Police licensing and similar records

A wide range of licensing records can survive among police records.  This derives from the original organisation of the policing of towns, which gave wider powers relating to public health and civic government, to the newly created police commissioners. In most cases licensing records come to local authority archives via town council and county council records, and to the National Records of Scotland via justice of the peace records.  However, records received from police forces occasionally contain licensing and other forms of registers, such as registers of pedlars’ certificates, registers of shops (under the Shops Act, 1912), registers of premises licensed to keep carbide of calcium (under the Petroleum Acts), registers of lost dogs (under Dogs Act, 1906), registers of firearms (under the Firearms Act 1920), registers of explosives, registers of poisons and registers of moneylenders. Most of these registers became the responsibility of local authority trading standards departments.

Other registers, not connected with licensing, which occasionally survive from police records are registers of aliens (non-British citizens resident in a town or county from the First World War until the 1960s), and, among the county constabularies, especially highland constabularies, registers or lists of sheep marks.

The use of licensing and similar records which survive in both police records and among town council, county council and justices of the peace records is generally confined to researchers investigating particular trades (such as the licensed liquor trade). However, they have some potential for local historians and anyone researching individuals who were traders in licensed trades.