Plymouth Policewomen's Department

Brendan Brookshaw

Not until September.

Kim Stevenson

So, celebrating 50 years from amalgamation, from 1967 last year, but we are carrying on because it’s quite a job to interview on a one-to-one basis. I think we are up to about 25 now, but having you lovely ladies here will actually add quite a few more numbers into the 50 because we can include these too. I have the slide up with the photograph I sent round of the article in the Western Morning News from 1937 where Chief Constable Lowe, at the time, was pressuring the Watch Committee demanding a trained policewoman for the Plymouth force. The Watch Committee refused to allow him to have a trained policewoman. I think they had had two before, but they somehow had been ‘disposed of’. There was some mention that they were too expensive to keep in the force. Nobody, I think, knows the real reasons. So, that was kind of the banner that Plymouth women demanded women police. Lady Astor proposed a march to try and put pressure on the Watch Committee, and also local suffragist Dr Mabel Ramsay was a prime mover behind promoting and trying to get policewomen into the city department. This is timely because it’s the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act and Mabel Ramsay was very much an activist in Plymouth. Judith has been looking at some of the work that she had done as well. It seemed quite an achievement when finally, the first policewomen were set on. I had the pleasure of meeting Eileen Normington about a year ago.1 Sadly she is no longer with us, and she was the first interview I did for the ’50 Years 50 Voices’ project. Some of the images on the overhead here are from Eileen and also Daphne has provided a wonderful record with some of the pictures she brought in this morning. I’m going to hand over to Judith who is going to say a little bit more about how the actual seminar operates. So please, everybody, get involved. Judith is going to encourage you all. We also have David Rees, Chair of the South West Police Heritage Trust who are responsible for all the material kept at Okehampton in the police store. The rest of us are from the university. So, over to you, Judith.

Judith Rowbotham (chair)

The thing about the history that I originally did in the 19th Century, the early 20th Century, was there’s almost too much in the way of a paper record, but increasingly with the development of telephones, then eventually email, and the internet, less and less is kept on record and you have the official headlines of what happens, but for institutions, including the police, you don’t get the social history. You don’t get the sources unless you do something like have a witness seminar where you get a group of people talking together. The whole point and purpose of a witness seminar is to encourage people to talk, to let conversations spark off things that you may not even have thought of or remembered, and to bring them out and put them on record. It’s not to embarrass, it’s not to go in for any kind of sensationalism, it’s simply to get a record of what it was like to be involved in certain periods of Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall’s history as a policewoman … what happened that you remember, what stands out, what did you like, what did you not like, what did you enjoy, what did you not enjoy, the silly little things. So, I think the most important thing to stress is that it’s the minor details that are often the things that actually make a witness seminar particularly important because it flashes out what is actually going on. So, please don’t think “I can’t say something like that because it’s so small and so trivial”, those are the things that this is the opportunity to bring out and it's surprising what it can spark off in the way of other memories to show things that were in common and things that were different. I remember when we did a seminar here on PACE, we had Kim and Kim, of course, trained in the Nottingham police and she kept saying “it wasn’t like that in Nottingham” and this is something which is hugely important because those kinds of minor details, it’s often assumed that everything was the same and it’s not. Even when the theory is supposed to have been the same, the nuances are different. So, that again, is what we want to try to find out and thank you, all of you, for agreeing to come and talk. Sometimes when it’s a smaller panel what I do is go around and ask everybody to explain something about themselves, but I think in some ways it would be easier to get a short biography from each of you, almost as a written biography, later, but to plunge straight into the questions. So, I think one of the things that is so often overlooked, but is actually … I grew up a military brat. So I remember the issues of my father’s uniform, and I remember one day when my brother managed to splatter my father with soapy water just before he was due on parade, and the frantic stripping of my father, putting him in fresh uniform and everything like that because he had to look the part. What is your memory of uniform? Were you proud of your uniform when you got it? Were you horrified? One thing could I say, when you speak, can you just identify who you are, so… this has been Judith Rowbotham talking and I’m now throwing it open. So, you are?

Ida Blackler

Ida Blackler.

Judith Rowbotham

Ida and you said with uniform, you were very proud of it.

Ida Blackler

Oh yes. It was quite strange because I worked as a typist in the Traffic Office before I joined the police, and when I went home and told my parents, bearing in mind I was 23, that I was going to join the police, my mother was horrified. She said “that’s the lowest of the low, joining the police”, and my dad said “well it could be worse, she could join the forces and be away, if she’s in the police in Plymouth we know where she is and what she’s doing”. So, that’s how that news was received. I was very proud of my uniform.

Judith Rowbotham

Was it comfortable? Did it fit?

Ida Blackler

Well it was meant to fit because I had a 23-inch waist at the time and there weren’t any skirts small enough and we had to go to a tailor down in Ebrington Street2 who would grab a handful of skirt and mark it and when you got it back you might have a bit sticking out this side, but not this side and I used to take it home and take it all apart and stitch it up again. You didn’t want to go out looking scruffy. Uniform is a uniform. It needs to be pressed and kept nice and our woman sergeant, as it was then, made sure we looked nice.

