Police station records
Records retrieved from police stations take a variety of forms and are described by a bewildering variety of names. Separate forms of record may have been kept by stations, depending on the whim and sophistication of the station, for example some stations kept lost property books or criminal registers (for the latter see the Knowledge Base entry for criminal registers and criminal photographs). However, most stations kept records conforming to four basic types:
- Station occurrence books/log books
- Charge/indictment books/case books
- Duty journals
- Detention/bail books
Station occurrence books/log books
These are essentially daily log books of incidents reported to the police staffing the station, either by members of the public or else by members of the police force. Runs of these survive from the mid-19th century for many stations in different parts of Scotland, and are manuscript. In some cases they have clearly been written up, very neatly, possibly from individual policemen’s notebooks. They go by a variety of names, such as Information Book, Incident Book, Occurrence Book, Station Log Book. Their format and content depended on the practice of individual officers, stations or forces, but some forces had developed a set form of occurrence book by the start of the 20th century.
Charge/indictment/case books
This type of record is a volume of information relating to specific cases, investigated by a police force, with information relating to the initial reporting of the crime, subsequent police action, and the result of the investigation (in many cases the result of prosecution in a civil or criminal court). These may be known by a variety of names, such as ‘Charge Books’, ‘Indictment Books’, ‘Reports of Crimes’, ‘Record of Convictions’, ‘Report and Disposals Book’, ‘Record of disposal of persons apprehended or cited’, or ‘Reports lodged with Procurator Fiscal’. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate between this type of record and the Station Log/Occurrence Book described above. Separate registers sometimes survive for accidents, sudden deaths and bodies found.
Duty journals
This type of record is more of a work record than a log book or a volume of case notes. In this case a policeman or several policemen stationed at one or more police stations records the details of each shift worked, including the amount of time on duty, the places patrolled, how he travelled to and around his beat (e.g. whether bicycle, horse, train or some other form of transport was used), costs incurred in the beat, and any action he took or incidents that occurred. In some cases the journal might relate to a specific type of duty, such as a time employed in escorting prisoners to and from prison after committal.
One example of this is a Police Duty Book for three officers at Bowmore 1863-66, (Glasgow City Archives SR22/91/4) which contains a record of beat patrolled, how travelled, costs, time worked, incidents.
Detention books/bail books
These are records relating to individuals detained in police cells or released, after arrest, on police bail. Most common are registers of persons detained in cells (sometimes called lock-up books), and registers of prisoners’ properties. Less common are bail books, registers of visits to prisoners, registers of punishments, and registers of sickness of prisoners.
Use of police station records
Taken as a whole, station records are probably most of use to local historians, as they allow the activities of police in relation to specific local events to be researched and some information about daily life (particularly the incidence of crime, accidents, etc). A proviso here is that station log books do not survive for all, or indeed, the majority of stations in Scotland. There is a particularly strong coverage for rural stations in some counties (notable highland forces) but much less survives for urban police stations, perhaps partly due to a higher incidence of reorganisation and relocation of police stations. Station records also have potential for academic research in social history and for historians of policing. For school use on the history of crime and policing in a particular area they are probably of less use than other records such as chief constables annual reports, since they are manuscript and require lengthy research. For genealogy, or for those researching the career of individual policemen or policewomen for other reasons, they may be of exceptional value or none at all, depending on what survives and in what form. If the individual you are researching happens to have left a duty journal, it will provide copious information about the life and work of the individual, written in his or her own hand. For others who require only basic details of the career and family of an individual, station records may represent a long, tedious research task, with little prospect of valuable results compared to personnel records (if these survive).
Related Knowledge Base entries