APPOINTMENT OF WOMEN POLICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3275, 20 December 1916, Page 65

APPOINTMENT OF WOMEN POLICE.

DEPUTATION TO ACTING PRIME MINISTER. On Wednesday afternoon a deputation, consisting of Mis Don and Mrs Feryinan, representing the Women's Christian Temperance Union, waited on the Hon. Mr Allen (Acting Prime Minister) to bring under Ins notice the necessity for the appointment of women police. The members of the deputation were accompanied by Canon CurzonSiggers (president of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children). The speakers were Canon Curzon-Siggers Mrs Ferryman, and Mrs Don. In reply, Mr Allen said the Government was anxious to do all it possibly could to conserve the purity of life, both of young women and young men. Probably the main weakenss in the position was the lack of parental control. He had realised it for many years; he had spoken on it on many occasions, and had done what a single individual could to make fathers and mothers' realise how much depended on parental' control and proper bringing up in the home. A.S to the appointment of women police, it was a matter that must be decided by the Hon. Mr Herdman, or upon which Mr Herdman must advise the Cabinet, and he would represent to that Minister what the deputation had said, and suggest to him that he should bring the question before the Cabinet for consideration. For himself, as Minister of Defence, the question of women police had been before him almost ever since the war broke out. It was represented to him that women police would be of service in tho camps, and he communicated with the Home Country to ascertain the experience there. Tho report he received showed that women police had been to a large extent successful. But when tho commandants were consulted in Now Zealand, they thought the conditions were different hero, and that there was not the same opportunity for them to work as in England. What the women police might do in the cities and among tho women themselves was hard for him to say, and he did not think any _of them could express any very decided opinion on the matter. Respecting the women protectors, it was a question that the Cabinet would have to discuss. He would place both tho requests of tho deputation before the - Hon. Mr Herdman.