Margaret Vickery

Margaret Vickery. Yes, our sergeant kept us in order with our uniform. Even our hair was not allowed to touch the collar or eyebrows, but she used to tell us in a subtle way. She used to look at you and say “oh, I must get my hair cut”, knowing that we would take the hint. Yes, we were very proud of our uniform and we always did look smart. We never went out without our hat on. I’m comparing the way it is now. If we were in a car, one of the police cars, we had to take our hat off then. When we got out of the car we had to put our hat on before we did anything else. I’m afraid it’s not as smart nowadays. We had three pairs of black nylons issued, which never lasted because they used to ladder so easily, so we were always having to buy them. We had to ‘spit and polish’ our shoes, which we had been taught to do at training school. Yes, we were proud of our uniform in those days.

Judith Rowbotham

Anybody else got anything?

Cindy Page

Margaret Vickery was Margaret Smale and I’m Cindy Page and I had Margaret Smale’s uniform. So, I think we’ve done quite well.

Margaret Vickery

Because we were the same size.

Cindy Page

One of my memories is the stockings, and we did point duty at Sherwell3 and, of course, trousers weren’t part of our uniform then, we were in skirts, and it was very, very draughty when you were on point duty. In fact, freezing to the legs. So, we had stockings and suspenders, but some wonderful person invented long-johns and we were able to wear those which kept us a lot warmer, and then a dear person invented tights, which was even better. That’s how we progressed with our uniform.

Judith Rowbotham

Did you have to have uniform knickers?

ALL

No. [laughter]

Ida Blackler

When Cindy says long-johns, they were known as beatniks. They came right down to your knees.

Pauline Bradley

Pauline Bradley, I was Pauline Bishop in those days. We also had to wear white gloves if we went out on patrol. You always had to have your white gloves and if your white gloves were mucky, woe betide, because Miss _______,4 she was an inspector by the time I joined, and she would check that you wouldn’t go out of that door without your gloves. We didn’t have any sort of bags in those days. Anything you had with you had to go into your pocket and they weren’t allowed to be puffed out with anything, so, you couldn’t carry anything with you that was surplus to your uniform. All we had was a whistle. A pocket-book in your breast pocket on your tunic, but all we had was a whistle, we never had anything else.

Ida Blackler

The pocket-books were stiff and flat. One side of you was different to the other. [laughter]

Daphne Jago

The skirts at that time were nice because they had a double pleat in the front and the pockets used to go right down into your groin. I can remember that very well because I think I’m before some of these, and at that time, if you were standing on a traffic point doing your traffic duty and an exhaust happened to whiz your stocking, you’d have to go to the nearest toilet and change the stocking because in those days it was stockings, and the stockings I’ve changed in Sherwell’s toilet … well it’s amazing. We used to do that because in those days there was no nylon and consequently your stockings would just zip if the fuel had touched your legs. It was quite a different age to today and as Margaret has said, nobody ever had to come in with their hair showing at the back, your hat had to come down. There was no nail-polish, no ear-rings. It was very plain, but very, very smart, and I was terribly proud of mine because I got to the age of 20 and my mother had brought us up after the War, and I really needed to get a good job. I didn’t have the qualifications either because I had rather a rough upbringing in school. I loved mine and I was thrilled when I got in. Unfortunately, my life expectancy in the force wasn’t very long because I decided to get married. I married a policeman and, in those days, when you married a policeman, you automatically left. He was in the Cornish force at the time and they did their absolute best and utmost to separate us, right from the very start. They threatened to send him to the Scilly Isles when we got engaged and he said “I’m not going, I’m going to join Plymouth”. When we got married, we were like ships in the night. He was going out on night duty and I was coming in, so, it didn’t work for us. I think nowadays they’ve got much more freedom in that field.

Pat Jackson

Pat Jackson. I was Pat Kenniston when I joined. I was a Special when I joined the ‘regulars’ and I’d been a Special for nearly four years, but 18 months of that was taken up with all the process of joining the ‘regulars’. I have Ida to thank for the encouragement when I was a Special for the interest in the police force. I joined as a ‘regular’. I got engaged and put in a request to get married. My husband was in the Navy at the time. He had to be vetted and go through all the security checks before I got the ok to get married, and I was the first Plymouth City policewoman to apply for maternity leave, which was very much frowned upon and was not met very favourably.

Judith Rowbotham

What date was that?

Pat Jackson

‘68 or ’69. I remember putting in the request for the maternity leave and I was told initially that I couldn’t have it. I was very fortunate that we had a sergeant who transferred down from the Met and she said “yes, you can apply for it, that is your entitlement”. So, I filled out my request form and put it on the inspector’s desk. Her office was down the other end of the corridor and the policewomen’s department was up at this end of the corridor. She was down in court at the time and she came back and I heard her throw her papers down on the desk saying “she can’t bloody well do that”, but I did get maternity leave. I had my daughter and I stayed in for 18 months after she was born before I eventually left.

