WOMEN POLICE

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 102, 30 April 1921, Page 7

WOMEN POLICE

A VARIETY ©F TYPES

NO FADDIST NBED APPLY

•JmiNIN&'DBESSJiND'DIAMONDS.

(FRftll-OUS-iO-Wif COJtMSPONDINT.)

LONDON, 3rd March.

When the House of Commons Committee wa3 considering the advisableness of continuing the force of women police, forty-eight witnesses gay« evidence, and their views have just seen tb© light of day as a Blue Paper. Sir N. Macready, was then head of the Metropolitan Police Force, 3«d he declared himself as being in favour of Slaving all sorts in the force. His wants were many and varied, far, lie announced: "I want to have the woman I can put into an evening dress, "with some diamonds ,or whatever she wears, and send to a place to mix with people, and also I want women at the other end of the scale. We have a certain number of constables' wiveu,- who, I fancy, are about the domestic servant claes, and we have a number of 'bus conductresses, but I want a certain proportion who are, to use the word in an unprovocative^sense, ladies. They are usefni. Then some nurses ate excellent. It is ,'veTy good to have women with nursing experience. - The more different the classes the better. We have all sorts, including a good many *of '■ our old friends the W.A.A.G.'s, of whom I did not get so many as I hopedl I should. In nearly every case it has been that the' sex does not always at first quite understand the' necessity for discrpime. That has been the case with nearly every, one of them. I made no/bones about it. If a woman did not suit us, she went. I did not give her a second chance." . Remarking that one had to he very, careful of the type of women obtained, Sir Nevil said: "You do not want an excitable woman or a neurotic woman,' but a woman who ha^ got the human element very largely developed, and who is not a faddist." He considered that the* women should. have power of arrest, but tiiat that power should be limited by regulation to cases 01 people under 16 and females over that~uge. MARRIAGE NOT A BAB. Sir Netfil was opposed to making marriage a baa." to enrolment or retention in the service, but "we have*made a stringent rale that we, will not take any ■woman who has got young children dependent on her and who cannot have them looked after. We are not going to Have it thrown at us that we are employing women who ought to be in their own homes." But marriage ought n6t to constitute a bar to enrolment in the service. S» certain cases a married woman was more suitable. If they made 25 years or 30 years the age of emolument, a certain pensionable rate ought to be created for them. Probably after 45 a woman would have done her beet.' Sir Nevili also referred to another organisation!, sad^said that when he started the Metropolitan Women Police 1 lie had/ some interviews with these people, who wore anxious that he should take advantage of their services. He adided : '•■"I did not do so, for a very goodl reason. On 1 inquiry I heard that the moving spirits were what in days gone by were called' ,'militant suffragettes,' and a certain number of them had got into trouble in the past, when miliant suffragettes did get into trouble)." The ordinary policeman was a very cortser\fotive person, and the starting- of the women police was not by any means received with acclamation by the force. They were now very friendly, and were working excellently with, the women. London had' 110 police women', aridi they .were paid 43s per week.--,WHO INSPIRED THE EXPERIMENT? The< late Miss M. Da.met'-Dawßon, who was commandant of the Women Police Service, explained) how she got the idea, of starting the force. In August, 1914, she was meeting Belgian girl and women refugees, and- taking them to lodgings in London. "One night," she saidb, "I lost two girls under suspicious circumstances. I had dtoe work on the Continent in previous years with regaard to the white slave traffic. I came across a woman who el«anged her dress three tnnea in the same night, aald the colour of her hair, I had seen her on the station, and I caught her trying to take from me pwo girls. I realised that it was very difficult to do that kind) of work, if there were attempts at white slave traffic, without having a body of uniformed and trained women, and) I think that gave me the first idea of having women police." WHAT THEY DID IN THE WAR. Giving evidence as to the origin of women's service in the Police Force, Miss Damer-Dawson referred to tho Zeeppelin raids in Hull, and said that, although the 1' bombs were falling, the women were out in the streets and at their posts within seven minutes of the call. When Sir Francis Blake remarkid: : "I suppose the. women do not dv any night work," Miss Damer-Dawson replied : "Yes they do. In London they Guarded all' the magazines in the siteiit ours, especially in the Royal gunpowder factories." She thought the State should' take over the movement.

•FLAPPERS' AMUSEMEN.T SEiAROH. Mrs. Stanley, Superintendent, M«fcropolitan Police Women Patrols, though* twenty-five was the earliest age at which women could be employed on police duty- Miich of their work, she said, had beeu in connection with the girl who -waa rather a product of the war—the "flapper" type who took to tho street tot amusement, and was Kabio to drift n»tiso prostitution. These girls often asktA fcine woman patirois for wtvioo and l»Jp. ■"'The majority cjf war patroiß," said Patrol-Sergeant Lallan wyjeo, M'etropolita/n Police Wonwn Piitrofa, "aro single and widows." Mies Olga Nethergole, the lion, organiser of the People's League of Health, thought women could properly perform police Junctions. 'During the wax there was not sufficient police protection at certain places, such as Hampstead Heath. She had been insulted, although she was in her nurse's uniform. The Chairman (Sir John Baird): Would you not have been equally insnlted if you had been a policewoman? —I do not think so. Is not a nurse's uniform more respected than a policewoman's uniform? —No, Ido not think so. I wore the uniform for two years and eight months in London. Asked if there were not duties involving physical risk, Miss Nethersolo replied, "A woman has a very great power wrthin herself that is not force." NO STIGMA. AH that it means to be a policewoman dealing with social evils was d«scri|)ed by Patrol Sergeant LiliaD Wyles (Metropolitan Police), who has sixteen: women police in her patrol, and covers the area& of Vine-street, Marlboroughstreet, Bow-street, and Tottenham Court-road. "There is a good deal of trafficking in young girls," she said. "A woman getting pass&e will probably get

hold of girls of sixteen and younger and ruin them. They have a tremendous influence over them, andi it is a great difficulty to win them away from the women. As a preventive measure it is sometimes well to get the two girls —there are generally two—run- into prison, or else to get tho woman imprisoned. When we know there is anything going on like that we generally ta,ke the iirls, if a constable will arrest them, anffhave them put in for insulting behaviour, which, as you know, leaves no stigma behind it at all. They are remanded for five or six daye, and we get them after that and they generally go straight. Y«u can bring no charge against the woman, because you can never bring any evidence to prove, what she us doing, though you know all the time. It is one of the things we do want the power of arrest for."

How the personality of a,; policewoman would count in the prevention of misconduct was emphasised by Mrs. R. Young Training Schools for Policewomen), who added: "There are innumerable jobs for us."

-And now the policewomen go quietly and efficiently about their duties without attracting undue notice. And perhaps in time they will be endowed with the power of arrest—this is still a vexed question. ,