Linda Benton came and gave us a talk about her career in the metropolitan mounted police.
When she started the horses had not received specific training for police work and were not fitted with the safety items we expect today, for example they were not fitted with eye shields/blinkers, and the officers did not have safety hard hats, nor did they have truncheons.
They were initially used in crowd control, like football matches, demonstrations etc. As one mounted officer would have the same effect as a dozen officers on foot.
She told us of how these things changed through her career, she brought along some items of memorabilia, which we could look at on the table after her talk.
