The Red Arrow Detective Agency

This wartime agency in Derby had a boss who may have exaggerated his experience somewhat...

Derby had a shortlived detective agency at the start of World War 2. The Red Arrow Detective Agency operated for a mere six months, if newspaper adverts give an indication of its longevity, from October 1939 until April 1940.

The Red Arrow Detective Agency was not named after the RAF aerobatics team - this was not known as the Red Arrows until the 1960s. However, it was a catchy name, it lent itself to a strong logo, and the fact that it was similar to a famous London agency - Arrow's - that had recently ceased operation, due to the death of its founder, was perhaps not a coincidence. People who were looking for Arrow's, and couldn't find it any longer, might instead find an advert for Red Arrow and think it must be the same.

Its publicity made much of the fact that it was run by an 'ex police officer'; however, my research struggled to find a former policeman who had become a private detective in Derby. The agency's address, however, was given as 7 Cockpit Hill. The 1939 Register, initially compiled in September 1939, gives the names of the two people living at that address at the time, but neither was a police officer nor a private detective. In fact, Ernest William Meakin, who lived there with his wife Gertrude, was a tobacconist and confectioner. Could Ernest have been a former policeman? No, he wasn't.

Ernest was a local man, born in Derby in 1890. His parents, Arthur and Sarah Ann, had married in the Autumn of 1888, and Ernest was their eldest child; he had a younger sister, Alice. Arthur Meakin was a postman; he died in the 1890s, leaving his widow responsible for two young children. Sarah Ann found long term work as a widowed grocer's housekeeper; the grocer, Philip Collis, appears happy to have had her children living at his home with Sarah Ann, although her parents-in-law were happy to look after the youngsters for periods - the 1901 census records Ernest visiting his grandparents, while Alice was at the Collis house with Sarah Ann. At the age of 11, Ernest was recorded as working as a farmer (own account) - perhaps a joke by his grandparents and reflecting an interest in growing fruit or veg at their house.

By his early 20s, Ernest was working as a compositor - arranging type for printing. In 1912, he married Gertrude Holmes, although the couple do not appear to have had children. During World War 1, he enlisted in the Sherwood Foresters, serving his country. After the war, he settled back in Derby, and by 1939, was living at 7 Cockpit Hill.

How could this farmer, compositor and tobacconist - son of a postman and grandson of a railway porter on one side, and a railway timekeeper on the other - establish himself as a private detective, using police experience in his advertising? The answer is that he was not a career policeman, but had simply worked as a member of the reserve police. In 1939, the Special Constabulary had made an effort to recruit younger constables (with many of its interwar constables being in their sixties or over).

There was also the War Reserve, formed in 1939 and, at its peak, consisting of 17,000 voluntary constables. It appears that Ernest Meakin had a brief spell in the latter, working as a reserve constable. By October 1939, he was using his status as an ex-reserve constable for his new career venture. He did not explicitly mention that he had been in the War Reserve, merely describing himself as an ex police officer. Given that the War Reserve - which would continue until the start of 1946 - had only been founded a year before he set up his detective agency, his experience could not have been extensive.

The Red Arrow Detective Agency appears to have folded by the end of April 1940. Ernest died early the next year, aged only 51, his agency surviving only in the few press adverts that can now be found in the British Newspaper Archive.