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‘Waging War on the Streets’: the Irish Women Patrol, 1914–22.1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2015

Senia Pašeta
Senia Pašeta*
Affiliation:
St Hugh’s College, Oxford
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Extract

Female activists across the United Kingdom had insisted from the late nineteenth century that the employment of women police who would deal with problems specific to women and children could help to address pressing social questions, or at least to offer women some protection within the entirely male criminal justice system. Their campaign for women police was connected to similar demands for the employment of female prison visitors and inspectors and, later, jurors and lawyers, and it was predicated on the idea that neither prisons nor courts afforded women fair and equal treatment under the law. Early victories included the appointment of police matrons and searchers, but the resistance of police authorities and most other civil servants to female officers remained solid into the early twentieth century, feminist campaigning notwithstanding. The outbreak of the First World War, however, provided an ideal context for renewed activism on the issue, not least because commentators across the British Isles predicted that the apparent inability of girls and young women to resist the lure of uniformed men would lead to outbreaks of war-induced sexual promiscuity and a decline in standards of public behaviour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 154 , November 2014 , pp. 250 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2014

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Footnotes

1

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Gemma Clark and Joseph Curran for their invaluable research assistance, and to Dr Daniel Gray for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this article.

References

2 Levine, Philippa, ‘“Walking the streets in a way no decent woman should”: women police in World War 1’ in Journal of Modern History, lxvi (1994), pp 34–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owens, Rosemary Cullen, Louie Bennett (Cork, 2001), pp 15–16Google Scholar; Irish Citizen, 19 Dec. 1914.

3 Woodeson, Angela, ‘The first women police: a force for equality or infringement?’ in Women’s History Review, ii (1993), pp 325–47.Google Scholar

4 Irish Citizen, 9 Jan. 1912, 14 Nov. 1914.

5 McCormick, Leanne, Regulating sexuality: women in twentieth-century Northern Ireland (Manchester, 2009), p. 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Irish Citizen, 9 Jan. 1915.

7 Irish Citizen, 14 Sept. 1912.

8 Bland, Lucy, ‘In the name of protection: the policing of women in the First World War’ in Brophy, Julia and Smart, Carol (eds), Women in law: explorations in law, family and sexuality (London, 1985), p. 24.Google Scholar

9 Constabulary Gazette, (supplement) 13 June 1914, xxxv.

10 In 1918, the N.U.W.W. changed its name to the National Council of Women of Great Britain & Ireland but, for the sake of clarity, I shall refer to it as the N.U.W.W. throughout this article.

11 The Irish Women Patrol Association was known by various names, including the Irish Women’s Patrol, the Irish Women Patrols and the Irish Women’s Patrol Committee. As it was most commonly known by its own members and by outside observers as the Irish Women Patrols (I.W.P), I shall use this title throughout the article. The individual women who were active in the organisation were known as patrols or patrollers and shall be described as such in this article.

12 Report of the Irish Woman Patrols (Imperial War Museum, Women’s Work Collection (I.W.M./W.W.C.) EMP. 42.5/63, (1917) p.8) and Irish Times, 14 Jan. 1915.

13 Report of the Irish Woman Patrols (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, (1917) , p. 3).

14 Bland, ‘In the name of protection’, p. 26.

15 Irish Times, 12 Jan. 1916.

16 Irish Times, 15 Apr. 1915.

17 Weekly Irish Times, 19 Jan. 1918.

18 These include: Bland, ‘In the name of protection’; Levine, ‘Walking the streets’; Woodeson, ‘The first women police’; Woollacott, Angela, ‘“Khaki Fever” and its control: gender, class, age and sexual morality on the British homefront in the First World War’ in Journal of Contemporary History, xxix (1994), pp 325–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jackson, Louise, Women police: gender, welfare and surveillance in the twentieth century (Manchester, 2006).Google Scholar

19 Shepard, Christopher, ‘A liberalisation of Irish social policy? Women’s organisations and the campaign for women police in Ireland, 1915–57’ in I.H.S., xxxvi (2008–2009), p. 565Google Scholar, and Luddy, Mariay, Prostitution and Irish society, 1800–1940 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 160.Google Scholar

20 The following provide the most comprehensive discussions on the relationship between feminism and social purity in Ireland: Luddy, Prostitution and Irish society; McCormick, Regulating sexuality; Malcolm, Elizabeth, ‘“Troops of largely diseased women”: V.D., the Contagious Diseases Acts and moral policing in late nineteenth-century Ireland’ in Irish Economic and Social History, xxvi (1999), pp 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Jeffreys, Sheila, ‘Women and sexuality’ in Purvis, Jane (ed.), Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (London, 1997), p. 194.Google Scholar

22 Existing records are kept in the Imperial War Museum’s Women’s Work Collection. Only two reports survive, 1917 and 1919, suggesting that others were lost. Copies do not appear to have been lodged in the National Library of Ireland.

