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Research Met Police ancestors
Reader Peter Terry knows that ancestor William Leonard Gue served in the Met Police between 1902 and 1928, but he doesn’t have any photographs of him in uniform. He’s also looking for a photo of his warrant cards, and details of cases he worked on. We were happy to help him find this information.
Search Met Police pension records
We started by searching the records held on Ancestry ( www.ancestry.co.uk) and Find My Past ( www.findmypast.co.uk). This proved surprisingly simple, thanks largely to ‘Gue’ being a rare surname in the UK (32,731st out of about 45,000 in England - as revealed at www.snipca. com/37455).
Both websites contain lots of useful information to paint a pretty complete picture of William’s life. He was born in Romford, Essex, in January 1881, was baptised in 1890, and died in Welling, Kent in 1954. He married twice – in August 1911, and again in 1936 – and from 1918 to 1931 lived at the same address in St Pancras, London, with his first wife.
There are plenty of references to his career, such as the 1911 Census which revealed he was a police sergeant, while his entry from the electoral register of the same year saw him working in Bow Street police station. He listed his occupation as “police inspector (retired)” in the 1939 register.
Ancestry holds the Metropolitan Police Pension Registers (1852-1932), which revealed William’s discharge date (2 September 1928), along with his warrant number and annual pension (£252 per year – see screenshot above). We suspect this is where Peter got the information he already knows about William.
Browse Old Bailey records
We then looked in the National Archives, which has a page dedicated to helping you track down information ( www. snipca.com/37439). Most records are held in a series of books and papers catalogued under MEPO (Metropolitan Police Office): browse them at www.snipca. com/37440. We found just one record on William, confirming he had joined the force on 1 September 1902 and that his final role was as Inspector in E Division.
None of this told us anything Peter didn’t already know, so we dug deeper. Luckily, William appeared twice in Find My Past’s ‘Middlesex, London, Old Bailey Court Records 1674-1913’ records (view these for free at www.snipca.com/37453). Type a name into the Keyword(s) search box, making sure you’ve selected ‘phrase’ in the options below, then click Search. This reveals that William testified as a witness in two trials in 1903 and 1905 (see screenshot below).