Oxford City Police
[3] Toward the end of 1868 Head and six other Metropolitan Police officers moved to Oxford to form the nucleus of the new force.
[2] Other recruits included five men from the Oxford University Police and four from the preceding "watch and ward" force.
[2] Oxford's police station had since at least 1843 been based in an office on the corner of Queen Street and St Aldate's,[5] but in 1870 it moved into Kemp Hall,[4] a Jacobean timber-framed house built in 1637 in a narrow yard south of the High Street.
[6] Necessary alterations to the building were not complete by 1 January 1869, so the new force was at first accommodated in a committee room in Oxford Town Hall.
On 4 February 1869 two constables named Gilkes and Wilkes, who lacked uniforms, were sent to patrol St. Ebbes, which then was a poor parish of the city.
Little is known of Wilkes, but Joseph Gilkes was originally from Great Rollright and had served as a constable with the Metropolitan Police.
[4] Gilkes and Wilkes found a crowd of about 30 people outside a shop in Blackfriars Road, whom they tried to disperse.
The Metropolitan officers were unused to Oxford undergraduates, and considered the boisterous crowd to be a danger.
[8] A young law don, FE Smith, who had taken no part in the violence, saw police mishandling his college servant.
He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1886, enjoyed rapid promotion and had transferred to the Oxford force in 1891.
He did much to develop the force's sporting activities, including its tug of war team which became very successful.
[12] In October 1909 East Oxford police station opened at the junction of St Mary's Road and James Street.
He had served with Portsmouth Borough Police in Hampshire, transferred to Oxford in 1914 and been promoted to Sergeant.
PC Alfred Needle, aged 23, was fatally injured by a motor car which failed to stop.
[20] When the Second World War broke out, Charles Fox was made Air Raid Precautions controller in addition to his duties as Chief Constable.
[11] In 1946 a war memorial at St Aldate's police station was unveiled to commemorate those officers who were lost serving in the armed forces.
[23] In 1956 Charles Fox retired as Chief Constable and the Watch Committee appointed Clement Burrows as his successor.
He had joined the Somerset Constabulary in 1927, risen to Chief Inspector, and from 1953 he had been Assistant Commandant of the Police College.
[33] In 1964 Traffic Wardens were introduced, and a telex machine was installed in St Aldate's police station.
[32] In his Annual Report for 1957 Burrows had said he wanted beat officers to have portable radios "within five years".
The original Cowley police station was replaced by a new one in Oxford Road that was opened on 14 September 1966.
[34] Since the 1930s most of the Oxford force's police cars had been built by the Nuffield Organization: Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley.
In its final year the force changed its practice by acquiring from Hartwell, a local dealer, four of Ford's newly introduced Escort Mk I saloons.
It recommended exempting small forces of between 200 and 350 officers, but "justifiable only by special circumstances such as the distribution of the population and the geography of the area".
[36] Parliament accepted Wellink Commission's findings and passed the Police Act 1964, which provided inter alia for small forces to be merged.
Oxford had too small a population and too few officers to remain independent, and no special circumstances that qualified for an exemption.
Its fifth series starts in April 1968, just after the Oxford force's absorption into the new Thames Valley Constabulary.