23 Report of the Women’s Patrol Committee, 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/30).

24 See Luddy, Maria, Women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century Ireland (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Prostitution and Irish society, for compressive discussions of the genesis of women’s and feminist social reform and voluntarist campaigns in nineteenth-century Ireland.

25 Irish Times, 22 Apr. 1915 and 23 Jan. 1923; Memoranda of Interviews, 10 Nov., 1914 (Sir Matthew Nathan Papers, vol. 1, Bodl., MS Nathan 467); Lady Aberdeen to Matthew Nathan, 25 Dec., 1914 (Bodl., MS Nathan 450); Constabulary Gazette, 9 Jan. 1915, p. 462; Irish Citizen, 14 Nov. 1914, p. 201. At least seventeen societies were represented on the joint committee: Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1915.

26 Irish Citizen, 9 Jan.1915.

27 Report of the executive committee of the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association for 1914, (Dublin, 1915), pp 4–6; International Woman Suffrage News, 1 Jan. 1917, p. 55.

28 The N.U.W.W. was an umbrella group to which many hundreds of mainly middle-class women’s organisations were affiliated.

29 A Threefold Cord; a magazine for thoughtful women (N.U.W.W.) ii, (1892), p. 1; Quinlan, Carmel, Genteel revolutionaries: Anna and Thomas Haslam and the Irish women’s movement (Cork, 2002), p. 143.Google Scholar

30 Quinlan, , Genteel revolutionaries, p. 143.Google Scholar

31 Irish Times, 18 Oct. 1916.

32 Mrs Creighton, The National Union of Women Workers and the War, (no date), p. 1; Carden, Mrs, ‘Women Patrols’, in Quarterly Leaflet of the Women’s National Liberal Association, lxxx (1915), p. 12.Google Scholar

33 Report of N.U.W.W. Women Patrols, 1918 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.7, p. 21).

34 Dublin Castle to Mrs Cardell of the N.U.W.W., 2 Nov., 1914 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.7).

35 Irish Times, 22 Mar. 1917

36 Woodeson, ‘The first women police’, pp 223–4.

37 Levine, ‘Walking the streets’, p. 39.

38 Constabulary Gazette, 13 Feb. 1915, p. 537.

39 Report of the Irish Woman Patrols, 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, pp 3, 6).

40 Ibid., p. 6.

41 Levine, ‘Walking the streets’, p. 56.

42 Report of N.U.W.W. Women Patrols, 1918 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42. 7, pp 23–4): Special Report of the Dublin Women Patrols, 1920 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP 42.3/11).

43 Ibid.

44 Report of the Irish Woman Patrols, 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, p. 5).

45 Ibid., p. 5.

46 Ibid., p. 3.

47 N.C.W. Patrols: Report of the Irish Patrol, (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP 42.3/14).

48 Irish Times, 14 Jan. 1915.

49 Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1915.

50 Dublin Castle to Mrs Cardell, 2 Nov. 1914 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.7).

51 Irish Times, 14 June 1915.

52 Dublin Castle to Mrs Carden 2 Nov. 1914 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.7).

53 Irish Citizen, 9 Jan., 6 Mar. 1915.

54 Ibid., 2 Jan. 1915.

55 Levine, ‘Walking the streets’, pp 40–1.

56 Ibid.

57 Irish Citizen, 9 Jan. 1915.

58 Ibid., 6 Mar. 1915.

59 Ibid., 13 Feb. 1915.

60 Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, p. 7).

61 Irish Times, 15 Apr. 1915.

62 Irish Citizen, 13 Feb. 1915.

63 Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, pp 7–8).

64 Irish Times, 14 June 1915.

65 Ibid., 23 Oct. 1915.

66 Ibid.

67 Irish Citizen, 23 Oct. 1915.

68 Luddy, Prostitution, p. 160.

69 See, for example, the Irishwomen’s Reform League’s campaign for the tighter regulation of licensing laws in ‘Dublin: The Irishwomen’s Suffrage Federation’, Third Annual Report, for 1913–1914 (Dublin, 1915), p. 8; Irish Times, 13 Feb. 30 Mar., 20 Apr. 1915.

70 Irish Citizen, 13 Feb. 1913.

71 Ibid., 30 Oct. 1915.

72 New Ireland, i (6 Nov.1915), p. 414.

73 Irish Times, 23 Oct. 1915.

74 Irish Citizen, 23 Jan. 1915.

75 Ibid., 23 Oct. 1915.

76 Ibid., 16 Oct. 1918.

77 Luddy, Prostitution, pp 157–8.

78 Irish Citizen, 23 Jan. 1915.

79 See Novick, Ben, Conceiving revolution: Irish nationalist propaganda during the First World War (Dublin, 2001), pp 150–7.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., p. 150.

81 N.C.W. Patrols: Report of the Irish Patrol, (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP 42.3/14).

82 See Novick, Conceiving revolution, pp 150–7 and Luddy, Prostitution and Irish society, 156–93, for comprehensive accounts of nationalist ideas about the corrupting influence of the British Army and feminist responses to such views.

