Police memorabilia is increasingly popular with private collectors and police forces battling it out for sought-after material at auctions.
An auction of coins, medals and militaria at Whyte's auction rooms in Marlborough Street, Dublin, on February 23rd next includes a large selection of material from Irish police forces.
Last September, a presentation sword estimated in the region of £1,000- £1,500 sold for more than £6,000 at Whyte's. The Garda and the Royal Ulster Constabulary both bid for it but the RUC outbid the Garda. However, the Garda sometimes outbid the RUC and other forces, says Mr Whyte.
The sword had been presented to a sub-inspector in the Irish Constabulary by the magistrates of Tipperary in 1848. The inspector had taken part in quelling the Rising of that year. Most police memorabilia is affordable. "You can build up a nice collection of buttons from uniforms, with the various badges. You've got the transition from Irish Constabulary through to Royal Irish Constabulary through to Garda Siochana or Royal Ulster Constabulary, depending on which part of the island they were on."
Badges and buttons changed over time, with different little nuances. For instance, there are two types of crown, a king's and a queen's, depending on the monarch of the time. These subtle changes help to date them.
"You also had a separate force for Dublin called the Dublin Metropolitan Police [DMP]. For a short period in the 1920s they were called the DP - Dublin Police - before they were merged completely into the Garda Siochana. You get badges at the transition period around 1921 with a crown over a DP." Other collectibles include horse-drawn cab badges, similar to today's taxi plates. Issued by the police, they bear the letters DP capped with a crown. "The RIC and the DMP would have worn similar helmets to the English police - blue cloth, hard type hats. And the Garda Siochana continued to wear similar helmets in cities up to the late 1940s."
Truncheons, truncheon holders, belts, tunics and hats are also collected, although bigger items such as tunics and uniforms tend to be less collectable due to collectors' storage constraints. Buttons, badges and hats are probably the most popular items. But whistles, handcuffs and any kind of police apparatus are all collectable. "Prices vary. Buttons you can pick up from 50 pence each up to £30 each. Badges could start at a few pounds for a recent one going up to maybe £100 for a scarce one. You could pay up to £150 for a scarce RIC helmet plate. In fact, the Garda Siochana helmet plates are also quite scarce . Policemen's notebooks can make fascinating social history. An RIC notebook sold some years ago at Whyte's for about £150 but Mr Whyte suspects such items would fetch more today. A rare Royal Irish Constabulary munitions box is included in the forthcoming auction. It's a thick wooden box with a sliding top, used for storing bullets. "I don't think there is one in either the Garda or RUC museum so hopefully we'll get a battle for that one. We'll probably get a couple of hundred pounds for it."
Photographs tracing uniform changes are also collectable, especially images showing the changeover from the RIC to the Garda Siochana. Photos can be worth £10 to £100. "If you can identify who's in them and what they're doing, that's interesting. If you've got an action photograph, say of the RIC battening a crowd during the 1913 strike, a close-up photograph that's not been published before, you could be well into the hundreds," says Mr Whyte.
jmarms@irish-times.ie
