PRISON TO WOMEN POLICE

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 December 1936, Page 8

PRISON TO WOMEN POLICE

COMMANDANT ALLEN’S MEMOIRS. The story of how a militant Suft fragette became a pioneer of the Women Police movement after having r been twice sentenced to prison is told s in “Lady in Blue,” the autobiography t of Commandant Mary Allen, just pub'f lished (says the London “Daily Telegraph”). g For attempting to force her way » into the House of Commons, she was s sentenced to one month in the second t division. The suffragettes in prison g were given shirts to sew: “We gave the prison authorities : even better value than they bargained I for on the shirts themselves. “We embroidered ‘Votes for Women’ e round the tail of each shirt we >, handled. Personally I put this indelible legend on over 100 shirts. They e were made of unbleached calico, and t would probably have lasted for many f years.” g A successful hunger-strike ended s her second stay in prison after five i- days. Still unrepentant, she was s planning to burn some empty houses when war broke out and Mrs Pankhurst ordered the campaign to cease. Miss Allen was one of the earliest of the Women Police Volunteers under Miss Darner Dawson. They started with £5 as their total funds. I She and another policewoman were drafted to Grantham, where a large i camp was established, alid their value was at once recognised. Other duties . —air-raid patrol, counter-espionage work and supervision of munition workers—multiplied, and recruits poured in. Commandant Allen gives one instance of a policewoman’s courage in a London Underground station, when a war-weary soldier suddenly ran amok: He stopped, stared with narrowing eyes at a crowd of people who were descending an escalator, and began to fumble swiftly with his bayonet. Whipping it from its sheath he snapped it into place on his rifle, and commenced to run forward at the oncoming crowd, who turned with shrill cries and tried vainly to run up the descending escalator. Panic spread like flame in a wind. But before the Tommy could take two paces the policewoman had him by the arm, gripping him, soothing him. “But they’re Boches!” he whimpered, struggling hysterically to break away from that ju-jitsu lock. “God! They'll get us in a minute, mate. Look, they’re jumping down into the trench. Let me get at them!” His nerves, stretched to breaking point with the racking agony of shellshock, had given way, and he thought himself back in Flanders repulsing a German raid. The policewoman got his rifle away from him, swiftly handed him over to another soldier who was running up to help, went instantly to the escalator, and, with a few sharp words of command stopped the trampling panic that was starting there. The invalid was removed to hospital and the terror was stilled. Officialdom frowned on the Women Police organisation when the war emergency was over. But again the patent value of its work, in Ireland and in the German Occupied Area, was vindicated. A large part of Commandant Alien’s book tells of her visits to the United States, Egypt, France, Holland, Greece, Poland and South America, on the invitation of national policeforces. | She makes out a, convincing case

for the retention and further expansion of the Women Police movement, with many details of their work against the drug and white-slave traffics.