Cabinet of Curiosities - Day 6

Today's item is my police whistle and chain. Plus a key that opens any TARDIS ...

Well, I say my police whistle - I am the most recent person to own it.

Traditionally, when London police officers retired, they would hand in their uniforms and their 'appointments' - things like whistles, notebooks, truncheon/batons, handcuffs etc. The items would then get reissued to new officers. Consequently, my old whistle would have belonged to several police officers before me. Certainly, it was battered and bent when I was given it in early 1980 so who knows what experiences it had gone through? It didn't work very well either but that didn't matter - like the oddly-shaped helmet, it being issued to me was more to do with tradition than practicality. 

Me, aged 18 at Peel Centre, Hendon Police College. Note whistle chain between my shiny buttons and top breast pocket.

The buildings behind me were later demolished in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron. No, they really were (see here). The place was in the process of being knocked down so it was chosen as a filming location.

Now, you may be asking, 'How come you didn't hand yours in when you retired?' It's because, by the time I left policing in 2010, the police service had long-since done away with tunics - replacing them with NATO style jumpers, bomber jackets, stab vests and Batman-style utility belts. The world had moved on and the whistles, which even in my time were just an affectation, had long gone. So I was allowed to keep it.

The Yale-type key was issued to me with the whistle and chain and it opened every police box in London. But, again, this was next to useless as they'd all been removed from the streets by the time I got to plod the beat. However, the key did open a small pillar-sized box on Piccadilly circus with a direct phone-line to Vine Street Police Station. Sadly, Vine Street - and sister station Bow Street - are now long closed and they now only exist on the Monopoly board.

The other item I was officially allowed to keep was my truncheon. These were universally withdrawn following the many riots of the 1980s and replaced in London by longer kevlar batons or extendable metal 'Asps' (some forces went for US-style side-handled batons). 

In the early days of policing, officers were issued with tipstaves and truncheons made of rock-hard Lignum vitae or Hornbeam woods. They would have seriously cracked some skulls if used indiscriminately. Therefore, by the time I joined, the truncheon had been down-graded to some kind of softwood. Consequently, its primary use as a deterrent had gone. The idea was that an officer drawing his/her truncheon would be seen as a sign that the officer meant business. But it was hard to 'mean business' with a lump of what felt like a lump of Balsa wood in your hand. And the bad guys weren't fooled. 

Mine mostly got used to smash windows when going into houses where an older person hadn't been seen for a few days (never a nice job) or for prising the crumpled wheel arch off a car tyre after an accident so the vehicle could be manoeuvred off the road.

I can say with complete honesty that I never used either my truncheon or my whistle for the purposes they were intended. But they are nice to have as they represent a little piece of British history.

And they are popular props in local AmDram productions.