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Mary Allen, the daughter of the manager of the Great Western Railway, was born in Cheltenham in 1878. Educated at Princess Helena College, Ealing, she joined the Women's Political and Social Union (WSPU) after meeting Annie Kenney. 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, Allen joined with Margaret Damer Dawson, to form the Women's Police Volunteers (WPV). Dawson was Commandant and Allen became Sub-Commandant.
The government had always opposed the idea of policewomen 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. As a result of Allen's achievements in Grantham, she was made a full member of the local police force.
Mary Allen is second from the right. Margaret Damar Dawson is in the centre.
When the Armistice was signed, there were 357 members of the Women's Police Service. Margaret Damar 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 Damar Dawson to retire in 1919, Allen became the new Commandant of the Women's 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 moved to Cologne where she trained German women for police work. 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. 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.
Mary Allen, who wrote several books, including The Pioneer Policewoman (1925), Woman at the Crossroads (1934) and Lady in Blue (1936), died in 1950.
Women's Police Service during the First World War.
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(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.
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