A VICTORIAN EBONISED POLICE TRUNCHEON AND A MINER’S LAMP (2)

The truncheon with ‘VR’ cypher for Queen Victoria and gilt lettering reading ‘St Giles’s Hundd.’, 41 cm long; the miner’s polished brass and painted lamp incised to base ‘Newstead Colliery’, 24 cm high (excluding loop)

St. Giles or (St. Giles’s) is an area east of Tottenham Court Road station, notorious prior to the mid-19th Century as a ‘rookery’ - a maze of slums, home to villains and misfits. After the police defeated a criminal gang in 1840 the area started to change, combined with the slum clearance bought by the development of New Oxford St. seven years later.