Featured ANTIQUE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS METROPOLITAN POLICE WHISTLE

As I think people here know, I like collecting stuff that is, or is related to, the Straits-Chinese/Peranakan Chinese, since that's my ethnicity and ancestry. For the last 12 years or so, I've been learning and studying more and more, and slowly adding to my collection over that time.

Something else I collect is antique whistles. And one whistle I've always wanted is one from the old Straits Settlements - the home of my ancestors - it's where both sides of my family were born and raised.

Anyway - recently - I finally landed one!!



Manufactured by J. Hudson & Co., Birmingham, the whistle was used by the Straits Settlements Police Force, so that means places like Malacca, Penang, and Singapore.

Antique whistles like these are dated according to their barrel-stamps. The barrel stamp here reads "244 Barr St.", which was (and still is) the address of the J. Hudson Whistle Works. This dates the whistle to around 1910.

I've always wanted one of these old Straits Police whistles, but unfortunately, they are EXTREMELY RARE. In nearly 15 years of collecting whistles, I've only seen one other, from another collector, and that was online. And I'd never seen one for sale before! This cost a pretty penny, but I'm glad I have it. This is exactly what my grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, would've seen - and heard!! - on the streets of Singapore, way back in the Edwardian era

 

Great Good Fortune, Shangas...Hearty congratulations!

 

DINGDINGDING! Score!

 

The Straits Police were not like London or New York or LA or whatever, they weren't the British Army and whatnot. They have thousands, millions of antique whistles to find, if you know where, and have the patience to do it.

Something like this was made for a tiny, colonial police-force on the edge of the empire, so they weren't numerous to begin with. That's what makes them so rare. Glad to have one

 

Rare and with a set of rabid collectors. I don't want to know what that whistle sold for, but if the seller found it in a rummage sale for a dollar I bet they're doing the happy dance.

 

Nice!!!

 

Very cool. Thanks for sharing this important find!

 

Whistle collectors like to pick up the exceptionally old, unique, or rare whistles. Whistles which were manufactured in different ways, by different companies, whistles which were the first-of-their-kind, whistles owned or used by famous or historically significant organisations...

...or in this case - a whistle with a rare barrel-stamp on the side.

Back then, if you were a particular organisation (say, a railway company, a police-force, a hospital or something) you could write to the manufacturer and it'd be something like:

"J. Hudson & Co. Whistles.
13 Barr St. Birmingham.

Sir,

Please supply us with a shipment of 100 Metropolitan whistles, stamped "Central District Hospital", to be delivered to the address listed below..." etc etc.

Yours faithfully, and so-on".

This custom whistle-stamp provision was all part of the service - buy your whistles from US because if you pay an extra 5/- per-order (or whatever) then you'll get your whistles custom-stamped with lettering of your choice on it! It was just another way to draw in more customers.

Of course, it cost you extra to get that treatment (they'd have to manufacture a barrel-stamp specific to your order), but the perk was that you got whistles with the name of your organisation, or company, or building stamped across the top, which was pretty cool!!

100, 150 years later, and those whistles with the custom stamps on them are worth a FORTUNE today, because they're so incredibly rare.

 

I dunno about "important", but it is pretty darn cool! I love it

 

Thank you for the education! Really a cool piece of history!

 

I'll have to upload my entire collection one day...

 

They're in the same vein as railroad switch keys and other similar things. They're worth more if marked with the road name. It cost extra to get them marked, and unprofitable and cheapskate roads didn't bother. Find a rare one and...$$$.

 

The problem with whistles with rare stamps is that everybody thinks their whistle is rare, and very few of them are.

I mean, if they weren't, then none of them would be rare, would they?? Rather defeats the purpose.

The Straits Settlements Police whistle is a genuinely rare one, though, because it would only have been produced for a relatively short period of time, and only for a small, colonial police-force.

But most of the others? Not so much.

This has led to people putting INSANE prices on whistles which they think are super-rare or special in some way...and they're really not. We see this all the time in collector-groups on like, Facebook and such, and people will post adverts there for whistles with huge prices on them...they're usually a huge source of amusement.

A really good example is WWI trench whistles.

"I have a whistle from the trenches of the Somme!! I want $5000 for it!!"

Buddy...buddy...there were MILLIONS of army whistles at the Somme. Officers carried them for "going over the top", NCOs carried them to organise the troops, medics and stretcher-bearers carried them to call for help ("STRETCHER!!" *chreeeep!!*), artillery-men carried them for sounding the warning for opening barrages, etc etc etc etc...they're not exactly rare.

But people will believe what they want to believe.

As with all antiques, knowing what's GENUINELY rare and valuable is down to experience and education.

 

It was great-grandpa's so it's priceless...yeppers. That's common to all collectibles, truth be told. Or "I paid XXXXXX for it 20 years ago so I just want my money back." Never mind that they spent 10x what it was worth then and prices have dropped. I've run into both scenarios.

 

Yeah I've heard of both scenarios too. It's nauseating. Like, all well and good, but sentimental value means nothing. If it was, every plush-toy in history would be worth a billion dollars.

Fortunately, since whistles aren't a natural area of collecting, you can still get them relatively cheaply.

 

Just don't tell, so they don't turn into sports cards.

 

The challenge is knowing which whistles are actually worth money, and most aren't.

 

Old junkers can often guess right, but anyone else should probably stay out.