Seasoned London detective Frederick Porter Wensley recorded in his memoirs that he had been ‘much affected by the war … both personally and professionally’. He had experienced huge family tragedy with the deaths of two sons in the armed forces. His work routine had also been transformed: ‘ As the war went on large numbers of the criminal classes were drawn into the fighting services, but on the other hand, there sprang up a variety of new offences peculiar to the time.’1 The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), rushed through Parliament in August 1914, ushered in a wide range of regulations and prohibitions, including restrictions on lighting and licensing as well as the movement of people, vastly increasing the powers of the state. Whilst the number of prosecutions in the courts for serious ‘crimes’ fell, the volume of work that police officers were required to do expanded seismically across the UK.