THE RISE OF MISS SHERLOCK HOLMES

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 27

THE RISE OF MISS SHERLOCK HOLMES

The woman detective is coming to Britain, states the "Sunday Express." Recruiting is now in progress to increase the number of women police attached to the London Metropolitan Police from 67 to 142. And there is a definite intention that some of these women will be attached to the Criminal Investigation Department. Will they get a chance to do real detective work? They ought to. Experience in the United States, where women officers have been extensively employed in fighting crime, shows how valuable "Miss Sherlock Holmes" can be.

. This is particularly true of Chicago. Knowing Chicago's reputation, one would,think it was the last place in the world where women police would be useful. But listen to Captain Daniel Gilbert, Chicago police chief, on the work of his thirty-five policewomen and thirty-four police matrons:—

"Even on the crime fronts, where policemen shoot it out with the criminals, women have proved their courage and intelligence," he says. "Many notorious gangsters, including members of the Dillinger mob, came to the end of the trail because of women—women who betrayed them, women who loved them but talked too much, women who left clues for the police.

"Women police, working side by side with men, should investigate cases of this kind. Knowing the feminine mind, the policewoman is invaluable. After all, women play an important part in every man's life—even a criminal's."

In breaking up a '.'million-dollar" arson ring in Chicago recently, women were well in the forefront. "Some of the police officers working under me had their wives and daughters go out with them when they were investigating. The women helped to dispel suspicion—were able to do do."

Chicago's policewomen have an envi-

things their husbands1 were unable to able record, clearing up as much crime annually as the samo number of policemen. "But clearing up crime is not the only police work they do," Captain Gilbert points out. "By far their most important job is keeping many cases out of court—cases involving juvenile delinquency. Many girls have been steered back on to the path that leads to happiness by our women stars."

Some of Chicago's policewomen have won fame. Miss Helen Bowden's work of tracing missing girls brought her nation-wide recognition. Alice McCarthy is the only woman in the force who has killed a man. The victim was a negro purse-snatcher who had terrorised the district. Miss McCarthy went out as a decoy. She walked past the dark doorways in which the man usually lurked.

She saw the negi;o in a gangway, but walked on. She heard footsteps behind her. She waited for the blow. It came—almost felled her. Jerking out her pistol, she called upon him to surrender. He fled. She fired one shot. - After she finished writing her report to the Coroner, she asked to be excused from duty for an hour. She went to church and prayed for the dead man's soul.

Bessie McShane is known as "the policewoman who always gets her man." One of her prisoners, who thought he could get away from a woman, will testify, that she is as good as a man any day. ...... :

When £he started to take him to a call-box he struck her. He weighed 1851b. Bessie tips the scale at 110. Did she call for help? She did not. She swung her purse, whfich contained her pistol, at his head. Then she gave him several punches in the stomach.

"I surrender" he moaned.

Five hundred people who had gathered cheered as- Bessie and her prisoner waited for the patrol wagon.