All Fool’s Day Canal Police/Smugglers

Today is April 1st, traditionally described as April-Fools Day or All-Fools day! A perfect day for looking at one of the more bizarre items we’ve looked at so far in this series about Whitchurch

Did you know that there was once a body called ‘the Glamorganshire Canal Police’?

From the day in 1794 when the canal was opened around Whitchurch, there was always the risk of goods being pilfered and drunken bargemen fighting each other. By the 1830s, there were upwards of two hundred barges on the canal and countless numbers of men, boys and womenfolk, passenger barges, farriers and stablemen and lock-keepers. In addition, there were victuallers, opportunists and hangers-on and of course urchins throwing stones at all and sundry

And what about the smugglers? As early as 1732, the customs officer at Cardiff called for assistance to rid the area of smugglers (but without success!)

In 1818, a large shipment of smuggled spirits was landed at Barry Island, then still a separate island, and a known haunt of smuggling gangs. The excise men managed to seize three kegs, but most of it found its way to the drinking dens of Cardiff and onto the canal barges to smooth the palette of many a coal miner and foundry worker

By 1850, a small number of canal constables were appointed by the canal company to keep order and to help prevent pilfering. By the time of the census in 1851, Constable Thomas Spencer of the canal police was stationed at Nantgarw and rented a small cottage in the village with his wife Elizabeth

Over the following years, the local newspapers reported on the ‘activities’ of the canal folk. In March 1854 the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian reported that canal police constable John Thomas was giving evidence in court against David Davies, boatman, charged with stealing coal from a barge (giving it to a person named Jane Henderson, a ‘respectable-looking person’). In June 1857 the same newspaper reported that James Casey, a violent Irishman was charged with assaulting PC Sweeney of the canal company’s police

By March 1859 the Cardiff Times reported George Calligan, one of the police in the Glamorganshire Canal Company’s service charged an ex-constable named Parkinson with assaulting him while on duty

There are no records of the Glamorganshire Canal Police, and no indication of when the force was formed or ceased to function. In 1857, Superintendent John Stockdale, in charge of the Cardiff Borough Police reported that ‘the Glamorgan Canal Company pay and employ two constables under my commend, for duty on the canal. They also have a separate police station at the Old Sea Lock’
The photograph below shows the old Sea Lock Hotel, right at the docks-end of the canal. The police station must have been very close nearby

From the 1860s, the railways began to overtake the canal for trade, and 10 years later, the canal business fell into debt. From 1882 onwards any policing requirements would have been undertaken by the Bute Dock Police

Does anyone know anything of the canal policemen, or of any of their dealings with the canal folk?

 

 

Thanks to Headline, the Dock & Railway Police History website for much of this information

 

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