Waterloo Police Station

This is an anonymously published postcard printed in Germany showing Somerset House and the Thames Division Police Station on Waterloo Pier, the view was taken from the old Waterloo Bridge just before it was rebuilt in 1900. The Police Station can claim to have been the oldest police station in the Metropolitan Police District, the original station dates from 1798 when the Marine Police Force was established by Magistrate John Colquhoun and Master Mariner John Harriott with the help of Jeremy Bentham. The idea of the force was to prevent theft from cargoes on ships and at the various wharves on the Thames and paid for by the shipping companies. The Marine Police Force was absorbed into the Metropolitan Police in 1839 and became Thames Division with their headquarters at Wapping Police Station. In recent years all has changed, after the Marchioness disaster in 1989 when 51 people were killed it was felt that a dedicated rescue service on the Thames was needed, the Government tasked the Marine and Coastguard Agency, Port of London Authority and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to set up such a service. On 2nd January 2002 the RNLI which receives no money from the Government and relies solely on public subscriptions set up Lifeboat stations at Teddington, Chiswick, Tower Pier and Gravesend and took over the search and rescue responsibility from Thames Division. Meanwhile in 2001 Thames Division changed its name to the Marine Support Unit and then again in 2008 to the Marine Policing unit. In 2006 the RNLI station at Tower Pier relocated to Waterloo Pier and renamed the Pier Tower Lifeboat Station, so Waterloo Pier no longer exists as such. To further add to the confusion the Waterloo Millennium Pier is located on the south bank adjacent to the London Eye Ferris Wheel.

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