Читать книгу Cops and Robbers - Ant Anstead - Страница 23

Crossley of Manchester are actually one of the oldest names in the British motor industry and were the first company to make a four-stroke internal combustion engine in the UK. Amazingly, they were making units under licence from Otto and Langen of Deutz in the early 1860s, some years before the ‘car’ was invented.

Crossley came to car manufacture in a slightly circuitous way. Having become well known for the quality of their engines and other engineering products, early pioneer car dealers Charles Jarrott and William Letts asked them to make a high-quality British car to address a perceived gap in the market. Ironically, the first Crossley, which was announced in 1904, actually used mainly Belgian and French components which Crossley assembled. It was well received, however, and the firm expanded their car-making while Jarrott publicised the marque by making a record-breaking drive from London to Monte Carlo in 37.5 hours, a record that was broken by C.S. Rolls only a month later using one of his own 20hp Rolls-Royce Tourist Trophy models. Wonderfully, Jarrott complained that Rolls had done this by breaking speed limits that he had obeyed!

The legendary 20hp series was launched in 1908 and remained in production until 1925, albeit gradually modified, rather in the way that Porsche evolved the design of the air-cooled 911, becoming the 20/25 in 1912 and the 25/30 in early 1919. Designed by A.W. Reeves, it was launched as a fully equipped short-chassis touring car for £495 (in an era when coachbuilding was still common on larger cars especially) and featured a side-valve 4-cylinder engine of 4531cc and a 4-speed gearbox.

The War Office purchased a batch of six 20hp Tourers and were impressed enough to think about ordering more with differing body styles. By the time World War I broke out, the nascent RFC had around 60 (figures vary slightly), and by the time the war finished, 6000! Any childhood fans of Biggles’ Great War adventures will recognise this. In all, well over 10,000 Crossleys of all types were used by the military in World War I as staff cars, ambulances, RFC Tenders and vans. Most of these were sold off cheaply when hostilities ceased and, having contributed greatly to the war effort, then contributed to the commercial motorisation of Britain as traders abandoned horses for ex-War Office Crossleys of one sort or another. This of course meant that the examples used by the Met blended in, in a similar way to how a Ford Transit would today. So successful and highly regarded was the basic design that Crossley bought back a few, especially staff cars, and refurbished them to 25/30 specification. They continued this operation until 1925, alongside production of new examples which finished in the same year.

Unfortunately, Crossley never built a car that captured either the government’s or the public’s imagination in the same way again and eventually ceased making cars altogether in 1937. They continued to make trucks, though, and were acquired by the Associated Commercial Vehicles Group, better known as AEC, in 1948, who acquired Maudslay at the same time. The Crossley name faded away in 1956 and eventually became part of the British Leyland melting pot. It was a sad end for the marque that had been the backbone of the British military’s move to motorisation during World War I and subsequently provided the UK’s earliest police patrol and response vehicles. Rest in peace, Crossley.

The Crossley also played its part in the formation of the Flying Squad, formed in October 1919 after a post-war crime surge; it became known as ‘Sweeney Todd’ in rhyming slang quite quickly, then just Sweeney, and initially consisted of just 12 officers. Manchester City Police followed London’s lead in forming what was originally called a ‘Mobile Patrol Experiment’ and patrols were made using a horse-drawn carriage that had been borrowed from a railway company. However, it was soon re-organised and issued with Crossley Tenders, the first vehicles used in Britain for actual police work rather than just moving things and people between police facilities. The Crossleys were heavy and fairly simple beasts that were apparently quite easy to skid in wet weather, but they did provide a good basis for patient underworld observational work and were used successfully in this role. They were much loved by the officers who used them because they were reliable and capable workhorses. Most were fitted with van-type backs, or, at the very least, a canvas tilt. They were actually liveried at times with false trade names to appear as delivery vehicles or furniture removal vans to aid their undercover work, the first time this was ever done in the UK and probably even around the world. These disguises were easy to believe because, as discussed, war-surplus vehicles were very common in the early 1920s, although apparently it was quite some while before most criminals cottoned on to the fact that the police also owned some of these vehicles. However, by the mid-1920s these vehicles had become outmoded and had begun to be replaced.

By May 1926, just as the TUC called a General Strike that plunged the country and the government into conflict with the unions, the Met’s fleet consisted of 202 cars:

• 6 Austin saloons, used by the Commissioner and his assistants.

• 2 Austin ambulances.

• 6 Bean saloons, used by HQ personnel.

• 5 Bean saloons, used by CID.

• 4 Bean saloons, used by District Chief Constables.

• 12 Bean saloons, used by Superintendents in outer areas of the Met’s jurisdiction.

• 4 Bean saloons, used as spares by whoever needed them.

• 18 Bean vans, used on inner and outer dispatch services.

• 4 Bean vans, used for accumulator service.

• 6 Bean vans, used as spares by whoever needed them.

• 17 Tilling Stevens, used as prison vans.

• 1 Dennis, used as a prison van.

• 52 Crossley Tenders for many and varied uses from Flying Squad to radio testing and everything in between

• 41 Triumph Solos and Combinations, used by sub-divisional and Detective Inspectors for patrolling.

• 24 Chater-Lea Combinations, used by sub-divisional Inspectors and Inspectors for patrolling.

And that is the last list of cars you will see in this book – you’re welcome!

The General Strike is important in the history of the police car because it marked the very beginnings of police officers being moved around to deal with troubles, something I became all too familiar with in my time as a police (and especially PSU/Riot) officer. This particular role depended on motorised transport to get officers to scenes quickly, and the lack of this sort of capability within various UK police forces was soon exposed nationally to both the government and media. From this time on, policing fleets got bigger and bigger across the UK. At the early stages of researching this book we did look at trying to come up with a definitive list of cars that the police have used, but we gave up quite quickly, simply because it encompasses pretty much everything, with local forces sourcing cars individually and in some cases buying used as well as new, especially immediately after World War II. No records exist for many forces, and in the early days local philanthropic lords of the manor would sometimes even loan cars to the police as a gesture of public spirit, which meant that police officers were sometimes seen in the most unlikely of vehicles, from station wagons to Rolls-Royces. I can’t imagine a member of the public today lending their car to the police to borrow. I wouldn’t!