Bill celebrates 80th birthday down the nick

10:27am Friday 23rd November 2007

A LONG-SERVING police officer has celebrated his 80th birthday with a visit to the police station where he began his career 55 years ago.

As well as having a look around the old station in Ilford Hill, where he first worked in 1952, former PC Bill Fuller was given a tour of the new station in Ilford High Road where his son Steve Fuller, 52, is now a forensic expert and crime scene manager for Ilford Police.

Bill Fuller went on to work with CID, in Lemon Street, in the East End, before going to West End Central station and Scotland Yard.

Speaking to the Guardian after his trip down memory lane, he said he had been overwhelmed by the greeting party of police chiefs and staff.

His son Steve added: "The officers in Redbridge really made the effort to put themselves out - it was really quite touching. It certainly made it a wonderful day for him."

Bill joined the force at the age of 25 after serving in the Second World War, and worked six days a week for a weekly wage of £7, which he said he considered quite good at the time.

"It was so different in those days," Bill recalled. "The sergeant would march you out with your truncheon and your whistle, then we went on patrol without any means of communication apart from two boxes, so if you wanted assistance you blew your whistle three times and the nearest officer would come running.

"When I was on patrol on a Saturday night all the activity was at the Ilford Palais. People would come out and obstruct the pavement, so I'd go and ask them to move along, and they just moved on.

"The police were very respected in my day, and today they have a much harder job - it's a bit of a thankless task."

The former officer said he was struggling to find similarities between his job and what Steve does today.

"He spends most of his time in front of a computer," added Bill. "The technology is unbelievable, the way they collect intelligence and so forth.

"The only similarity I can see there is still that comradeship, that friendship between them still occurs."

Around the site