For many women, the outbreak of the First World War was an opportunity to break free of their conventional roles—as mothers, homemakers, and carers for elderly relatives—and make careers for themselves. Many had ambitions to be leaders, as an alternative to being led and directed by men and, with thousands of men being called away from their everyday occupations, gaps appeared which women believed they might fill.
Policing had always been the preserve of men. The only women involved in police work were those who cared for women prisoners, and these were usually the (unpaid) wives of police officers. It was an unsatisfactory arrangement. There was no doubt that women in police cells were open to abuse, and this was among the reasons put forward in support of a force of female police officers.
The first women police service was founded at a meeting in the Chelsea home of Margaret Damer Dawson, a well-known philanthropist active in the cause of animal protection. Mary Sophia Allen, a former suffragette, soon joined her and became her second-in-command. The Metropolitan Police wanted nothing to do with these women, but Chief Constables all over the country were eager to employ them.
The first women police to patrol in uniform appeared in 1914 in the small market town of Grantham in Lincolnshire, where an influx of some twenty thousand soldiers under training caused mayhem, both by their own behaviour and by attracting women with 'khaki fever' who flocked to the outskirts of the camp. After making their mark in Grantham, the officers moved on to Hull, where they helped to rescue families caught up in air raids.
In 1915 the Women Police Service were invited by the Ministry of Munitions of War to help police munitions factories. Hundreds of women were recruited and trained by Dawson and Allen for this essential work. They had become an efficient organization, designing their own military-style uniform, which they wore with pride.
At the end of the war, Dawson and Allen assumed that their important work would be recognized, and that they would continue to work alongside men in policing. However, they had not been popular with the Metropolitan Police, who set up their own female force. However, the Women Police Service carried on for many years outside the Metropolitan area, working under Chief Constables who appreciated them. They can truly be said to have blazed a trail for the modern police woman.
Nina Boyd is the author of From Suffragette to Fascist: the many lives of Mary Sophia Allen. Mary Allen, once a window-smashing suffragette, went on to become a pioneer policewoman, helping create Britain’s first female police force. Honoured for her work policing munitions factories and bombed towns during the First World War, she was soon infuriating the Establishment, travelling the world in her unauthorised uniform to the acclaim of foreign leaders and the dismay of the British government. Mary’s head was next turned after a meeting with Hitler, and she joined Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, narrowly escaping internment despite suspicions of spying, secret flights to Germany and Nazi salutes.