The Glasgow Police Museum

On the first floor of an office building on Bell Street, in the Merchant City, is one of Glasgow’s most unexpected small museums. The Glasgow Police Museum tells the story of the City of Glasgow Police, which can claim to have been Britain’s first modern police force, and alongside it displays a remarkable collection of police uniforms and insignia from around the world. Entry is free, it is run entirely by volunteers, and it is one of the best places in the city to understand how Glasgow was policed over nearly two centuries.

Who runs the museum

The museum belongs to the Glasgow Police Heritage Society, a charity founded in 1999 by a group of mostly retired police officers, many of whom had served in the City of Glasgow Police before it was merged into Strathclyde Police in 1975. The society had helped to establish an earlier police museum that was not open to the public, and its members wanted to create one that anyone could visit.

The Glasgow Police Museum opened on 3 May 2002 in the city’s central police headquarters. When that building closed, the museum moved to its present home in Bell Street, in 2009. It is an independent accredited museum. It receives no funding from Police Scotland or from Glasgow City Council and depends on donations from visitors to survive.

The story of the City of Glasgow Police

The main exhibition traces the history of policing in Glasgow from the first experiments in 1779 to 1975. It explains how the town’s magistrates set up a small force of officers in 1779, which collapsed for lack of money, and a second attempt in 1789, before the Glasgow Police Act of 1800 established a permanent, professional force paid for by a local rate. That was almost thirty years before the Metropolitan Police was founded in London, and the museum makes the case for Glasgow’s claim to precedence with some pride.

Through uniforms, equipment, photographs, documents and text panels, the exhibition follows the force through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the growth of the Victorian city, the development of the detective department, the merger with neighbouring burgh forces, the officers who served and died in the First World War, the arrival of the first women officers, and the reforms of Chief Constable Percy Sillitoe, including the chequered cap band known as the Sillitoe tartan.

The international collection

The second part of the museum is the International Police Exhibition, which shows how policing spread around the world. More than 2,000 items of insignia, headgear and uniforms from police forces in every country are on display, many of them collected through exchanges between police officers. It gives the small museum a surprisingly global feel.

Why it matters

Much of the history of ordinary policing is easily lost. Uniforms are replaced, equipment is thrown away, and the memories of officers who walked the beat disappear with them. By collecting and displaying this material, and by drawing on the knowledge of former officers, the museum preserves a part of Glasgow’s social history that would otherwise be forgotten. It also gives visitors a way into the stories told elsewhere in this section, from the razor gangs of the 1930s to the long investigations into cases such as those of Peter Manuel.

Police history has its darker chapters too. Visitors who know the story of the Oscar Slater case, in which the force’s own detective John Trench was dismissed for telling the truth, will recognise that the institution celebrated here had its failures as well as its achievements.

Visiting the museum

The museum is on the first floor of 30 Bell Street, opposite Merchant Square, a short walk from Glasgow Cross and High Street station. Entry is through the main door of the building, using the entry system, and there are stairs and a small lift to the first floor. Brown tourist signs point the way from the Trongate and the High Street.

Opening hours change with the seasons. In recent years the museum has opened every day from April to October and on two days a week, Tuesdays and Sundays, in the winter months. Visitors should check the museum’s own website for current times before travelling. Admission is free, and donations are welcome. The museum is also dog friendly.

A visit combines well with a walk around the Merchant City and the old heart of Glasgow. The High Court in the Saltmarket, where many of the great criminal trials were heard, is a few minutes away, as is Glasgow Green, where public executions once took place in front of the court.

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