A Stranger in a Foreign Land.....

Truly Lost ...........

London can be a very strange place............To me it always has been even after fifty years here, thirty of which were spent in the Police.   The problem for me was that the river Thames flows more or less through the centre of it, West to East, and to this day, most of the area I know as ‘South of the River’ is still a foreign country to me.   Apart  from the main  arteries to  the  south coast, I never know where I am.   I have only worked ‘North of the River’ and even then, the East Side.

Before the advent of mobile phones, smart phones with a suitable Application, and Sat-Navs, I used to carry with me a small A-Z map of London and followed it religiously.   Personal Radios would not be introduced into the police for another six or seven years.   

Foreigners, especially Americans used to think that I was joking whenever I was on special duty  ‘UpTown’  and  was  asked the location of somewhere such as Piccadilly Circus or Trafalgar Square and I told them ‘Sorry, but I am a stranger here’.   I am sure they thought not so much that I was being funny, but that in fact I was either mad or someone pretending to be a uniformed officer.

You see, when I left Ireland and ‘joined up’ in 1966, I had never been within a few hundred miles of London, knew nothing of the different areas, and would soon find out that I could not understand a word that the local ‘Cockneys’ were saying.   All that ‘Whistle and Lute’, ‘Apples and Pears’ etc., - so called ‘rhyming slang’ left me puzzled for most of my first few years.

The Cockneys were bad enough but the many different accents, including the Scottish and West Indians, left me puzzled trying to understand what most people were saying to me.   With my own strong Irish brogue, they most likely had the exact same problem with me........

And so it was when I completed Police College and was posted to my first station – Hackney – in the deep East End of London..............

After a week’s holiday back in Ireland, I presented myself at the Police College and was informed that I was being posted to ‘G’ Division.   They might as well have said ‘Mars’ for all I knew.   On arrival at City Road Police Station, I was then informed that I would be working at ‘Hackney’.   That was the first time I had ever heard the name as a place but I was familiar with the term ‘London Hackney Carriage’ – the legal term for a black taxi cab.

After about an hour I was taken by police van to Hackney to see the Chief Superintendent. 

After another long wait, his Clerk, a Scotsman named strangely enough Jock Clark, with the most dreadful accent, informed me that I would be taken to a Section House a few miles away which would be my quarters whilst single.   I was to get the bus the next morning and see the Chief at 10.30am.   He gave me directions on how to get to the station.   I must have been tired, for what he was saying, or at least what I could understand he was saying, was going in one ear and straight out the other.   Nevertheless, I was taken to the Section House and settled in.....

Next morning, (and I can remember it clearly), was a beautiful warm June day, and dressed in full uniform, including my long coat, I stood at the bus stop opposite.   The West Indian conductor went into shock when I asked him to let me off at.......   Oh my God, I had forgotten the name of my station (Hackney).   I did remember part of another address that Jock Clark had mentioned - Shoreditch Church or something  like  that.

I told the conductor and quite honestly I am not too sure to this day if he understood what I said.   However, a long time later, far longer than it should have taken me to get to Hackney, he informed me that we were at Shoreditch Church.   I got off the bus and sweating profusely, I stood on the pavement at the height of the rush hour.  I was now completely and utterly lost.................

I looked around me for what I could remember Hackney Police Station looked like but saw nothing familiar.   I strolled up to a newspaper seller on the corner and politely asked him ‘Where is the nearest police station please?’   He looked at me in total amazement and said ‘Are you taking the piss, guvnor?’   ‘No’ I replied, ‘Please can you direct me’.   He pointed across the road and said ‘Old Street Guvnor – on the corner’.   I looked but knew immediately that it was not Hackney as it looked nothing like it.

However, I did not intend to give up as the time was now half past nine and I did not have to get to Hackney until ten-thirty.   I therefore made my way over to Old Street police station, boldly walked in and said to the officer behind the counter.  ‘How do I get to the next police station down the road’?   ‘Dalston?’ he replied, ‘just get a number 22: get off at Le Bon’s corner and walk back up Dalston Lane’.  

It could have been for all I knew, so went straight outside and onto a 22 bus.   ‘Tell me when I get to Le Bon’s corner please’ I asked the conductor.   He said nothing and did not blink an eyelid.   I honestly think that word must have gone around among the bus conductors about the nut-case police officer wandering around the East End.

