Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police on 29th September 1829. Andrew Roberts investigates the humble origins of the police bell.
The bell on a police car was also known as the ‘gong’.
The gong’s origins date from 1921, when Winkworth Engineering, near Basingstoke, received an order for their first emergency warning system. Winkworth Electric Car Bells Ltd provided equipment for police forces, fire brigades, ambulance services and other government bodies.
When Ealing Studios shot The Blue Lamp in 1949, the sole musical accompaniment for the opening credits was from the frantically ringing gong on the Humber Super Snipe.
During the following decade, no B-feature seemed complete without a Wolseley 6/80 pursuing overacting villains through Croydon. The Roadcraft manual for police drivers gave stern advice about correctly using the gong.
In 1964, one motoring journalist noted, ‘Traditionally in this country, bells are used for warning traffic of an ambulance, fire engine or police car on a priority mission, but often in busy streets these carry insufficiently to be effective.’
Nor, as patrol crews soon discovered, were gongs very practical on motorways, the first of which opened in 1958.
Six years later, some fire brigades used two-tone horns, and the Home Office stated that their sound carried further than bells: ‘These days, so many motorists have radios in their cars, and modern lorries are more soundproofed than they used to be. We felt that horns would give an earlier warning than bells.’
Some counties remained loyal to the gong. In 1965, Hampshire County Council blanched at paying £1,077 for 100 two-tone horns.
By 1970, the London Metropolitan Police were pensioning off its last black Wolseley 6/110s, and for much of the country the gong had gone the way of A/B button telephone boxes. But the Met used both two-tones and bells on their cars into the 1970s, with Rover P6B 3500s and Triumph 2.5 PIs still making clanging noises as they pursued errant Ford Cortina and Hillman Hunter drivers.
Autocar on 3rd September 1977 reported, ‘Some police cars in London still have the bell fitted. This is used, apparently, when the driver of the vehicle ... is getting on in years. The law reckons it is less traumatic than the two-tone horns.’
The Met continued to fit the gong on Traffic Division Land Rovers, Sherpa vans and some unmarked cars into the 1980s. Some villains must have wondered if they had strayed into an Ealing comedy.
Memories of such films inspired me to acquire a 1960 Met Traffic Car specification Wolseley 6/99, complete with a bell that makes a sound familiar from countless Edgar Wallace films.
Andrew Roberts
