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Investigating the Murder File: a Biographical Analysis of Creation, Survival and Impact

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Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Investigating the Murder File: A Biographical Analysis of Creation, Survival and Impact Thesis How to cite: Sutton-Vane, Angela (2021). Investigating the Murder File: A Biographical Analysis of Creation, Survival and Impact. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2020 Angela Mary Sutton-Vane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0001296b Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk Investigating the murder file: a biographical analysis of creation, survival and impact Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Angela Sutton-Vane MRes (Exeter) History Department Open University March 2020 This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Anne and Vane Sutton-Vane, both of whom I’m sure would have been immensely proud of my achievements, but neither of whom survived to see the final result. They have frequently been in my thoughts. i Abstract During a specific period of time, from the 1900s to the 1980s, a small number of files created during murder investigations by UK Criminal Investigation Departments found their way into the public domain and currently sit in record offices. By treating these murder files as objects with a biography, their lives have been mapped through creation and use, to after life in the record office. Concentrating on the records of regional police forces in England and Wales which have a much less clearly defined biography than their Metropolitan or Scottish counterparts, three interlinking research questions have been examined around the perceived gaps in regional policing history caused by a loss of historical documentation; the development of the role of the detective, his culture and his attitude towards his work and how this contributed to the preservation of the murder file and, last, the murder file’s contribution towards our knowledge of the link between collective memory and archives. To answer these questions, interdisciplinary research employed material culture, archival studies and history in order to triangulate quantitative and qualitative methods using surveys of online catalogues, interviews with retired detectives and police museum curators, and direct access to ten murder files. The results have been shaped into narratives around the file’s liminality and protean nature as it moved from a working record to a historical text via often unregulated removal from the police force bureaucratic processes. This research also examines the importance of collective memory in the detective’s life, and the role of the file as a lieu de mémoire. The biography of a murder file enables us to better understand wider debates around how paperwork was used as a form of institutional control, in addition to the problems associated with the preservation of policing history given the potential lacunae of research material caused by developing technologies, practice and legislation. Ultimately, this research contributes a new understanding of the historic murder file in the context of the wider issue of the preservation of criminal justice history. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following: absolutely first my husband, Glyn, whose love and faith in my abilities has kept me sane and focused—his constant presence in the background has been the real driving force over many years; my supervisors, Chris Williams and Susie West at the Open University, for nurturing me from a fledgling academic with little self-confidence in my abilities through to completion of this thesis; the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Consortium for the Humanities and Arts in the South East (CHASE) for funding my research and providing some inspirational training and networking opportunities; the Open University for their support and for additional funding in times of need; Alison Adam for having enough faith in my research to include it as a chapter in her book, Crime and the construction of forensic objectivity from 1850; the British Crime Historians 2018 symposium for awarding me the prize of best postgraduate paper which gave me motivation and inspiration to continue; the Police History Society whose generous grant allowed me to purchase recording equipment for interviews. I also cannot thank enough the archivists at local record offices, who in the current climate have precious little time and resources, and yet patiently answered my questions; particularly Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, Gloucestershire and Lancashire Archives; and especially Sue Webb from the Gloucestershire Police Archives project for her thoughts and time. Discussions or email correspondence with police museum curators and retired police officers such as Will Brown, Peter Hampson, Richard Cowley, Paul Lockwood and David Forward provided invaluable insight and guidance. And finally, but not least, Tilly the cat for being my warmth and purring companion during seemingly endless days writing in a cold office. iii Table of contents Table of illustrations, diagrams, charts and tables ......................................................... vi Glossary of acronyms and initialisms ............................................................................... xi Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 12 From a bureaucratic to archival response: archival structures and the production of police histories ............................................................................................ 55 1.1. Mapping the archival landscape ................................................................................ 56 1.2. Uncovering object biographies in the archive ........................................................... 59 1.2.1 Accession records................................................................................................ 60 1.2.2 Cross-archive collections .................................................................................... 61 1.2.3 Professional networks ......................................................................................... 62 1.3. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 65 The detective in history ............................................................................ 67 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 67 2.2. The beginning of the detective .................................................................................. 67 2.2.1 London ................................................................................................................ 67 2.2.2 Beyond London ................................................................................................... 71 2.3. Supervision and corruption ....................................................................................... 75 2.3.1 The Detective Department .................................................................................. 75 2.3.2 The Criminal Investigation Department ............................................................. 78 2.3.3 The national debate ............................................................................................. 80 2.4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 83 The detective and his paperwork ............................................................ 84 3.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 84 3.2. The regional C.I.D. office ......................................................................................... 84 3.3. The detective’s routine .............................................................................................. 91 3.3.1 Detective diaries .................................................................................................. 96 3.4. Bureaucracy, paperwork and why the detective disliked it..................................... 101 iv 3.4.1 The card index system ....................................................................................... 107 3.4.2 Systems and forms ............................................................................................ 109 3.4.3 Separatism ......................................................................................................... 124 3.4.4 Accountability ................................................................................................... 130 3.4.5 Art and craft ...................................................................................................... 135 3.5. Challenging the traditional detective culture .......................................................... 140 3.5.1 The 1981 Byford Report and MIRSAP ............................................................. 142 3.6. Outcomes and conclusions ...................................................................................... 145 Memory,
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