Planning help needed

[liriel1810.livejournal.com]

I'm currently in planning for my big bang story and I have a couple of questions I need answers to, but don't know how to find these answers. I'm hoping the wonderful people here can help me. Even just a place to start looking would be appreciated. My google-fu is not so fabulous.

1. If Doyle's family background was on the 'shady' side (no one's ever been arrested, but a lot of their business has been somewhat questionable - just petty stuff, though) would he have been allowed to join the police? Doyle himself was never involved in any quasi-wrongdoing.

2. Does anyone know where the wealthy area of Liverpool is? I've been trying to find information on Liverpool but it's mostly just general stuff.

Comments

[spaghettitoes.livejournal.com]

Hi

Sorry I don't know about Liverpool but I had to comment on Doyle.

In 'Mixed Doubles' Doyle tells Bodie that he was a trouble-maker as a kid and got into bother himself. But that he joined the police force to get discipline. It's not an uncommon story in the UK police/fiction history but as long as he himself didn't have a criminal record and wasn't known by the local police intelligence branch for having criminal associations there wouldn't be anything stopping him, straightening up trouble-makers is what the Police do (especially back then).
This seems to have a good collection of old police adverts that might give you an idea of what they asked for in recruits.
http://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/en/pages/image_map.html?selectedLevels%5B1%5D=Magazine%20Advert&selectedLevels%5B0%5D=Recruitment&level=3&search=Police+Recruitment&page=1

My only concern is that Doyle has never spoken about his family being particularly troublesome as far as I can recall. He had to sneak into things like dirty movies (the ep where they stake out a city under too-tight police control) and skip school which poor parents might not have cared about. He's also educated in art and politics (not encouraged or required in the police force and something which would have socially isolated him from his school peers)which implies a certain level of encouragement or respect for those things from his family. The same goes for his decision to seek out the police force as a way of managing his aggressive tendencies. I believe his implied background is a working class one, where he was encouraged into troublesome behaviour by friends/the culture at the time but overall had moral parents who tried to guide him without too strict a hand.

But that last one is just conjecture from years of viewing. Good luck with your fic!

[liriel1810.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link and your input. As far as Doyle's family, he's never really mentioned them at all. Aside from mentioning he was a bit of a tearaway as a lad, and the story about using his dad's coat to sneak into the movies, he's really never said very much about his family at all.

So I'm using 'artistic license' to give him the sort of family I need him to have - I just needed to make sure it wouldn't prevent him from joining the police when he did. :D