Name/Title
East Sussex Constabulary Telephone and Call Book 1949 - 1955Entry/Object ID
2511Description
Buff coloured card folder containing similar coloured card covered A4 size (33cm x 21cm) bound booklet consisting of 200 pre numbered pages 1 to 200, each printed at the top "East Sussex Constabulary", with pre-printed spaces and columns with titles. Most of the pages have handwritten entries detailing date, time nature of call (ie telephone or visit) and the details of it. All of these entries are for Northiam Police Station which is recorded in the book as being in the Battle Division. The front Page is marked in print "East Sussex Constabulary Telephone and Call Book", and handwritten in ink is "Northiam From 22.11.49 To...". The outer folder has "Call Book from 22/11/49 to 3/5/55", handwritten in ink on it. The entries are dated between 22th November 1949 and 5th March 1955.Use
For calls and visits to an individual police station to be recordedContext
Call books similar to this were used in all police stations to record not only in person calls and telephone calls by the public and other external agencies, but also internal calls and updates from other stations within the same police force. These pro forma registers would have replaced ledgers, where everything would have had to be handwritten. Over time call books were themselves replaced with carbonated call or incident logs, which in more recent years have been replaced by computer communication logs, usually referred to as CADs short for Computer Assisted Dispatch.
This particular call book was used at Northiam Police Station between 22nd November 1949 and 5th March 1955. Northiam was one of a number of small rural police offices in the then Battle Division of East Sussex Constabulary before and after the Second World War. These rural offices were usually attached to, or were part of a rural police constable's house, which would have been owned by the Constabulary. At the time most reasonably sized villages across Sussex would have had their own constable, who would have often patrolled on a bicycle. This system of rural officers continued into Sussex Police until the 1990s after which there was a move to have rural officers work out of police stations in larger towns and eventually do away with dedicated rural officers altogether.