Etc ... Magazine Stations’, it read: ‘Police armed with revolvers, are, when they detect the approach of any person or persons whose actions are suspicious, to challenge such persons by calling out “Halt, who goes there?” If the person or persons fail to reply to the challenge or to give a satisfactory explanation and continue to advance, the Constable should, if the circumstances permit, repeat the challenge and warn them that unless they stop he will fire, at the same time, if possible, blowing his whistle. If they still advance, and he has reason to infer from their actions or the surrounding circumstances that they are evilly disposed, it will be necessary for him to fire with the object of disabling them’.
For full document click HERE
This form of challenge would have been entirely familiar to anyone working in or near a military establishment and the instructions probably drew on the orders given to navy personnel performing guard duty. Having said that, the idea that a constable facing ‘the evilly disposed’ should also have to think about blowing his whistle as well as repeating the challenge and adding that he will fire if they do not stop can only have come from the pen of someone senior in the police.
In 1913 the Royal Navy changed to the biggest of all the production Webley self-loading pistols. It was in .455 calibre and it was adopted as the Webley & Scott self-loading pistol Mark I Navy.
At the time the Met had the .32 calibre Webley & Scott self-loading pistol which had been adopted at the end of 1911 (see Siege of Sidney Street – 1911) and weighed 580 grams (1 lb 4.45 oz). The .455 weighed nearly double at 1,131 grams (2 lb 7.89 oz) and the difference between the two weapons in terms of size and weight was quite marked, particularly for those who had to carry one for a tour of duty (although .455 Webley revolvers were still in use by some Met officers at the Royal Woolwich Arsenal in the 1920s – ‘R’ Division of the Met would borrow ‘a large number’ in 1921). The Police Federation of England and Wales had been set up by the Police Act 1919 as a representative body for police officers up to the rank of Chief Inspector and in June 1921 the Metropolitan Police Branch Board (Constables) passed resolution 78 which read: ‘That this board respectfully ask the Commissioner to favourably consider the advisability of substituting the .32 Webley [&] Scott Automatic Pistol, for the .455 Webley [&] Scott Automatic Pistol with which the men at the Dockyards are at present armed. The former pistol is much lighter and more effective. The men at some Dockyards are carrying [the] .455 Webley [&] Scott Pistol and 21 rounds of ammunition which together with the holster and pouch weigh 5¾ lbs, and which is suspended from the left shoulder by means of a strap’. Since the .455 Mark I Navy could be loaded with a 7-round magazine each officer was obviously carrying two spare loaded magazines in a magazine pouch.
The photograph below shows the holster worn with a shoulder-strap although the latter is over the right shoulder after the fashion of a Sam Browne belt. This is not of itself significant because other photographs show weapons being carried (without the shoulder-strap) on the left or right hip seemingly at the discretion of the officer concerned. Alternatively the Branch Board may just have got the shoulder wrong.
The Branch Board could not have chosen a worse time to make its request. After World War I Great Britain found itself in severe debt and the realities of trying to balance the books across the whole of the post-war economy were starting to become evident. Like every other government department the Home Office was under pressure to cut costs and the Commissioner of the Met, Sir William Horwood, saw no reason why his force should buy more pistols when in this case they were already being provided free of charge by the Admiralty. On 4 August the Secretary of the Branch Board was informed that: ‘With reference to resolution No. 78 ... in view of the present financial conditions, the extra charge involved cannot be favourably considered. ... In view of the informative nature of the Resolution, the Commissioner considers it inadvisable to publish [the resolution and the reply] in Police Orders’. In other words Horwood did not want the fact that police in the dockyards were carrying guns to become public knowledge.
The death knell of the dockyard divisions was sounded four months later with the ‘First Interim Report of the Committee on Public Expenditure’ in December 1921. This committee, headed by Sir Eric Geddes, had been appointed the previous August by the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, to find economies in all government departments after they had failed to identify enough on their own. Known today as the ‘The Geddes Axe’, the end result made sweeping cuts across the board and noted in part that: ‘the Admiralty, with a smaller Navy, are maintaining far larger shore establishments, both Naval and Civilian, than they did before the War, and we think that there are many ways in which economies could be effected by employing the Naval Ratings and Marines held for mobilisation on the work now done for the Admiralty by civilians and Metropolitan Police’.
Of the dockyard divisions the committee believed that: ‘The system of guarding Naval establishments, undertaking Fire Brigade duties, &c, by means of the Metropolitan Police seems to us to be entirely wrong, and the cost excessive. In wages and uniform alone, the cost is now £539,693 compared with £173,380 pre-war. The numbers are now 1,665 as compared with 1,347 before the war [the committee neglected to mention that this was largely due to the creation of the sixth dockyard division at Rosyth in the intervening period]. The present total cost to the State for each policeman may be put at £400 per annum. From information which we have received, we are satisfied that these men are employed by the Admiralty in numbers largely in excess of what is required for purely police duties, and we recommend that the whole question should be gone into by the Admiralty with the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, with a view to arranging that Metropolitan Police be employed only in such numbers as the Commissioner considers necessary for detection of crime, and that all duties of watching, gate guarding, fire brigade work and sentry duty, including conducting visitors round the dockyards, should be carried out by active service Marines or Naval ratings retained for mobilisation of the War Fleet’.
