POLICE HISTORY
“When father reads at breakfast the title of this article, I can see him push back his chair, bring down his fist fiercely upon the table to the nervous confusion of crockery, and looking round at his adoring but somewhat apprehensive family exclaim, ‘Women porters, and women conductors are all very well, but Women Policemen, NO – one must draw the line somewhere,” she wrote. Gladys went onto say that once examinations are passed, “bowler-hatted, blue uniformed and high-booted, the Policewoman is ready to tackle bravely the problems that await her.” She then quotes a wonderful example of policewomen managing a group of potentially troublesome girls: “At 11:40pm on New Year’s Eve the Policewomen came upon a crowd of girls outside an entertainment hall expecting a dance that had been advertised. They were bitterly disappointed, as no preparations had been made, and were rather noisy and not inclined to return to their hostels. The Policewomen collected 50 girls together in the empty hall, Auld Lang Syne was sung, three cheers given for the men in the trenches, and then for the Women Police, after which the girls went quietly back to their quarters.” The article suggests that men were
selected for the police force on account of their physical strength and not as some “old ladies seem to imagine, because they can perform accurately the combined officers of a clock and signpost.” But she adds that “in these war-time days, Eve is breaking through Adam’s strongest barbed wire
entanglements in an alarming manner.” Despite the reservations of many, on 22 November 1918 a group of women police officers were approved as an ‘experiment’. Policemen at the time would apparently be the first to admit that moral qualities such as tact, intuition and sympathy are of equal value in both men and women. Today, perhaps many would suggest women are stronger in these areas. In 1923, the members of so-called
Women Police Patrols became attested officers and were finally allowed to make arrests. The number of female officers increased to 50, but only unmarried women could join. It wasn’t until 1946 that married women could become police officers and it was 40 years later, in 1986, that female officers were given truncheons to protect themselves. In 1968, Sislin Fay Allen, then aged 29,
became the first ever black female police officer, just one year after the first black male officer was recruited. Sislin served in the Metropolitan Police Service for four years. In an interview, she said: “On the day I joined I nearly broke a leg trying to run away from reporters. I realised then that I was a history maker. But I didn’t set out to make history; I just wanted a change of direction.” Sislin resigned from the Met to move
Paul Upton
back to Jamaica with her family, where she then joined the Jamaica Constabulary Force. She passed away in 2021. Gladys ended her 1918 article saying: “Surely if the Policewomen can carry out their ideals in the way in which they have begun, our national life will but become
the purer in proving the old saying to be true, ‘There is not a life, or death, or birth, that has a penny-weight of worth without a woman in it.”
More than a century on from the birth of the voluntary Women’s Police Service, there are more than 47,000 women police officers working across every area and rank in policing across England and Wales. Gladys Wiles would be delighted to see how far we have come.
23 | POLICE | FEBRUARY 2022
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