Former PC Alan Manley passed away on 18th July 2025.
Alan Manley, was born 23rd August 1933 in Morden south London. Alan was the only child in his street to attend Mitcham Grammar School. As a schoolboy he and his friends would share a bus with girls from the nearby Mitcham High School where he was to meet his future wife Maureen, they were together from the age of 12 to his death at the age of 91.
Alan joined the Metropolitan Police in 1952 aged 20 following a spell in Fleet Street as a junior at Boy’s Own Magazine. Then as an editorial assistant at Burke’s Peerage.
Alan recalled being on duty at the Queen’s coronation in 1953 while stationed at, what was then, Old Street station in North London. He moved out to T division at Staines, (later A division), when he and Maureen started a family.
Alan was an advanced class one driver often seconded to detective duties and the Flying Squad and always had many tales of high-speed operations to recount to his family and grandchildren. In 1969 he received a Royal Humane Society award for saving a young woman’s life. He served 25 years, receiving the long-service medal and was an ever-popular fixture as collator in the Staines ‘nick’. Alan was also a regular contributor the Met’s in house magazine “The Job”.
Alan studied for 5 yrs at the Open University to get his BA (Hons). This was in the days of very early morning broadcasts which he watched on a portable black and white TV in the bedroom (so as not to not wake the children) and late nights at a desk in the same room.
After leaving the Met, Alan worked in security and safety for Sheraton Hotels at Heathrow. Ever keen to expand, he then studied at Nottingham University for his CQSW and became a Probation Officer in Cheltenham. He and Maureen retired in the Cotswolds before moving to Falmouth in Cornwall to fulfil their dreams of early morning walks by the ocean. They had happy years before he was taken ill and passed away on Friday 18th July 2025. He left me a letter (his son) asking that I send this obituary to pass on “thanks to my old comrades—most of them will be waiting up there”. The police force defined his life and was never far from his thoughts even during our last conversations.
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