Women in Policing
women's initial police work followed work in prisons
Estelle B. Freedman's book, Their Sister's Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930, focuses not on women emerging as police officers, but rather on women in prisons, and women who were employed by prisons to work with female inmates. On page 19, Freedman explains that in the late 19th Century, "sexual ideology began to suggest that purity came naturally to women, in contrast to men, who had to struggle to control their innate lust." It was argued by "influential Victorian authorities" that women did not have an appetite for sex, but rather they just went through the motions to have children. This attitude laid the groundwork for the vicious hatred society had for "impure women" who had the capacity "to unleash not just male sperm, but more importantly, the social disintegration that sexuality symbolized" (20).
And so, the "fallen women" received terrible treatment in prisons (particularly in the early 19th Century), and thus, were to be examples to all women, to behave and stay within the boundaries of raising children, cooking meals, being obedient to men. After all (20), "women had to be pure to enforce male continence."
The book, From Social Work to Crimefighter (Shulz, 1995), spells out in the Introduction that - as Freedman's book documents and sets the stage for - "the roots of the policewomen's movement can be traced to earlier demands for female jail and prison and then for female police matrons." The author points out that back as far as 1820 when Quaker women worked as religious and secular trainer-volunteers for female inmates in prisons. And, she explains, the "only position in corrections open to women" from 1920 into the 1870s was that of prison matron. And then, by the 1880s, women who had been involved in the abolitionist movement "turned their attention to religious,...
The first law which required the appointment of police matrons had been enacted in Massachusetts in 1887. That law affected cities with 30,000 or more residents, and within three years (15) there were 22 police matrons across the state, including a total of ten in Boston.
New York was behind Massachusetts in this important reform movement, as the "big apple" did not appoint matrons to police departments until 1891 (16). And the New York City Police Department only changed policy and allowed the first matrons to be of service to female prisoners after a Harper's Weekly article that reported a police officer's attempted rape (and guilty plea) regarding his attack on a 15-year-old female inmate. New York (under police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt between 1895-1897) then hurried to appoint matrons to police stations - in fact, in 1896, Roosevelt appointed 32 matrons - "the most ever named in one year."
Matrons' duties included searching female suspects, processing them, escorting them to their cells and supervising them in precinct detention facilities in New York City. The matrons also cared for lost children, according to the author. By the year 1899, New York City had 59 matrons. Women were still not carrying out police duties in full, but they were making…
