Hi Elaine I don't know if it's any interest to you or not but in a book about St Ippolyts, the author Daphne Rance describes a period in 1830 when many of the surrounding parishes were experiencing strikes and riots by the farm labourers. In Ippolyts 24 men volunteered to act as special constables for 6 months, including my probable ancestor William Slater. The following year there was a further riot in St Ippolyts and when the constable John Harpin was called to make some arrests he said "The whole crowd said they would not be taken by anybody. They said I was no constable for I had not got a staff". I was just thinking that the constables would have been kept very busy around that time. If you find yourself in the Ippolyts records I would of course be very interested in any references to the Slaters. Lyla ----- Original Message ----- From: "Elaine Saunders" <Elaine_Saunders@completetext.com> To: <eng-hertfordshire@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 9:26 PM Subject: [HRT] Parish Constables > Does anyone have any parish constables in their tree please, working in > the period 1780-1840? > > It might be difficult to tell because often the duties were foisted on > them in addition to their 'day jobs'. This temporary appointment might > not have been recorded therefore. Instead, usually everyone in the > village took a turn until the Herts force was created in 1841 (and > possibly beyond this too) > > I'm particularly interested in operational records of the various village > constables, details of their duties or any private forces set up around > the time. I'm building details on the Barnet General Association which > maintained a private police force and helped victims of crime to > prosecute. Their records include quite a few names of officers and > members which I will post to the list when I've transcribed them. > > I'm spending lots of time at the archive, going through all the village > records, looking for details of constables so, if anyone would like to > send me some names, I'll see what I can do in tracing them. I'm already > keeping my eye open for ASHBY on behalf of Nick but any others most > welcome. > > Elaine > > > Hertfordshire Surnames List > > http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~hughw/hertford.html > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > ENG-HERTFORDSHIRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message