83 Irish Times, 22 Mar. 1917.

84 Irish Independent, 16 Jan. 1918.

85 Constabulary Gazette, xl, no. 27 (19 Jan. 1918), p. 440.

86 Irish Times, 19 Jan. 1918.

87 Bland, Lucy, Banishing the beast: English feminism and sexual morality, 1885–1914 (London, 1995), p. xix.Google Scholar

88 N.C.W. Patrols: Report of the Irish Patrol, (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP 42.3/14).

89 Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, pp 9–10); Report of the I.W.P., 1919 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/64, pp 7–8).

90 Irish Times, 2 Mar. 1917.

91 Letter from A[nna] Haslam and Mary Hayden to the minister of Home Affairs, 18 Feb. 1922 (N.A.I, , Department of Justice, H/21/5).

92 Special Report of the Belfast Woman Patrols, no date given (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.3/9).

93 N.U.W.W., The Women’s Patrol Committee (report by Mrs Carden), 1915 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/21).

94 McCormick, Regulating sexuality, pp 96–7

95 Ibid., p. 96.

96 Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1915

97 Irish Times, 11 Apr. 1916.

98 For information about executive members, volunteers and subscribers, see Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63); Report of the I.W.P., 1919 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/64).

99 Report of the I.W.P., 1919 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/64, p. 7).

100 Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, p. 9).

101 Ibid.

102 Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1915.

103 Irish Times, 26 Jan. 1916.

104 Bland, Lucy, ‘“Purifying” the public world: feminist vigilantes in late Victorian England’, Women’s History Review, i (1992), p. 406.Google Scholar

105 Ibid.

106 The Worker, 9 Jan. 1915.

107 Shepard, ‘Liberalisation of Irish social policy?’, p. 565; Luddy, Prostitution, p, 176.

108 Woollacott, ‘Khaki fever’, p. 327.

109 Irish Times, 19 Oct. 1915, 18 Oct. 1916.

110 Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, p. 9).

111 See, for example, New Ireland, i (6 Nov. 1915), p. 414; Irish Citizen, 9 Oct. 1915.

112 New Ireland, i (6 Nov. 1915), p. 414.

113 Report of the I.W.P., 1919 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/64, pp 6, 7).

114 Irish Times, 16 Oct. 1918.

115 Irish Citizen, 9 Oct. 1915.

116 New Ireland, i (6 Nov. 1915), p. 414.

117 Report of I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M.,/W.W.C., EMP. 42.3/14).

118 Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, p. 9).

119 Ibid.

120 Irish Times, 19 Oct. 1915.

121 Irish Citizen, 9 Oct. 1915.

122 Report of the I.W.P., 1919 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/64, p. 9).

123 Irish Times, 15 Apr., 19 Oct. 1915.

124 Ibid., 18, 19 Oct. 1915.

125 Ibid., 23 Oct. 1915.

126 Frances, Hilary, ‘“Dare to be free!”: The Women’s Freedom League and its legacy’ in Purvis, June and Holton, Sandra Stanley (eds), Votes for women (London, 2000), pp 191–2.Google Scholar

127 Irish Times, 19 Oct. 1915.

128 Ibid., 18 Oct. 1915.

129 N.U.W.W. Women’s Patrol Committee: Extracts from Organisers’ Reports, 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.2/28); Report of the I.W.P., 1917 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/63, p. 9).

130 Jeffreys, ‘Women and sexuality’, p. 196.

131 Bland, Banishing the beast, p. 120.

132 N.C.W. Patrols (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.3/15).

133 Ibid.

134 Report of the I.W.P., 1919 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.5/64, p. 8).

135 Irish Times, 22 Jan. 1919.

136 List of Women Patrols employed by Commissioner of Police (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 42.4/45).

137 Irish Times, 9 May, 1919.

138 Special Report of the Dublin Women Patrols, 1920 (I.W.M./W.W.C., EMP. 423/13).

139 Irish Times, 9 May 1919.

140 W. E. Johnstone to Irish Under-Secretary, 9 Oct. 1919, (T.N.A., Treasury Papers, P.R.O., T 1/12398, 44452/1919).

141 Irish Independent, 9 May 1919.

142 Shepard, ‘Liberalisation of Irish social policy?’, pp 567, 569.

143 Constabulary Gazette, 3 Apr. 1920, p. 580.

144 Carrier, John, The campaign for the employment of women as police officers (Aldershot, 1988), p. 70Google Scholar; Allen, Mary S., The pioneer policewoman, ed. Heyneman, Julie Helen (London, 1925), pp 17, 184–99.Google Scholar

145 A[nna] Haslam and Mary Hayden to minister of Home Affairs, 18 Feb., 1922, (N.A.I., H/21/5).

146 According to Carmel Quinlan, the last of these patrollers, Elizabeth Watters, retired in 1956: Quinlan, Genteel revolutionaries, p. 180.