Notes:

Penzance Borough Police was formed in 1836, along with many other borough forces in the country, following the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835 which required every borough to appoint a Watch Committee with a duty of maintaining a police force. The officers were housed in the basement of St John's Hall with their Chief Constable and this remained the pattern until the force was eventually amalgamated into the Cornwall Constabulary. Nationally, in an effort to reduce the number of police forces with which the military authorities had to deal during the Second World War, the Home Office amalgamated certain of the smaller borough police forces with the local county force. Therefore, in 1943, Penzance Borough temporarily went over to the county constabulary until the 1946 Police Act which abolished non-county borough police forces such as Penzance. As a result, from 1947 the town was policed solely by the Cornwall Constabulary and Penzance became the last of the old borough forces in the West Country to be taken over.