Talk:Custodian helmet

Untitled
Oh dear. 'Custodian' is just the brand name for one particular make of Police high helmet. Much of the information here is either outdated or simply wrong. Unless there are good reasons otherwise, I will create a new page and mark this one for deletion. Trust me, I have been employed by the Home Office on police helmet design. Glynhughes (talk) 07:34, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Relevance?
Do policeman still wear helmets? I live in suffolk and can't remember the last time I actually saw a proper old-fashion style police helmet. They all seem to wear caps these days....

Yes they very much do, especially in metropolitan areas and major cities. angelangelv2 05:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Pictures
As helmets differ between forces, it would be nice to have images of some of the other variants. Drutt 02:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

While the displayed picture is certainly very nice, it is clear from the text, that the shown helmet is quite an exception. What the article needs is a picture of the standard typical London bobby helmet which everyone in the world knows. Is there no picture of a London policeman anywhere in Wikipedia? --BjKa 08:39, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Photos are needed of the inside of the helmet. Better yet, photos of the entire production process would be good. It is hard to visualize by description alone.

Pregnant women
Is it just an urban legend that policemen are required by law to offer these helmets to pregnant women to urinate in? Obviously, the practice isnt common and probably reflects a very old law if it did ever exist, but did it ever really exist in the first place? Scaeme (talk) 06:09, 18 September 2009 (UTC) I believe that by law a pregnant women is allowed to urinate anywhere, and can do so in a policemans helmet is she asks first. Seen it fairly recently (someone explaining the law, not a the peeing -.-) and I'm sure that's what they said.

Myth. See here for evidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.23.86.132 (talk) 12:10, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Origin
It presumably evolved from the Home Service helmet of the Army. Can anyone confirm this? Drutt (talk) 11:45, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

No the police helmet came in in the early 1860s, the Home Service Helmet came in in 1878 (following a couple of years of trials). Subsequently, the shape of the police helmet was clearly influenced by the Army helmet, however. The white helmet worn by both the military and police overseas from the 1870s was part of the same continuum. Anon-eeeee-mouse (talk) 18:15, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Northern Ireland
It says that helmets were never worn in Northern Ireland. Check out this site. 58.8.25.112 (talk) 08:18, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Australia
Many Australian police forces wore this helmet eg Tasmania Police Ozdaren (talk) 22:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Terminology
As Glynhughes wrote 3 years ago, the term 'Custodian' is a very recent proprietary name (like 'Hoover' for vacuum cleaner). While I totally accept it has become the universal modern term for helmets across the British police forces that use them, it seems very strange to retrospectively apply it to any similar helmet worn anywhere in the world over the last 150 years, especially Italian helmets. The so-called "White Colonial custodian helmet" is really descended from the old Zulu-war style British Army foreign service helmet, nothing to do with the 'Custodian' type. Similarly the 'Monegasque Prince's Carabinier' is wearing a version of the old French military helmet. The statement that 'The original design was based on the Victorian British Army Home Service helmet' is also clearly wrong, as Metropolitan police helmets predate this by over a decade (1863 as stated in the article, against 1878 for the army helmet). Unfortunately I guess putting these two well-testified facts together would constitute original research. Anon-eeeee-mouse (talk) 17:56, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

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Pickelhaube
The 2016 newspaper article given as evidence that the helmet was was based on the pickelhaube is circular - this claim appears in many 21st century newspaper articles, and these are obviously based on the wikipedia article itself. As a matter of fact the original police helmet looked nothing like a pickelhaube, it had a crest and no spike. The fact that some helmets obtained spikes thirty years later (like the one in the photograph in this article) is a different matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.101.3.26 (talk) 12:17, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

OK, I give up. Reverting my well-intentioned minor change on this under the heading of "vandalism" is pathetic. I've been studying this subject for 30 years, I'm not a "vandal", I just disagree with this point. Serious "encyclopediac" works specifically about police uniforms (i.e. not Money Barnes) just don't mention the pickelhaube. If you read this I'd like to discuss rather than turn into an edit war. My latest change is meant to be a compromise, please read it as such. I'm sure you know that the "early type of helmet which had an upturned brim at the front and a raised spine at the back" not my words really didn't have much in common with a pickelhaube, apart from being rounded and having a badge on the front. Spiked police helmets (like the one pictured in the article) did not appear until a good 30 years after the police helmet was invented, and were always rare. These were mostly copies of the British Army home service helmet, not directly influenced by the pickelhaube, anyway — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.203.13.4 (talk) 14:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)