Criminal record Office and the war dead

[Adam Harland]

A number of years ago there was offered for sale an issue of either the Police Gazette, or the Metropolitan Police Orders that was a list of those recorded with the criminal record Office who had died in the service of their country.

A number of attempts to find this document in a library somewhere have failed and I wonder if there is someone out there who has knowledge of this document?

There are a number of anecdotes from the courts in 1914-15 where the bench took a particular view of the accused when informed that he intended to enlist, but this appears to have ben an official record.

Any help?

Adam

[Graham Stewart]

Adam,

Don't know if this is of any help, but when doing some research many years ago I came across a piece in the newspapers regarding Scotland Yard and criminals who had enlisted. It also referred to a Scotland Yard list of hardened criminals and the fact that many of them had enlisted and were proving to be first class soldiers with quite a few of them being decorated for bravery, and if I remember rightly one was even put forward for or received a V.C.

As far as I'm aware it had nothing to do with the Police Gazette, but was something that Scotland Yard had drawn up themselves. Perhaps it may be still exist in the Metropolitan Police Museum Archive, which would be a good place to start and look.

Graham.

[ianw]

Most interesting. Not surprising that "hard cases" may prove to be good soldiers. Might they also have viewed the battlefield or the Uk army base as being a good place to pursue their criminal activities.

[Guest]

I imagine the CRO was very interested in who had died, so that in effect they could delete them from their lists of active criminals and not waste time trying to keep track of them.