For this month’s Curators Corner, we have decided to focus on an object not currently displayed in our main galleries, but from our larger museum collection in storage. This month we are focusing on a police whistle, from the early 1900s.

Since the nineteenth century, police in England have been using whistles. Prior to whistles, police used rattles, known as ‘Victorian Police Rattles’. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries night watchmen or constables would use them to raise the alarm. After Sir Robert Peel formed the Metropolitan Police in 1829, rattles became standard issue for all police officers and were used by police, fire brigades, and military units across the British Empire. In 1883 the Metropolitan Police found that a whistle could be heard at 1000 yards, far more effective than the rattles.[1] Not only that, but the rattles were somewhat awkward to operate and prone to rot/warping as they were made of wood. Constables were even subject to attacks from their own rattles.[2] Police whistles fell into disuse in England in the mid-1900s, when early hand-held radios began to replace them.[3]
As this whistle is not currently on display, in this month’s Curator’s Corner we explore the role of the curator and how we can use objects we keep in storage, using the whistle as an example. The main job of a curator, after cataloguing and preserving collections, is telling the stories of objects. Before doing this, you must be able to place the item in its context. By looking at an object we may be able to find out what an object was made from, where it was from, when it was created, and who created it.
From inspecting this particular whistle, we can ascertain that it was made from silver plated metal, it has the words:
' POLICE WHISTLE
BARRAND
16 VICTORIA CHAMBERS
BRADFORD
PATENT '
engraved on it, and it is missing its chain that would hook the whistle on to an officer’s uniform. This engraving directly states its purpose ‘Police Whistle,’ but some of the other information is less explainable and requires slightly more research. From the engraved ‘Bradford’ we can assume two possibilities, it was a whistle used in Bradford by the Bradford Police, or it was manufactured in Bradford possibly by a company called ‘Barrand,’ also engraved on the whistle.
A difficult part of curation comes from the unknowns, some objects leave you with questions that take time to find the answers to or they are lost to time completely so we must make assumptions based on context clues. The style and patent number of this whistle is similar the model manufactured by the company J Hudson & Co, which engraved the company name, the word ‘patent’, the address, and the city, which our whistle seems to emulate. From there we can find out when it was made, in this case the patent number 5727.08 is engraved on the bottom, with some research we can narrow down a date range of when this version, the Two Piece top, was first manufactured; around 1908.[4]

The main question curators ask is how to tell an objects story and how to fit it into an exhibition. You could focus on the equipment police officers had to carry or who could have carried it — creating a story around the person who may have used the object (hypothetical or real). This whistle is not currently on display at the museum, but every object has a story to tell, and who know it may end up in an exhibition at some point in the future!
[1] Edward Steenberg, ‘Police Rattles & Whistles’ (2024) Saint Paul Police Historical Society.
[2] ‘Police Rattle, 1860s’ (2024) People’s Collection Wales.
[3] Steenberg, Saint Paul Police Historical Society.
[4] ‘J Hudson & Co’ (May 2024), Wikipedia.
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