Memories of 'Tosh' - and the days of discipline
IT was good news to hear Brighouse Police Station has opened its front door once again to the general public.
I remember many years ago the outcry when it went on to restricted opening hours. I went to countless meetings with the public, Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators, Pub Watch, Business Watch and Shop Watch trying to reassure people and explain that unless they used it the restricted opening hours would only get worse. Residents complained that it should be open, even into the night.
But I asked them: "How often do you go to the police station during the early evening, let alone at night?" The answer was rarely, if ever, which meant someone basically sitting and waiting for a caller.
Then, following a survey that showed barely above two people per hour used it during the evening, the writing was on the wall. The decision was taken and the public entrance was closed and the external telephone was made available.
The West Yorkshire Police is now 35 years old, not long you might think, but that date in 1974 saw the large scale amalgamation of Leeds, Bradford and the West Yorkshire force, and I served in them all during my 30 year career. The new amalgamated force became known as the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police and we all received out new shiny helmets and cap badges.
But our local police service here in Brighouse and its satellite communties has been around far longer than 1974.
Following the enactment of the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835 where one of its clauses stated that every borough and city should establish a modern police service based on the one Sir Robert Peel had established in London some six years earlier.
Locally we had Halifax Borough, Huddersfield Borough and of course Bradford City and Leeds City, which all went ahead and established their own police service. What of the bits in between? This saw the introduction of the West Riding Constabulary and it was Anthony Waddington who became the first West Riding Constable of the modern era to cover the Hipperholme-come-Brighouse Township in 1854.
In those early days both Brighouse and Hipperholme had their own police sections, even after the Township was formally separated in 1865 the Hipperholme Police Section continued well into the 1950s and 1960s. One of the early police stations at Hipperholme was in one of the houses on Roydlands Terrace which was also used as the police house. It then moved into one of the newly-built houses in Brookeville Avenue. Prisoners would be taken there and seated in the front room of the house which doubled as both the station and the police house.
I am sure that many readers will be able to remember the local policeman being talked about by your parents between the two wars. PC Brown, who for many years before World War Two was based at Southowram as the local policeman; PC 1398 Joseph Stocks Fawcett, was the Bailiff Bridge policeman in the post First World War years. Inspector George Archer had been promoted and posted to Brighouse in 1914, he retired on May 1, 1919, having completed 30 years' service and was the senior officer at the Police Street Police Station in Brighouse..
Looking back to those officers who served in more modern times some of the names that instantly spring to mind include: PC John Lawton; PC Jack Butcher; PC Jim Stansfield joined in 1953 and retired as an inspector based at Brighouse; Sgt Alan Lunn; Sgt Tom Denny; PC Geoff Kilvington; PC McDonald; PC Lewis Truelove; PC Bill Ley and PC Tom Stennett; PCs Hanson Binns; Horace Calvert and Jim Murphy all based at Norwood Green. But, you cannot put a list of local police officers together without mentioning 'Tosh'.
'Tosh' was Chief Inspector Tom Lawrence who was made famous many years ago through the writings of John Wainwright, a former Brighouse Police Constable. He wrote one book in particular about his years as a police officer and particularly his days as a young PC in Brighouse and the 'run-ins' he had with his boss who he nicknamed 'Tosh'.
I got to know Tom and even when he was in his 90th year I still called him Mr Lawrence to his face. It was the way you were brought up in the police service back in those days. I regularly visited him at his home in Bailiff Bridge, where we used to have long nostalgic conversations about his policing days both before and up to his retirement in 1955, and of course his days chasing after John Wainwright.
In this week's featured photograph taken in Lawson Road (which many readers will recall was then known as Police Street) some time during the 1950s.
The new Bradford Road Police Station was opened in 1964 after it was decided to close the one in Police Street because like the old Ganny Road lock-up, this too had become obsolete. Even after the new station was opened at a cost exceeding 40,000 the building could not be built any higher to allow any expansion but it could grow outwards.
Looking back now it is 35 years ago that started work at Brighouse – the days of the late Superintendent Brian Midgley. If you dared to leave the station and drive a police car and passed his office without wearing your head gear, you were called in to his office for a dressing down – and they could hear it in Wellholme Park!
Policewomen were not allowed to have hair below the collar. Male officers were not allowed to have crew-cuts or very short hair or near bald heads as these were considered to be 'aggressive' hairstyles. Walk through Brighouse in uniform carrying your cap or helmet was a cardinal sin.
Superintendent Basil Hirst came to Brighouse from Bradford and if you ever had to go and see him for a dressing down, the key was to try to change the subject to the police choir because he had long associations with it and after discussing that he would say: "Now what did I want you for?"
In 1976 a message came through from the Chief Constable's Office – "With the current heat wave officers may take their ties off . . . but that has to be all officers." The same applied to shirt-sleeve order, again it was all or none and walking round Brighouse with any of your buttons undone. Heck, life would not be worth living! Creases in trousers had to be vertical and not horizontal or as one Chief Inspector did, he sent a sergeant home to get changed for setting a bad example.
The police station was used as an overnight hostel for wagon drivers who were stranded on the motorway back in 1981.
In 1990 Superintendent David Brook-Smith retired and this was really the end of an era. The changes would soon begin to sweep through the valley. One of those changes was eventually to see the police station closed to the general public. But perhaps the tide is changing back again with it being reopened – now don't forget use it or you could lose it!
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Weather for Halifax
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -3 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 0 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South
