|
|
Mary Allen, the daughter of the manager of the Great Western Railway, was born in Cardiff in 1878. Educated at Princess Helena College, Ealing, she joined the Women's Political and Social Union (WSPU) after meeting Annie Kenney.
In 1912 she became head of the Hastings branch of the WSPU. A militant suffragette, she was imprisoned three times, including once for throwing a brick through a Home Office window.
Like most members of the WSPU, Allen agreed to the decision to give full support to the British war effort during the First World War. In September 1914, Nina Boyle founded the Women Police Volunteers. The following year Margaret Damer Dawson became Commandant and Allen became Sub-Commandant.
The government had always opposed the idea of police women but with large numbers of policemen joining the British Army, it was considered a good idea to have women volunteers to help run the service. Another reason that Dawson's proposal was accepted was that her members were willing to work without pay.
Allen later remarked in her book, The Pioneer Policewoman, that: "A sense of humour had kept me from any bitterness. I was quite as enthusiastically ready to work with and for the police as I had been prepared, if necessary, to enter into combat with them."
In February 1915 Dawson and Allen renamed her organisation, the Women's Police Service (WPS). At first the WPS concentrated its work in the London area. Wearing a dark-blue uniform, the WPS were assigned responsibilities such as looking after the welfare of refugees.
Later that year, Allen was sent to sort out problems in Grantham and Hull. Both towns had army camps and local people were complaining about drunken behaviour and a growth in prostitution.
Mary Allen is second from the right. Margaret Damer Dawson is in the centre.
When the Armistice was signed, there were 357 members of the Women's Police Service. Margaret Damer Dawson and Allen, asked the Chief Commissioner, Sir Nevil Macready, to make them a permanent part of his force. He refused, saying that the women were "too educated" and would "irritate" male members of the force. Macready instead decided to recruit and train his own women. However, both Dawson and Allen were awarded the OBE for services to their country during wartime.
When ill-health forced Margaret Damer Dawson to retire in 1920, Allen became the new Commandant of the Women Police Service. In February, 1920, Mary Allen and four of her members were charged with "impersonating police officers". It was claimed that their uniforms were too similar to that of the one worn by the Metropolitan Women Police Patrols. After a four-day hearing Macready won his case and the WPS were forced to change its uniform and its name to the Women's Auxiliary Service.
In 1922 Allen spent time in Cologne where she trained German women for police work. During the 1926 General Strike she helped to keep the road transport services running.
Allen was a frequent visitor to Nazi Germany and after meeting Adolf Hitler in 1934 and became one of his most fervent admirers. Even when on official duties with the Women's Auxiliary Service she wore Nazi style jack-boots.
Allen was an active supporter of General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist Army during the Spanish Civil War. She was also Chief Women's Officer of the British Union of Fascists and a member of the the Right-Club. The historian, Julie V. Gottlieb, has argued: "Allen was a prominent supporter of Mosley's British Union, a movement she claimed she had joined due to her sympathy for its anti-war policy."
Her extreme right-wing views made her unpopular with some members of the Women's Auxiliary Service and she was forced to leave the movement with the approach of the Second World War. According to Helena Wojtczak: "Mary Allen became increasingly eccentric, and her apparent support for Hitler and Goering led to questions about whether she should be interned in 1940."
Mary Allen, who wrote several books, including The Pioneer Policewoman (1925), Woman at the Crossroads (1934) and Lady in Blue (1936), died in 1964.
Women's Police Service during the First World War.
(1) In her autobiography, The Pioneer Policewoman, Mary Allen recalled the actions of one policewoman in a London tube station during the war.
A soldier (who had just returned from the Western Front) was so disordered while he was going down the stairs into the tube station, he became suddenly aware of the crowds of people coming up, he looked haggardly about, and evidently mistaking the hollow space below for the trenches and the ascending crowd for Germans, fixed his bayonet and charged. But for the women constable on duty at the turn of the staircase, who was quick enough to divine his trouble and hang on to him with all her strength to prevent his forward advance, he would have wounded many and caused danger and panic.
(2) Mrs. Creighton, Voluntary Patrol Committee, Annual General Meeting (1917)
The policewoman of the future will be taken from that class of women who are forced to earn their living by it, and not so much from the educated women who now take smaller or no pay for the sake of helping.
(3) Eveline W. Brainerd, The Outlook (10th September, 1924)
The proposal of the New York Women's Police Bureau to train college women for policework, though a new idea here, has had ten years' trial in England and has proved its worth. The head of the Women's Auxiliary Service for training women candidates for police service in Great Britain, Mary E. Allen, came to this country last spring to study our police systems and to speak on the business of the women constables as worked out in Great Britain.
No one in London would turn to gaze after the trim uniform of the Commandant, but here the visored cap, the high-collared shirtwaist and black tie, the trousers and full-skirted coat meeting the tops of the black boots, catch every eye. When the Commandant is caught with her cap off there is another surprise, for the heavy hair is close cropped -- not bobbed, notice. It frames a strong, kindly face, of a type seen more often in England than among the descendants of the settlers on this side of the river. One would not choose to have the steady eyes rest upon one at an untoward moment, but at the corners are humorous wrinkles that show she has never become obsessed by the sordid and tragic scenes known to the police.
The war conditions brought to sudden action in 1914 the plans for an experiment in women on the police force that had long been considered by a group of thoughtful Englishwomen whose social work had shown them the need for some more understanding and careful treatment of women and children than the police force as constituted could give. In that time of need their offer, as a private organization, to train women for appointment to the regular police force was readily accepted. Commandant Allen was one of these women. She herself served on the police force at Grantham, where the experiment was first tried out, and, having learned the job, working side by side with the "Bobbies," she became head of the training school for these new officers, who during the war numbered a thousand, and who are now to be found on the local staffs in various parts of England and Scotland, and in the occupied territory in Germany.
Educational Websites
Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Schools Wikipedia,
Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Music Teacher Resource,
Freepedia, ATW, Science Active, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History,
Compton History, Industrial Revolution, English Teaching, HistoryWorld, Virtual Library
E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, I Love History, ICT4LT |
Spartacus Educational
First World War, Second World War, The Tudors, British History, Vietnam War,
Military History, Watergate, Assassination of JFK, Assocation Football, Normans,
American West, Famous Crimes, Black People in Britain, The Monarchy, Blitz,
United States, Cold War, English Civil War, Making of the United Kingdom,
Russia, Germany, The Medieval World, Nazi Germany, American Civil War,
Spanish Civil War, Civil Rights Movement, McCarthyism, Slavery, Child Labour,
Women's Suffrage, Parliamentary Reform, Railways, Trade Unions, Textile Industry,
Russian Revolution, Travel Guide, Spartacus Blog, Spartacus Review, Latest Books |
News and Search
Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, SOS Children Charity News, The Independent, New York Times,
Daily Telegraph, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4,
Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search,
Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About
Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, Queen Victoria
|
|
|
|
