Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part III)

An early and interesting K.P.M. pair awarded to Commissioner G. L. Brooks, Sierra Leone Police, latterly a temporary Commissioner of the Gambia Police
King’s Police Medal, G.V.R., 1st issue (Geo. L. Brooks, Commr., Sierra Leone Pol.); Jubilee 1887, Metropolitan Police issue (P.C., 48, Devonport), the first with edge bruising, otherwise very fine or better (2) £400-450

K.P.M. London Gazette 1 January 1913.

George L. Brooks commenced his career as a P.C. with the Metropolitan Police in 1885 but transferred to the Colonial Police in October 1894, when he was appointed an Inspector in Sierra Leone. Advanced to Superintendent - and appointed Sheriff and Provost-Marshal - in July 1996, he served for the first time as a ‘Police Magistrate, Coroner and Judge of Court’ in Freetown in the following year. In 1905, when he ‘introduced a system of identification of criminals by finger impressions’, his title was re-styled Commissioner of Police and his responsibilities extended to non-urban crown lands, hence his subsequent appointment as Acting District Commissioner in the Waterloo District - the multi-talented Brooks also found time to serve as Acting Harbour Master in the second half of 1909. But it was largely as a result of his deeds in the following year, in suppressing the outbreak of yellow fever in Sierra Leone, that he was awarded the K.P.M. in 1913, the recommendation citing in particular his ‘invaluable assistance’ in combatting the outbreak at Freetown. Brooks appears to have retired in the early 1920s, by which time he had also held temporary command of the Gambia Police in 1915.