4 The women police volunteers
The first decades of the twentieth century saw important moves towards women’s rights. At times, this brought women into conflict with the police. The Suffragette Movement (formed in 1903 as the Women’s Social and Political Union) campaigned for women’s rights, particularly the right to vote. This sometimes involved radical protest tactics, including smashing shop windows, pouring acid into post boxes, chaining themselves to fences and conducting hunger strikes while in prison.
Figure 5: Ada Wright, part of a group of suffragettes trying to enter parliament, is struck by a police officer and falls to the ground (1910). [Description: An image of the Daily Mirror with the headline: ‘Violent scenes at Westminster where many Suffragettes were arrested while trying to force their way into the House of Commons.’ Beneath is a photograph showing a woman, Ada Wright, in hat and long coat lying on the street with her hand clasped to her face. A uniformed police officer and a man wearing a top hat and coat stand over her. In the background is a group of people and other uniformed police officers.] Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Daily_Mirror,_19_November_1910,_front_page_%28cleaned%29.png
Suffragette campaigns often brought middle- and upper-class women into highly public clashes with the police. Figure 5 shows a photograph which was reproduced on the front page of the Daily Mirror in 1910, shocking public sensibilities at the time.
Nonetheless, in 1915, two suffragettes – Mary Allen and Margaret Damer Dawson – took over leadership of the WPV, changing its name to the Women’s Police Service (WPS). The discarding of ‘voluntary’ from the organisation’s title shows an increasing demand for an independent, national women’s police force answerable only to the Home Office and on equal footing with the established, male-dominated service. Damer Dawson and Allen redesigned the WPS uniforms and were regularly photographed in ‘masculine’ attire including long black boots, breeches, and sporting cropped hair and monocles.
Figure 6: Commandant Margaret Damer Dawson and Sub-commandant Mary Allen of the Women's Police Service, c.1918 [Description: A black and white photograph of a full-length studio portrait of Commandant Margaret Damer Dawson and Sub-commandant Mary Allen. They stand side by side in front of a painted studio landscape backdrop in full uniform: long dark belted coats, caps, shirt and ties and long black boots. Damer Dawson also has a stick and is holding a pair of white gloves.] Source: Link
The links between the Women’s Police Service’s leadership and militant suffragism, and the generally middle- or upper-class membership of the organisation, often led to considerable friction with entirely male, predominantly working-class police forces. Nonetheless, the organisation was creating new opportunities for women, as the next activity shows.
Activity 3 The women’s police service
Listen to the following extract from an oral history interview recorded in 1985 with Gabrielle Mary West, who joined the WVS patrolling between 1916 and 1918. As you listen, think about Miss West – what does her voice tell you? For example, was she working class or middle class; does she sound educated? What sort of roles was she given?
[Source: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80008574 – see Asset spreadsheet for full details]
Discussion
You may have thought that West sounds well educated and well-spoken and was fairly typical of WVS women. She received some initial basic training in London which involved patrolling areas such as Leicester Square to help combat ‘vice’ and ‘immorality.’ She was then sent to supervise women working at munitions and explosives factories. Here, one of her tasks was to ensure women did not fraternise with male workers and to supervise the gates to the factories. She comments on the fact that Margaret Damer Dawson and Mary Allen seemed very interested in enforcing women’s morality.
The Women’s Police Service, while not a police force in a formal sense, nonetheless served to promote the employment of women as police officers. Indeed, it may have been instrumental in some of the earliest women to enter formal police roles. Edith Smith, who was the first woman in Britain to be appointed as a police officer with full powers of arrest (in 1915), had been a member of the WPS. Her experience there, and involvement in efforts to reduce prostitution in Grantham, undoubtedly contributed to her employment. As the next section demonstrates, other women soon followed suit.