Name/Title
Pair of Sussex Constabulary/Sussex Police epaulettes with number "H 810" and sergeant's insignia 1968 - 1980Entry/Object ID
2409Description
A pair of dark blue heavy cotton epaulettes with chrome plated letter and numbers "H 810" attached with a mixture of screw and pin fittings, each with a set of chrome plated metal sergeant's insignia.Use
For a sergeant to wear on a uniform shirt.Context
By the late 1950s most if not all of the police forces in Sussex allowed their officers to wear shirts without tunics in some capacity. This meant that epaulettes were needed to display a constable or sergeant's warrant number on their shirt, with sergeants having the addition of rank insignia as well. Ranks of inspector and above, did not display numbers but only rank insignia as was the case on tunics.
These epaulettes are from Sussex Constabulary or Sussex Police and were issued to PS Herbert Hother who had been a sergeant with the Brighton Borough force and went onto serve with Sussex Constabulary in 1968, and retired in the then Sussex Police in 1980. The number "H 810" was his Sussex Constabulary/Police number and unlike the Brighton Borough force, in the new combined Sussex force officers retained the same number upon promotion and throughout their service. In Brighton the same numbers were continually re issued and the lower numbers were reserved for higher ranks. On promotion a constable would surrender their existing number and be given one from the new rank's allocation of set numbers. So in Brighton Herbert Hother began as "PC 100" and on promotion became "PS 47". However when he became a member of Sussex Constabulary he was allocated the number "H 810", though for admin purposes his full number was "AH 810", the "A" designating that he was male.
When Sussex Constabulary was established in 1968, it was initially not intended for officers to have numbers on their uniforms, even though they were allocated an alpha numeric warrant number. It was only after complaints from the Home Office that these warrant numbers were attached to uniforms, with the omission of the first letter, "A" or "B", which designated their sex, for a male and female officer respectively.
Metal numbers were used on Sussex Police epaulettes until the 1990s when embroidered versions were introduced. Initially Sussex Constabulary used a more elaborate style of metal sergeant's insignia and this simpler version pictured appears to have been adopted later, probably in the 1970s.