Animal rights activist and senior copper - that must be quite an unusual combination. But Margaret Dawson was both.
She was born in Hove, on June 12th 1873. Her father was a surgeon and her step-father was a sixth baron with a Norman surname, so Margaret entered adulthood with a private income, an education from the London Academy of Music, and a glittering social circle. A life of cultured leisure might have followed, or else a high-class marriage.
Instead, Dawson devoted her time and money to causes, especially those involving children and animals. She became particularly well-known for her international work against vivisection, which earned her medals from continental humane societies, but she also campaigned against the slaughter trade and animal circuses, and for the rescuing of abandoned babies.
When the world war started in 1914, Dawson was involved in the welfare of refugees arriving in London from Belgium. She was horrified to discover at the railway station that pimps met their train, ready to recruit desperate women into prostitution. She didn't have a lot of faith in the ability or willingness of male police officers to tackle such a problem; she might have to do something about it herself.
The idea of female police was gaining ground from two directions; ideologically it was something that many in the growing feminist movement saw as a necessity, while in practical terms, the authorities were aware that the needs of the armed forces would soon leave the police short of men. Even so, there was no question of actually recruiting women - but tolerating their auxiliary presence in certain circumstances might not only be possible but perhaps unavoidable.
It seems bizarre now, but the first female police force in Britain was essentially self-appointed. Dawson's Women's Police Service consisted of unpaid volunteers who designed and provided their own uniform; it was therefore inevitably made up of well-off women who could afford to work without wages. There was a rival group, but Dawson's lack of previous involvement in militant suffragette activities, and her posh contacts, made her more acceptable to the state.
A further split took place very quickly, when the "lady policemen," as the press called them, were asked to enforce a curfew on women in Grantham designed to prevent soldiers in the barrack town from fraternising with prostitutes. This abandonment of feminist principles caused a minority of Dawson's recruits to break with her, as she argued that only by accepting the discipline of following orders, no matter how "distasteful," could women police gain credibility.
The WPS was allowed to train with the Metropolitan Police, and assigned various tasks involving women and children, such as searching female munitions workers entering and leaving their factories. They weren't allowed to carry truncheons, and most had no powers of arrest. After the Grantham split, Commandant Dawson appointed as her Sub-Commandant an ex-suffragette named Mary Allen, who also became her bidie-in for the rest of her life.
By the time WW1 ended the WPS had more than 350 members. Both Dawson and Allen received the OBE for their work, and a parliamentary committee recommended, in principle, that women should be able to become constables. A small number of those who had volunteered during the war were in fact hired by various forces, but it was made clear to Dawson and Allen that they, and their organisation, were no longer wanted. It seems that, for once, their poshness counted against them; the police commissioner in London declared that his men would find them too "irritating" to work with. However, he did begin his own modest programme to recruit female officers. The wall had been breached, if only slightly, and could never be fully closed again.
Margaret Dawson died suddenly in 1920, of heart disease. Mary Allen inherited her house and her title of Commandant in what was now called the Women's Auxiliary Service. She became an increasingly absurd figure, strutting around the world in her uniform, representing herself as some sort of official chief policewoman of the UK, and insisting on being addressed as "Sir" by her underlings. A more sinister development was her increasing attraction to fascism. Her auxiliaries worked as scabs during the general strike of 1926, but the government found her embarrassing and the real police forces found her infuriating. As an unrepentant fascist during the second world war she came close to being interned and amid the mass mobilisation of women for the war effort, the last flicker of Dawson's organisation faded into irrelevance, never to be revived.
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Sources:
The Vegetarian Winter 2022
https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/margaret-damer-dawson-1863-1920-police-pioneer-founding-member-of-womens-police-volunteers/
www.theargus.co.uk/news/14565765.nostalgia-the-women-who-made-their-mark-in-history/
www.metwpa.org.uk/history-of-women-police-officers.html
www.bawp.org/women-in-policing-history/