Joseph Barker Wilson

Born in Bradford in 1946 into a family of police officers – his father, grandfather, uncles and great uncles had all served in the City of Bradford Police Force – he wanted only to follow in their footsteps, and declined to ever accept a promotion.

As young as five, he was captured on film as the only child at the force’s annual inspection parade in Peel Park.

The Wilson family had originated in the Furness area of what was then Lancashire, where, in the late Victorian period, Joe’s great grandfather, Barker Wilson, had inherited the family farm.

His younger brothers made their way to Bradford to earn a living from policing, and found their agricultural skills put to good use in the mounted branch.

The police recruitment process, Joe recalled, could best be described as casual. When at 19 years he called in to see the Superintendent at the police station in Bradford’s City Hall, the boss pulled out his father and grandfather’s files and pronounced: “A striking family resemblance – you can start on Monday.”

Joe’s policing style was honed in the 1960s, when relatively few people had cars or telephones. Officers patrolled on foot and colleagues were never far away. The centre of Bradford had at least 12 such foot beats.

The police controlled the streets, he would later say, and took pride in the security he felt that his mother or sister could walk down any street in Bradford at any time and not be put in fear.

But it was as a Panda car driver that Joe excelled, swapping the traditional bobby’s helmet for a driver’s flat cap. He spent most of his career in that role at Bradford Central, moving eventually to nearby Shipley, where he adapted his city centre policing style to one more suitable to suburban estates.

In 1975 he met and married Margaret, a special constable who worked as a telephonist at the GPO Exchange in Bradford. They had two sons, but in 1995 Margaret succumbed to cancer at 49, a few days before Christmas, and it was left to Joe to raise his boys alone.

He acquired many commendations, and in 1978 the Police Authority named him the officer with the most arrests that year.

Just before his retirement he received a lifetime achievement award for service from the Home Office.

He was a keen walker, not just on the beat, but over the Yorkshire Dales, Moors and the Lake District, and a local historian. In 2016 he wrote and published a book on the former police stations of Bradford.

He is survived by his sister, Anne, sons Joseph Barker and John and a nephew by marriage, Stephen Young, a serving constable who inherited Joe’s old collar number, 3346.