WOMEN AS POLICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 May 1921, Page 5

WOMEN AS POLICE.

VARIETY OF TYPES WANTED. London, April 11. When the House of Commons Committee was considering the advisability of continuing the force of women police, 48 witnesses gave evidence, and their views have just seen the light of day as a blue paper. Sir N. Macready was then head of the Metropolitan Police Force, and he declared himself as being in favor of having “all sorts” in the force. His wants were many and varied, for, he announced: “I want to have the woman I can put into an evening dress, with some diamonds or whatever she wears, and send to a place to mix with people, and also 1 want women at the other end of the scale. We have a certain number of constables’ wives, who I fancy are about the domestic servant class, and we have a number of bus conductresses, but I want a certain proportion who are, to use the word in an unprovocative sense, ladies. They are useful. Then some nurses are excellent. It is very good to have women with nursing experience.” The more different the classes the better. They had all sorts, including a good many of “our old friends, the W.A.A.C.’s, of whom I did not get so many as I hoped I should. In nearly every case it has been that the sex does not always at first quite understand the necessity for discipline. That has been the case with nearly every one of them. I made no bones about it. If a woman did not suit us, she went. 1 did not give her a second chance.” Remarking that one had to be very careful of the type of women obtained, Sir Nevile said:—“You do not want an excitable woman or a neurotic woman, but a woman who has got the human element very largely developed, and who is not a faddist.” He considered that the women should be limited by regulation to cases of people under 10 and females over that age. Sir Nevile wqs opposed to making marriage a bar to enrolment or retention in the service, but “we have made a strict rule that we will not take any woman who got young children dependent on her, and who cannot have them looked after. We are not going to have it thrown at us that we are employing women who ought to be in their own homes.” But marriage ought not to constitute a bar to enrolment in the service. In certain cases a married woman was more suitable. If they made 25 years or 30 years the age of enrolment a certain pensionable rate ought to be created for them. Probably after 45 a woman would have done her best. Sir Nevile also referred to another organisation, and said that when he started the Metropolitan women police he had some interviews with these people who were anx'ious that he should take advantage of their services. He added: “I did not do so for a very good reason. On inquiry I heard that the moving spirits were what in days gone by were called “militant suffragettes,” and 8 certain number of them had got into trouble in the past, when militant suffragettes did get into trouble.” The ordinary policeman was a very conservative person, and the starting of the women police was not by any means received with acclamation by the force. They were now very friendly, and were working excellently with the women. London had 110 police women, and they were paid 42s per week.