Another source for identifying a Met Police officer’s service is through the pension records. For officers who joined before January 1889 this may be the only tool available to identify the man’s Police career. He would have needed to serve to pension age before he was eligible for a pension (normally pension points were 25 or 30 years service). If a man was discharged through ill health he could still have been eligible to receive a pension.
The pension records show the date of discharge and the annual rate of pension. The record for PC Mark Butcher is shown below. He retired in January 1893 and received a pension of £55/9/4 per annum.
The second page of the pension record gives detail of the man and includes a brief summary of where he served in the Met Police. In PC Butcher’s case it shows he served in 4th Division (Chatham) but he was actually serving in Sheerness Dockyard which was part of that division.
The Pension Files are at the National Archives in the MEPO 21 series. However only a small part of this series has been digitised and can be downloaded for a fee which is how I obtained PC Butcher’s record. Now some Met Police Pension files are available through Ancestry.