In any event:   I got off the bus as told and I walked back up Dalston Lane and immediately when I saw the police station I knew that it was not the correct one.   I stood on the steps, twenty-five years old, in full uniform sweating like a pig and began to cry.   Yes, I began sobbing at the thought that I would be sacked on my very first day proper in the police.............

I pushed open the door and entered.   Immediately, Station Sergeant Crask – a true gentleman of about fifty and one of my favourite officers of my entire service – leapt over the counter and ran towards the door.   As he did so, he called back ‘What happened son, who hit you, who did it?’    Through my tears I said ‘No-one Sergeant, I am (excuse the expression) fucken lost’.

He looked at me and put his arm around my shoulders.  ‘You are new, aren’t you?’ he asked.   ‘My first day’ I said ‘and I can’t even remember my station?’   ‘Listen son’ he quietly said ‘You can never be lost with those numbers on your shoulders’.   

With that he telephoned Divisional Office and said to me ‘Hackney.  Remember that for the rest of your life’.   He softly laughed.   I looked at the station clock and saw that the time was twenty past ten.   

I stuttered and said ‘I am supposed to see the Chief Superintendent at half ten’.   ‘Don’t worry’ he said and called another officer from the Reserve Room.   ‘Take the Area Car’ he said ‘and make sure you get our friend here to Hackney Nick before half ten.   Use the Blue Light if you have to’.   With that we were away at high speed.

Suffice is to say that I walked into the Superintendent Clerk’s Office at exactly half past ten and when Jock Clark saw me, he merely nodded and said ‘Away with you to the canteen and I will call you when the Chief is ready to see you’.   I did and I waited and waited until just after twelve o’clock before I was ushered into the Chief’s office.

A truly memorable day, albeit not for the best reasons.   However, I did meet my first police hero, Station Sergeant Eric Crask.  As true a gentleman as I have met throughout not only my police service, but also during my life..............

(Incidentally, he made me write the name ‘Hackney’ on the palm of my hand and also on page one of my A to Z map.   Whenever I met him for almost the next year, he would take my hand and check that I had rewritten Hackney on it whenever I washed my hands)...............

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A Nod is as good as a Wink to a Blind Horse...

The One that Got Away......

Having completed my thirteen weeks entrance course at the Police College in North London in 1966, I found myself posted to the East End of London.   I was so far out of my depth that it was a wonder that I survived my probationary period.   I did not know where I was most of the time and was given only a couple of weeks with an experienced officer to show me the ropes.  I regularly got lost (in full uniform) and embarrassingly had to ask puzzled members of the public how to get to my destination. 

I honestly do not know how I managed to cope with the local thieves who had a field day when I was on duty.   You see, I was brought up back home in Ireland to be honest and truthful and consequently I expected others to be the same.   They certainly were not and one incident haunted me throughout my service.........almost to my last tour of duty twenty-five years later......

It happened like this:  Back in 1966, I was on night duty and at about twenty past five in the morning I was making my final checks on my beat.  Suddenly, out of the darkness, and from around a corner came a young man carrying a large cardboard box. I stopped him and checked its contents.............

It contained hundreds of cigarettes, tobacco and small cigars. I asked him where he got them and he casually replied “I work as a porter at the meat market in Smithfield and I buy them at the Cash and Carry. I sell them to the other porters and make a few pennies on each packet. Look, guvnor, my bus is coming, can I go please?"   I was not entirely happy but he did not appear nervous and his story was plausible. I let him go and he jumped onto the bus...............

I carried on around the corner and a few hundred yards down the street, lo and behold, there it was, the tobacconist's shop with the door kicked in.    Total panic ensued............

I called for assistance and luckily, a trusty old constable friend of mine arrived. I told him what had happened and he advised me to keep my mouth shut or I might get into all sorts of trouble. This I did and there were no repercussions.   I merely reported the burglary...........

However, about eighteen months later, when I was married and living in the same area, quite often the same young man with the cigarettes would casually walk past me in the street and without saying anything to me, would merely nod his head and wink. He knew he had pulled the wool over my eyes..............

Twenty-five years later, as a sergeant, when I was working in North London, I was out at lunchtime in full uniform having a walk about.  As I went down the local market, I looked towards a pub where they were occasionally having some problems.  As I did so, the door opened and a man emerged into the street.........

He stopped and looked straight into my eyes, he did not say anything, but merely nodded his head and winked. Although I had not seen him for a long, long time, it was him alright and he hadn't changed a bit........................

Good luck to him - he was one of the few who got away.

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