An Original WW2 Battle of Britain and the Blitz Period British Police 'Messenger' Brodie Pattern Helmet

Following the defeat of France, Britain and the empire was all that was left to fight Germany.

To successfully invade Britain, Germany needed to control the skies over the English channel.

This led to the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, followed by the targeted bombing of towns and cities during the Blitz.
The Blitz
The Luftwaffe decided to change their tactics from the Battle of Britain period and started targeting civilian targets and key landmarks instead of the RAF airfields. This was known as the Blitz.

Major British towns and cities were targeted from September 1940 to May 1941. The aim was now to try and force the British to surrender, rather than attempt to destroy the RAF.
Incendiary devices were used to start fires and light up targets on the ground, before bomber planes tried to target populated areas.

The Blitz caused huge loss of life. 40,000 civilians were killed and 2 million houses were damaged or destroyed.

The British Police during WW2
Their usual tasks included keeping the peace, dealing with criminals and making sure that the traffic flowed freely in towns and cities.
The Police also had new wartime duties. They had to make sure people obeyed the wartime blackout rules, help the rescue services during and after bombing raids and search for soldiers who had deserted from the army.
Looting was a big problem. The number of bombed properties provided a big temptation to looters. Many were given fines or short prison sentences.

Black market: Many items were sold on the black market without a ration card. If caught selling on the black market then the punishment could be a fine and imprisonment.

Murder rates increased dramatically during the war. Air raids killed so many people, it was often impossible for the police to investigate all deaths and criminals took advantage of this. {Pretty much like it is today}. Murder, however, still carried the death penalty.

Juliet Gardiner, the social historian and author of Wartime: Britain 1939-1945, says that, while most people found looting despicable, examples differentiated between stealing someone's property and spotting a wireless or jewellery lying on the pavement after an air raid and reckoning that, if you didn't take it, someone else would. "Looting can be a rather elastic term," says Gardiner. "There are stories about rescue parties going to a pub and having to dig for bodies, which is a very grisly task; one of the leaders of such a rescue party found a bottle of brandy and passed it round his men to have a swig to stiffen their sinews and he was actually sentenced to six months in prison. It was mitigated on appeal, but it gives you an idea of what a broad spectrum the notion of looting could cover."

In the archives of the Imperial War Museum in London, there are detailed records of people's experiences during the blitz. The Rev John Markham, vicar of a church near the Elephant and Castle and a chief fire warden, was one who kept a detailed log. He described how one "volunteer" warden had offered to join the team. "I made a few discreet inquiries and found out that he was a burglar and that his van was full of tools," wrote Markham, "and that he'd made a point of driving all over the borough, particularly to business premises when they were hit, and diving straight into the ruins to find the safe. His only concern with us was that he wanted the cover of a warden's badge as an identity card." Markham's team would take bodies to the crypt of his church and have them guarded by a warden because otherwise people might steal their wallets or wedding rings.

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