A day in the life of a Police Archives volunteer...

Have you ever wondered what we do in the police archives? We gave you a flavour last time but there is more.

There are 8 volunteers and one member of police staff who are all based in the Police Archives office, conveniently next to the Heritage Hub kitchen!  The tasks undertaken are rich and varied and range from answering queries from members of the public, retired officers and their families as well as current police officers and staff, usually in connection with their relatives and/or the history of the Force.

We enjoy talking to people who ‘discover’ us when they visit the Heritage Hub. We give talks on the history of the constabulary, support Force and Hub colleagues and partners at outreach events.  We also transcribe documents and drawing on our former detective skills, extract police related information from council documents.  We investigate both the life and careers of police officers. 

We have a website, dedicated to Gloucestershire Police Archives, which is regularly maintained with new information and images.  This helps to capture and share Gloucestershire's rich and diverse police history and heritage. We also link up with other police history organisations and police forces to share information and attend conferences to extend our knowledge and contacts through networking. We seek out police artefacts and ensuring they are kept for posterity, help other organisations when their history pathway crosses ours. Finally, we regularly provide photographs for national publications to use in various articles and help authors with their research.

Currently our band of volunteers are working on the following tasks: 

Extracting career information from general orders
Transcribing pocket books from the 1870sTaking the Chief Constables reports from Standing Joint Committee meetings
Transcribing Chief Constables orders from the 19th century
Finding information about military service
Investigating the Charles Chamberlain Military Medal, looking into acts of bravery
Looking at crimes from the early 20th century to see if they can be included on the website
Looking at reasons why police officers left in the early days of the Constabulary and what, if any, support was there for them.

You will see that some tasks are ongoing whilst others have changed since our last newsletter.

If you are interested in finding out what we do, please come and talk with us in the Chester Master Room in the Heritage Hub. We are open Monday to Wednesday until 2.30pm. And if you're wondering who Chester Master was, Richard Chester Master was the Chief Constable from 1910 until 1917 when he was killed on active service in France...just one of the many Police facts we can share with you!