The Early Days of Policing in Kent Pt 5.
by Roy Ingleton
A United Force - 1943 - 2000

The outbreak of the Second World War meant that the work of the police changed considerably, with an emphasis on Air Raid Precautions and emergency legislation.

Major Chapman, the Chief Constable of Kent, retired in 1940 through ill-health and was replaced by Captain J A Davison MC. who had been an Assistant Commissioner in the City of London Police. He is described as being completely tireless and utterly fearless, but, in 1942 he was suspended as a result of certain irregularities in the force's assets and was required to resign as an alternative to dismissal. Instead, he committed suicide.

An early involvement for the Kent Constabulary came in 1940 with the arrest of what was probably the first and only attempt to land spies in Kent. Four agents were landed in September 1940, two on the beach near Hythe who were quickly detained by Army sentries, and the other pair near Dungeness. Shortly afterwards, one of the agents was brought to the police office by a civilian and a soldier and the remaining spy was found the next morning, walking along the beach and arrested. Three of the four were hanged.

In the early days of the War, the policing structure in Kent remained the same but, on 1 April 1943, the 9 borough forces in the county were compulsorily amalgamated into the Kent County Constabulary. Although this was applied as an emergency measure, they never regained their previous autonomy and the Kent County Constabulary covered the whole of the county from then on..

The post of Chief Constable being vacant following the death of Captain Davison the previous year, Sir Percy Sillitoe, the Chief Constable of Glasgow, was appointed to take command of this new combined force.

It is a remarkable fact that the amalgamation of ten disparate forces of varying sizes and levels of efficiency went off comparatively smoothly with few serious problems. This was largely due to the skills of the new Chief Constable who had no particular allegiance to any of the 10 forces and was seen as a 'clean pair of hands'. Sir Percy also had wide experience of police work in Africa and in Great Britain.

In 1946 Sir Percy Sillitoe left the force on appointment as Director of Security at the War Office and was succeeded by Major John Ferguson, another former army officer but one with considerable police experience. He was knighted in the Coronation Honours in 1953.

In the early 1950s the open-necked tunic was introduced and blue shirts, collars and ties were issued in place of the traditional "dog-collar" type of tunic. This innovation was popular with the men although there were occasional panics when getting dressed for Early Turn, the essential collar studs had been mislaid!

In 1951 an unarmed Sergeant and 2 Constables from Chatham were called to an incident involving a masked man carrying a Sten gun. On their arrival, the Sergeant went to investigate, leaving PC Brown at the edge of the field and PC Alan Baxter in the van with the radio. The Sergeant quickly withdrew when some shots were fired in his direction and the gunman with two young girl accomplices ran away towards the van. A number of shots were heard and, when the Sergeant arrived back at the van PC Baxter was lying in the roadway in a pool of blood and died of his wounds.

By this time the assailant had been identified as Alan Derek Poole, an army deserter, who had been living with the girls in the nearby woods. A major police hunt was organised and it was discovered that Poole had returned to his parents' house in Symons Avenue, Chatham where he was soon surrounded. He fired on the besieging police but these were now armed, and the fire was returned and tear gas grenades fired into the house. After two hours had passed without further shots, the Chief Constable, Major John Ferguson, who had arrived to take charge of the incident in person, ordered a direct assault on the house. Poole was found lying dead in an upstairs room, a police marksman's bullet having punctured both lungs.

Sir John Ferguson retired in October 1958, shortly after the force celebrated its centenary. He was replaced by yet another soldier, Lt. Col Geoffrey White, who had been the Chief Constable of Warwickshire. Colonel White had served with distinction during the Second World War and was responsible for reorganising and revitalising the Cyprus Police Force during the troubles there in the mid 1950s.

Colonel White was a comparatively young man and fired the force with his enthusiasm and was widely regarded as a breath of fresh air after his rather austere predecessor. Unfortunately he was not to live to achieve his full potential and died of a heart attack in October 1961.

The 1960s saw the phenomenon known as the 'Mods and Rockers' whose meetings frequently erupted into disorder such as those in Margate in 1964 when they clashed over the Whitsun weekend. The trouble began at first light when kiosks were broken into, shop windows smashed and beach huts vandalised. Later, some 400 youths and girls were engaged in a pitched battle on the sea front. The police had to draw their batons and charge in the face of a barrage of stones and bottles. This of course was before the police had any form of riot gear.

In April 1962, 50 year old Richard Dawnay Lemon became the new Chief Constable of Kent, moving up from Hampshire where he had been the Chief Constable. He had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1934, graduating from the Hendon Police College and was appointed Chief Constable of the East Riding in 1939 - at the age of 27!

Dawnay Lemon was the last of the old-style chief constables: scion of a 'good family' and somewhat autocratic, a keen cricketer and golfer. However, he continued the progressive moves initiated by his short-lived predecessor. He was responsible for arranging liaison with the French and Belgian police and for a number of organizational changes. He was knighted in the 1970 New Year's Honours List and retired in 1974.

Sir Dawnay's replacement was the first of the new breed of chief officers - a career policeman who had worked his way up through the ranks. A grammar school boy, Barry Pain joined the Birmingham City Police in 1951 and progressed through the ranks until, in 1974, he took command of the Kent County Constabulary where he was responsible for a great deal of modernization. He left in 1982 when he was appointed Commandant of the National Police College at Bramshill.
Barry Pain was followed by another refugee from the West Midlands - his deputy, Frank Jordan - another career policeman who retired in 1989.

Frank Jordan's successor was a man who was going to make a name for himself. Paul Condon joined the Metropolitan Police in 1967 and proceeded to move swiftly through the ranks, being appointed an Assistant Chief Constable of Kent in 1984. This was clearly just a stepping stone as three years later he returned to the Mets. on promotion. In 1989, following Frank Jordan's retirement, Paul Condon returned to Kent as its new Chief Constable but this, once again was but a transient move since, in 1993, he was appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and knighted.