The Water Police Branch came in for a special mention. The report identified that it cost £30,750 whereas before the war the cost was £9,644. The numbers now employed were 2 Inspectors, 16 Sergeants and 81 Constables, an increase of 23 over 1914. The committee suggested that this work should be done by active service navy ratings and ‘the Metropolitan Water Police should all be released’.
After consulting with the Admiralty, Horwood decided that crime detection and crime prevention were so intertwined that they could not be easily split and that he would pull the Met out entirely. The Admiralty started looking for the cheapest available alternative and decided that as Royal Marines had been engaged on guarding ships in the dockyards for years there was now an opportunity for them to be offered useful employment to supplement their pensions when they retired. According to the London Gazette, at the Court at Buckingham Palace on 13 October 1922, the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty proposed that: ‘whereas we consider it desirable, as a measure of economy, to replace the Metropolitan Police employed at certain of Your Majesty's [King George V’s] Naval Establishments by a Force of Retired Officers and Pensioners of the Royal Marines, to be known as the Royal Marine Police: We beg leave humbly to recommend that Your Majesty will be graciously pleased, by Your Order in Council, to sanction the formation of a Royal Marine Police Force’. In fact, this was even more of a formality than usual because the new force had already been formed and the sanction was backdated to 1 August 1922. In addition, the Special Constables Act 1923 allowed special constables, with all the powers of fully-sworn Met officers, to be employed ‘within the yards and stations and limits’ at which Met officers were at that time employed under the 1860 and 1914 Acts ‘both as originally enacted and as applied to the Air Force’.
Unfortunately, however much the Government wanted to save money, this new and totally untrained force could not just step in and take over and it was the closure for economic reasons of the dockyards at Rosyth in 1925 and at Pembroke in 1926 that saw the first major reduction of Met officers in the dockyards. Nevertheless, a ‘Standing Committee on Expenditure’ report in 1926 noted that: ‘Substantial savings have already been effected by replacing Metropolitan Police by Royal Marine Pensioners in various naval Establishments. But at the home Dockyards the [Met] police still cost £156,000 a year’.
The replacement of the Met was a gradual process with the Royal Marine Police and serving navy personnel taking over the more mundane tasks early on and working alongside Met officers until they could finally replace them for the rest. In December 1926 the remaining officers at Woolwich Arsenal were withdrawn (they were replaced by War Department special constables) but it was not until April 1929 that the Met was finally able to withdraw from Sheerness. The Royal Marine Police eventually fully replaced the Met at Chatham in 1932, at Portsmouth in 1933 and at Devonport in 1934.
The obvious flaw in the plan to use serving ‘Marines or Naval ratings retained for mobilisation of the War Fleet’ in place of Met officers for those duties which were not taken over by the Royal Marine Police was realised five years later when the ‘Marines or Naval ratings’ were actually required for the ‘War Fleet’. Arrangements made to cover the desperate shortages during World War II included the formation of the Royal Marine Police Reserve and, when even this was not enough, the formation of the Admiralty Civil Police. This meant that the Admiralty was in the chaotic situation of having three separate police forces at the end of the war, all under the same Chief Constable. In 1947 the Emergency Laws (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act extended the 1923 Act to cover any premises in the United Kingdom used by the Admiralty, Army or Air councils for military purposes and the Admiralty Constabulary (which incorporated the pensioners in the Royal Marine Police, the Royal Marine Police Reserve and the Admiralty Civil Police) was established in 1949.
The War Department Constabulary started with special constables in 1925 to become the Army Department Constabulary in 1965. The Air Force Department Constabulary grew out of the warders who became special constables in 1923. In due course they would be called Air Ministry Constables. The Army, Air Force and Admiralty constabularies were amalgamated in October 1971 with the formation of the Ministry of Defence Police although this inherited the special constable status of its three predecessors.
In the House of Commons on 27 January 1987 Mr. Archie Hamilton, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, explained that: ‘In one form or another, [the MDP] has been doing its present job since 1860, when it was a branch of the Metropolitan police’. He went on to say that there was ‘no single Act of Parliament from which the MDP derives its powers. In fact there is no Act which provides specifically for the MDP at all. ... The MDP derives its powers from a Metropolitan Police Act passed in 1860 to permit the use of Metropolitan constables in royal dockyards and military stations. Although this early legislation has been amended and extended many times down the years, it was not conceived with the duties of a modern force in mind and it cannot be appropriate for duties which could not be foreseen in Victorian times. Not surprisingly, there are gaps and ambiguities. ... The intention ... is to provide the force with a statutory basis in its own right instead of its rather curious status as a body of special constables with the powers of constables of the Metropolitan Police under the 1860 Act’.The Ministry of Defence Police Act 1987 finally gave the force full legal powers of its own and it is a worthy fully armed successor to the officers who for three-quarters of a century served in the Met’s dockyard divisions.
Note:
I am grateful to Keith Heather, curator of the MDP Museum at Weathersfield, for the guided tour of his domain and for filling in some of the gaps in the MDP family tree.
Did your force or any of its predecessors perform duty at military stations or other premises before the creation of the Admiralty, War Department or Air Ministry special constables? If so please contact mike.policehistory@yahoo.com
© Mike Waldren