Dad's police notebooks

Sorting through my late father's effects recently, I was delighted to come across his old police notebooks. 

Dad was a colonial policeman, a fairly enlightened one, from his days in the Kenya police 1942-1947 (he had a 'lucky war', as they used to say), through Aden and East Africa to the Caribbean, retiring in 1977.

Although serving abroad he had a truly British training, including stints at Hendon Police College in the 1930s and '40s.

One thing he'd done, in Aden, about 1952, was to write his own police training manual, in two 150-page volumes, in his own handwriting. 

Why did he do this?  I don't know, and don't now have a chance to ask.  Perhaps it was simply an aide-memoire,  or it might have been to help train Arab recruits to the Aden Police (although it's a peculiarly British book).  Or perhaps it was just they were short of books after the war. 

I didn't even know of its existence until I was sorting through his effects.  Do British bobbies ever do this sort of thing so diligently nowadays?

The scans here are of a Table Of Contents and a sample page showing what happens to the human body after death.  (This information might be useful if you come across a body floating in the canal. I try not to think of dad, lying near-frozen in the undertaker's chapel of rest.)

Granny Buttons is supposed to have a waterways-related link in every post, but I'm not sure what it could be in this case.   Neither the table of contents nor the index mention boats, canals or waterways.

Which is hardly surprising, since my father wrote these books in Aden, in what is now Yemen, the very south of Arabia.  Not many canals in Arabia.

A while back the London Canal Museum (LCM) was asking for information about canal police for a special exhibition.  Had any of the canal police compiled such a book as this, it would have made a fascinating exhibit.

(The canal museum link above is No. 1 in Google for "police canals".  Granny Buttons is No.2:  Police helicopter buzzes the canal at midnight - something that the canal police of old would have found supernatural.) 

Granny Buttons is named after my mother, but I feel a need to name something after my papa as well.

Comments

[Mark Brewster Jones]

Thank you for sharing that with us Andrew. The examples shown were fascinating. If you went for self-publication, I'm sure there would be a willing audience.
I also lost my father about 2 years ago and know exactly what you mean about being semi-frozen. I'm still unsure whether I did the right thing viewing.

[Martin]

It must be fascinating Andrew. Scope for publication maybe.