This popular weekly journal aimed to give the policeman on the beat a voice at a time when he lacked one, published weekly it started in 1893. It's now to be made available on The British Newspaper Archive, starting with 1893-1917, it will be digitised and made available to subscribers, with the remainder, up to its demise in 2011, following in due course.
Because if its wide readership, this weekly journal is one of the most important for historical research on the work of Britain's police. It not only has editorials showing how the good policeman should act but also the moral values he should have. It also has letters pages with the names of the letter-writers, so is good for genealogy. The letters give insights into the struggles and issues of individual policemen and their families at the time. Another feature is the Wive's Column, showing the struggles of the police family who were incorporated into the police service, with poor pay being a common thread. The journal was well known for its campaigning, so that issues such as the implementation of 1 day off in 7, or lack of it in some forces, in the 1910s, the police bonus during the First World War at a time when each force had its own pay structure, and conscription were all hot topics of debate and dispute for which the journal provided evidence and direction. The journal gives real insight into the lives and work of policemen, and women when they were employed in the force, at the time.
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Digitisation is very much needed, as the number of complete sets is becoming a worry and the state of these is deteriorating. The number if sites with a complete set makes travel inevitable, so digitisation and uploading to a national resource is very much welcome.