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Shortly after Harold Taylor joined the police in 1948, he had a few nasty cases to deal with, such as the following.
There was quite an amiable group of police personnel at Horsham and they tried to organise things, such as old time dancing to keep us amused and together, as generally the police like to do this. I think this was an overhang from the pre-war days when a policeman's lot was not a happy one.
For instance, he was not allowed to enter a pub for drinking in his own division. This is one of the reasons why divisional headquarters usually had a club and bar. It also catered for local dignitaries and Special Constables who were allowed by ordinary or associated membership.
This had a two-fold thing, which I was not altogether happy with. It seemed to put some in a privileged position and was also a source of gossip by people who considered that they had been badly treated when in fact it was they who were taking advantage of their friendship.
Fortunately our new Superintendent took care of a lot of that. I also soon learned that the more time you spent in the club seemed to indicate the keener you were as a policeman instead of your keenness for drink.
Ones presence was taken favourably because if an incident occurred whilst you were in the club you could be called upon to turn out. This was all right for single men but did not favour married men who had young wives and families at home who were deserving of some of your time outside of work hours.
I had my first bit of praise from the public as the result of having to notify a gentleman of the death of his brother. He very kindly took the trouble to write in appreciation of the manner that this distressing news was passed to him.
Later on the local Detective Sgt. tried to get me congratulated for keen and observant work when I took in the driver of a vehicle. The vehicle was circulated as having been stolen by virtue of a hire arrangement and the vehicle not returned to the hirers. I had been on point duty when I saw this vehicle coming towards me and I recognised the number.
Having stopped the car and checked it I was quite satisfied myself, but to clear the air I got the fellow to drive me to the police station to clear up the situation.
It transpired that he had hired it legitimately and it was a previous hirer who was the miscreant, but the local police had failed to remove the notice of suspicion.
This turned out to be the Det. Con. Ellis who had left us to become Sgt. at Shoreham. He was also son of the Deputy Chief Constable. This may be why the recommendation did not get any further.
In the year after my marriage I dealt with my first sudden death, as I remarked earlier, the same person who featured in my first offence report also featured in another first.
It was his wife that I dealt with, a woman in her mid-fifties and the family was most distressed as there had been no preceding illness. It turned out to be a heart failure case, a fatty heart.
It is strange the manner in which these cases affect you, it made me sad for several days. I had an almost uncontrollable habit of washing my hands, as there seemed to be what I can only describe as an odour of death, which attached itself to one.
My next sudden death was a road accident. It occurred early morning on a frosty cold day at Broadbridge Heath. The roads from Bognor Regis and Guildford merged to join the road into Horsham.
A motorcycle combination from the latter struck a milk tanker coming from the former, and gave each other a glancing blow, but the cyclist came off worst, and died.
It seemed that neither driver had seen the other coming and probably thought at that time of the morning they were the only people on the road. For that time of day I was surprised at the amount of money an ordinary looking working man would carry in his pocket, which if my memory serves me right was over twenty pounds.
In the February of that first year the crime of the century became known. This was John George Haigh, the acid bath murderer. I first became aware of it after my birthday visit to London on a day off excursion with my wife and sister to see a show called Worm's Eye View.
As I read the evening paper I did not realise the significance of it, but later I was to act as escort to the man several times and got my picture in the paper once. At the time we were having a serious set of shop and house-breakings taking place.
It was a very distressing set of circumstances, because we all felt that it was one of us. We became aware that outside officers were being brought in. At the time we did not know how many, but it turned out to be twenty.
What made it more distressing was that places were being broken into after one had checked them and caused one to go back over the area to make sure.
One day I was on point duty when Fred sidled up to me and said, 'Eh Harold who do you thinks doing these jobs then.' I replied, 'Well if it's not you it must be Sgt. W.' 'That's funny', he said, 'that's who Jack thinks it is.' Then he walked away.
Sgt. W had been posted to us from another division where he had fallen from grace. To the best of my recall, over something to do with expense claims. There, he had been Det. Sgt. so in effect he had been demoted.
After I finished duty that day, I was asked to report to the CID office and questioned about my opinion of suspicion of Sgt. W. I elaborated on the theme, made a statement and was told to go. Now that one knew the ball was rolling, I paid special attention of the Sgt's actions when on nights.
The next period of night duty when he was the night Sgt. he met me at a conference point and when he left, took a route which led to a place which I had always supposed to be a place likely to be attacked. I therefore took a longer route to reach the same place.
In doing so I walked into one of our country policemen coming from the direction that I was heading. We conferred and I told him my intentions, only to discover that he and our Stn. Sgt had been concealed in these premises when in walked Sgt. W.
When they had approached him he said that he had found the door insecure. The Stn. Sgt. felt so unsure of his ground that he let the man go, much to the disgust of our countryman.
I stated that Bill W had not come this way home otherwise I would have met him. The other Sgt. had gone the other way round so we decided to go into the station together, where we found that they had put Sgt. W. into custody.
This was all an anti-climax for Alf Picking. He and another constable had gone out during the night to search for an absconder form Farmfield Institution. This was a sort of prison without bars near Rusper.
They had located the individual and he had brandished a knife. Alf, being a bumptious little fellow, had come in all swagger and expecting to be praised, when in fact he was completely ignored.
The episode of Bill W. had a peculiar twist. He and George Haigh were in custody together and sometimes escorted to prison together. George took it as an affront that he was to be mixed up with a rotten copper.
George in his way was an amusing individual, in fact he got his escort to court one day in trouble with the Chief Constable. Just as they entered the courthouse George cracked a joke and the press published a photo with this fellow with a huge grin on his face escorting George through the court doors.
I was snapped with George, always with an inappropriate caption, hence my mis-trusting of any press reporting. Many times since then, the same experience has been found.
Bill W. was charged with 22 offences of breaking and entering, but he pleaded not guilty, and after a lengthy court proceeding he was arraigned before the Quarter Sessions. This was transferred to Horsham for convenience.
He was found guilty and sentenced to three years, some of which he served at Portsmouth, but I believe the latter was served at Ford which I think had been opened by then, at least it was at an open prison somewhere. He was not convicted as charged, but agreed to accept 9 charges of receiving.
I realised during the trial, that on one occasion I had travelled in his car to an incident, and on the back seat was a twelve bore shot gun in an ornamented case which was the subject of one of the charges, which had not previously been circulated.
Harold Taylor, West Sussex, 2001
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