I work nights, doing 2300-0700 tours. As you can imagine, I spend a lot of my time polishing a chair and twiddling my thumbs.

The result is that I do most of my online research on company time, using company internet and company printers. No family interuptions, no ringing phones and my staff handle most of the issues that pop up. It's not a bad way to go!

A very good friend of mine out of Troop K here in NY once told me "Never do off-duty what you can do on-duty". He's a sage.

So as I peruse different archives and libraries online to find more Trophy Gun details, I continue to find all kinds of stuff.

One thing I found tonight:
For a very long time I've known that the NYCPD maintained an inventory of about 20-26 Colt-Browning Model 1895 machine guns. They were mounted on patrol boats, motorcycle flatbed sidecars (!) and supposedly the front passenger seat of RMP's fitted with fold down windshields.

One thing I always wondered was what became of these guns.

Tonight I found images of a gun destruction from 1940 and front and center were a half dozen stripped down Potato Diggers being tossed into the briny deep.

Anyway.........
One thing I really want to have for my Trophy Gun paper is pictures of the actual guns. Pictures of the recipients with the guns would be even better. You'd think that's be fairly easy to find but it's not. There's a lot of pictures of guys (and some gals) getting their guns presented but it's always from a distance and the gun is obscured by the presenters hand and recipients hand. If you're luck you might see a glimpse of barrel or the box.

The further back in time you go, the harder it is to find an image.

It's a tough image to find.

And then Fortuna stepped in tonight and discretely placed her finger on the scales...........

John J. Patterson - Bloomingdale Trophy - 1928
New York Daily News 17SEP28


Now if he was just holding up a mugshot card with the serial number of the gun!

Attached Images

PATTERSON - 1928.jpg (40.9 KB, 17 views)

Great post and great photo.

A different time and a different country to be sure. Can you imagine giving out the officer's home address in today's world?

__________________
You're shy a few manners.

Funny you mention that. Very often you'd read about an award given to "...Patrolman John D. Law, of 1234 Grand concourse, Bronx. Watching him receive his award is his wife, Minerva Law and their three children; Jack,3; Jill, 5 and Theodore, 6".

Yea they really had some pretty interesting private details. How about this for PERSEC fail:



1926 Bloomingdale Trophy recipient. Picked up SGT a few months later and was dead a year after that, having succumbed to "...a long illness."

That $38 per week works out to around half his salary (some things never change).

That last clipping shows that the old days were not all sweetness and light.

__________________
You're shy a few manners.