X Dear Ken,Delighted to have been able to help to deal withyour questions I will go with the easiest first,our Website is as you see above, all the HistoryBooks are within the drop down menu on the left,any difficulties please come back to me.With regard to William's death etc, as I gothrough the records, which incidentally are inexcess of 14000 and which has taken the past 5years of my spare time to compile, it is easy forme to see the full picture. I am currentlytranscribing General Orders from 20th April 1857,they basically give a day by day account on theworkings of the Cheshire Constabulary and at thispoint it should be said that there would be verylittle difference between a Chester City Policeman(William) and a County Policeman (Samuel), themain difference being that City Policemen/BoroughPolicemen were only responsible for the area inwhich the City/Borough fell. The County Policemanhad all the authority for his County and of coursethroughout England as time progressed. As I said Samuel had not declared that his fatherwas dead, may be as I said some type of rift hadtaken place between them and that is why Samueljoined Cheshire Constabulary in September 1881 asopposed to trying to follow in the footsteps ofhis father. But looking through the records theremany officers who sons followed them my own is aDetective Sergeant, another member of the MuseumCommittee has a continual line of service from1860 and that's some going, here we are lookingfor some reason why Samuel had not stated hisfather was dead, and in fact it could well be thatthe Sergeant he recorded the information did nothave all the facts and just recorded what hethought was right, we will never know.I have numerous Kelly's Directories' for Cheshireand many of them do not record the Constables onlythe senior officers or as you say Detectives,other Directories record the Constables so I thinkit basically was a case of what the producer of aparticular Directory thought was best at the time.With regard to Police houses in 1881 all PoliceOfficers lived in accommodation provided by theWatch Committee (Modern day Police Authority) orwould receive a rent allowance for accommodationthey rented from a Landlord, a weekly allowance of4/6d to 5/- per week was paid to the officer. Evenin those days there were all types of restrictionsplaced on the officer that lived in policeproperty, you could not hang pictures on the wall,the cheapest of wall paper would be supplied every7 years, and many other petty restrictions. If itwas a County owned property it was always classedas a 'police station' particularly in the morerural areas and the officer's wife would beexpected to be there basically as an unpaidassistant to the Police. Prior to William's deathhe would be earning about 32/- per week as aSergeant, from this he would have to pay a weeklyamount into the Superannuation Fund of about 1/- ,which was by no means a small amount. This wouldnormally be returned to the officer at the end ofhis service in the form of an annual pension atthis time it was about £50. William had in factonly served about 15 years when he died, hisservice with the police in Dublin would not countand there was no provision for a widow to receivea police widow's pension. His widow would haveprobably received a gratuity lump sum of anywherebetween £40 and £50.With regard to Samuel's record believe me when Iwould say Samuel's record consists of pettyoffences. The Chief Constables at the time CaptainThomas Johannes Smith 1857-1878 and Captain JohnWilliam Arrowsmith 1878-1881, Lt. Colonel JohnHenry Hamersley 1881-1910, as you can see all wereex Military Officers who I believe were trying torun a civilian force along Military lines andinstil military style discipline amongst the men.I can see in a lot of the discipline records thatthere is certainly dissent amongst the men.Drunkenness was a particular problem amongst theConstables and it was more or less instantdismissal if found drunk, it then got to the stagethat so many officers were being dismissed fordrinking that they were short of men and a fineprocess was brought in, then after being reportedthree times for drinking/drunkenness then youwould be dismissed. Captain Arrowsmith isdocumented in the force history as being a harshdisciplinarian.I have checked the database for the names you gavenone are recorded, however it may be worth tryingMerseyside Police and the person to contact is aMrs. Kate McNichol. Information and ManagementDisclosure Department she is in charge of all theold records but I should point out that they don'thave a museum or records like we have, but it'sLastly I note you say your wife's sister JoanJackson served with Special Branch in Liverpool Iam assuming that you originate from Liverpoolyourself Ken. I was actually born in the Dingle,and went to Dingle Vale Secondary Modern School(DVS) after a few years in the Merchant Navy Ijoined the Army, then in 1975 Cheshire Policeafter walking the beat for two years I wastransferred to Special Branch and spent the next23 years there and finished my service in 2002.Right, hope this has gone someway to answeringyour questions, if you have anything else pleasedon't hesitate to ask. When I get to the year 1881of the General Orders I will keep an eye out foranything in there that may not be showing inSamuels personal record which I have now comeacross on numerous occasions for other officers.The likes of an officer being reported for assaulton a member of the public in 1868 and fined 10/-by the Chief Constable this is what it says in hispersonal record. However General Orders gives amuch fuller version, the officer had in fact drawnhis Cutlass and stabbed the man with it and reallywithout provocation. Sincere best wishes Jim.