Policing and detection in Inspector Ryga's 1950 set mysteries
DEATH
IN THE NETS is the third in the Inspector Ryga 1950s set mystery
series, published on 4 October 2021 in paperback, as an e book and on
Amazon Kindle. It is set in the fishing port of Brixham, Devon where
Scotland Yard's Inspector Ryga investigates the death of a man
discovered tangled in fishing nets in the harbour. DEATH
IN THE COVE is the first in the Inspector Ryga 1950s set mystery
series, set on the Royal island of Portland, Dorset with DEATH IN THE
HARBOUR number two, set in the port of Newhaven, East Sussex..
Policing
and detection in 1950 - how the public communicated with the police,
reporting in; women in the police, and police vehicles.
Communicating with the police and reporting in
There
were, of course, no mobile phones in 1950 and indeed few households had
telephones. Mackenzie Trench Police Boxes appeared in London in 1929
and could also be used by the general public. They were a vital
communications link. The boxes could be used to report fire, or to
summon an ambulance and report crime.
The
light on top of a police box illuminated red and could be activated by
the station or by a member of the public to attract a police officer.
Officers therefore were encouraged to stay within line-of-sight of their
Police Box for as much time as possible, although the top of the Police
Box lamp contained a gong mechanism which also provided an audible
means of attracting attention.
Women in the police force
Between
1939 and 1949 the number of police women rose from 246 to 1148, whereas
in 1939, 138 out of 183 forces employed no police womenIn 1932 Lilian Wyles was appointed the first woman Chief Inspector in the police force. She joined London's Metropolitan Police in 1919 and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in 1933.
In 1950 women
police officers were still fairly rare but a growing number. It wasn't
until 1948 that the first two policewomen in the Glamorgan Constabulary,
WPC1 Elsie Baldwin and WPC 2 Florence Knight, were appointed on the
13th March. And Liverpool City Police only appointed police women in
1948 (Rawlings, 2002: 199).
On 1 January 1949
the British Transport Commission Police (BTP) was created, formed from
the four old railway police forces, canal police and several minor dock
forces. In 1950 the first female BTP sergeants were appointed when WPC's
Snell (Paddington) and Barrett (Liverpool Street) were promoted.
Police vehicles
In
rural areas this often only consisted of a ‘Bobby on a bicycle’ but in
towns where there was a sergeant or inspector they often used their own
cars for which they received an allowance.
and
larger areas police vehicles were used. In the 1930s the Met was using
Area Wireless Cars’ crewed by CID officers and trained drivers and
operators (you can see these in operation in some British films of the
period). In more rural areas motor patrols would arrive at a phone box
at a fixed time and check in. By the end of the 1940s car fleets began
to expand equipped with VHF wireless but not all had them, not in fact
until the mid-1960s.
The Inspector Ryga Mysteries
DEATH
IN THE COVE is Inspector Ryga's first solo investigation outside of
London, where he is despatched to solve the mystery of why a man in a
pin-striped suit is found murdered in an isolated cove on the Royal
Island of Portland in Dorset. Here he meets war photographer, Eva
Paisley, for the first time. Ryga quickly realises that her observations
could provide the breakthrough he needs in a complex murder
investigation and the answer to the haunting circumstances that have
sent the man in the pinstriped suit to his death. 
The
second Inspector Ryga mystery, DEATH IN THE HARBOUR is set in the port
of Newhaven, East Sussex where Ryga has to solve a puzzling and
disturbing case of why an ordinary police constable was murdered and his
sensible law-abiding wife has gone missing.Number
three in the Inspector Ryga series DEATH IN THE NETS is set in the
small fishing town of Bridport, Devon. It's a cold wet January night in
1951, the body of a man stabbed through the heart, is found tangled up
in fishing nets in Brixham Harbour, Devon. After a series of startling
revelations, Ryga is tasked to discover why the dead man who left the
town eleven years ago has returned and why someone hated him enough to
murder him.
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