"Walking the Streets in a Way No Decent Woman Should": Women Police in World War I

Shortly after was broke out in the late summer of 1914, people in Britain were witness to what was, for the times, a curious sight. Women, generally in pairs, wearing lettered armlets and darly colored clothes or official looking uniforms, began patrolling after dark in streets, parks, and railway stations and in towns close to the swelling military encampments where hasty combat training was under way. These were the new women police and patrols of the war years, many of whom harbored an ambition to create a permanent female office corps that would become indispensable in peacetime.