Peter Clarke 1.03.29 We all got issued pocket books, and any incident you dealt with, you were expected to make a record of it in your pocket book, and then there may be other paperwork associated with it, so if you dealt with an arrest you had arrest forms to fill out, if you were reporting someone for a traffic offense, then you had another book that you would fill out, but no matter what other forms you’d fill out, you’d always put the record in your pocket book and then there would be kept at the police station a book where all the incidents were recorded, just a sort of one liner, but then that was a sort of record that could go to the officer who could go to the other documentation to get more information.
Press A to hear an excerpt from the book on display Press B to hear about record keeping in the 20th century