Anne Lockwood

Anne Lockwood. I was Kent. I was a transferee from Halifax Borough. I joined Halifax Borough in January 1962 and transferred to Plymouth in April 1966. It was a bit of a shock joining Plymouth because ______, the woman inspector that was, was really, really strict and my first encounter with her was, she looked at me and said “that’ll have to come off”, and she meant my hair and I said “no way”, but we were made to tuck every little bit of hair we had and keep it under control, very tightly, under our hats. The other thing was, she didn’t like you to wear makeup. There were one or two girls who rather pasted it on and she would make them go and wash it off. The other thing she did was she kept nail varnish remover in her drawer, so, that was something else, but she was very, very strict with the uniform. When I came down I was taken to this place in Ebrington Street and fitted with my uniform. Because I was very tall, some of it had to be specially done. I still have my overcoat, which actually I do still wear. It’s my best funeral coat. [laughter] It’s very in vogue at the moment. I’ve also got my cape. I think that’s about the only thing I’ve ever got. I stayed under ______’s regime for two years when I sort of got to know my way around the city and obviously got to know what was going on. Then I was moved out to Plympton5 and we covered the South Hams and Tavistock, right out to the moor [Dartmoor] area. All I did was travel around dealing with serious offences against women and girls and court duty, things like that. I actually stayed at Plympton until 1977, when I came back into the city again as school’s liaison. So, yes, it was rather an awakening meeting _____ who had a great character. I think really, she had a great effect on all our lives. I think we can all say that. She brought us up to be very respectful and smart. She even inspected our shoes and made sure our shoes were the right type.

Pat Jackson

On that subject, we had to wear wrens’ shoes. We weren’t allowed to buy them from the shop. We had to get the Naval issue of wrens’ shoes.

Anne Lockwood

When they were new, they gave you absolute hell because they were so stiff. On the question of stockings, I mean, you couldn’t wear them if they got any clicks or ladders or anything and if you’d done traffic duty, they just seemed to disintegrate.

Margaret Vickery

Could I recap on the school crossing?

Judith Rowbotham

Yes.

Margaret Vickery

We looked after a school crossing at Mannamead6 and this was before school crossing patrols, lollipop-ladies. We looked after ours. The men had certain ones. I remember being … well, I was just going to say, because there were just a few of us, we were well known all over the city. All the bus drivers knew us and all the taxi drivers. So, I’m up there early in the morning and I’m standing in the middle of the road with the traffic stopped and the usual commuters knew us as well. So, I had all this traffic stopped and suddenly something touched the back of me and the back of my hand and they all started laughing because I jumped and it was the bus driver of a double-decker bus. He had driven the bus right up and touched my hand. [laughter] We used to have fun in those days. Another day, I had a Lambretta scooter in those days and I was off duty, and I happened to touch the brake coming down towards Mutley Plain7 on one of those white arrows, I was right over the top and the bus driver stopped the bus because he knew me. The bus was full of people and I was so embarrassed, but he got out of the bus and picked me up off the road and off I went again. It was so embarrassing, but lovely to think that he did that because he knew who I was.

Pauline Bradley

Shortly after that, the policewomen’s department moved from Greenbank8, where we covered the Mannamead crossing, to the city centre and we were then allocated Sherwell Arcade crossing. That was our allocated children’s crossing. You can imagine the traffic coming down from Mutley Plain, down North Hill, they didn’t like stopping and all we were issued with was a little cuff …

Judith Rowbotham

So, wrist to elbow.

Pauline Bradley

Yes, wrist to elbow, nothing else, just your dark uniform and you got out there, in the middle of that road, and you’re stood there thinking “I hope they’re going to stop”. You wouldn’t let the children get off the pavement until somebody had actually stopped because until somebody had actually stopped, you couldn’t guarantee that they weren’t going to shoot through at 30mph. In those days it was a very busy piece of road. The commuting between 8.30 and 9.00, it was quite dangerous, but we took it in our stride and we just did it. That was what you were allocated to do.

Judith Rowbotham

So, I’m wondering how the experience of uniform changed and Kim, I know that you were Nottingham and you are a bit later, but has what has been said so far, in terms of uniform, does that chime with your memories?

Kim Stevenson

I think our uniforms were a bit more comfortable and certainly we didn’t get passed ‘hand-me-downs’ from other serving officers. I was given the number 123 from the stores’ officer because he wanted to make sure that I could remember what my number was going to be. [laughter] Did you have police numbers?

All

Yes.

Kim Stevenson

Because Devon & Cornwall seem quite unusual because you are now up to how many? Six thousand, is it?

Brendan Brookshaw

We’ve just started re-issuing again, but we haven’t re-issued for about 30 years.

Kim Stevenson

Whereas other forces like Notts, re-issue the same numbers. So, you only ever had the amount of numbers that was the force complement. So, somebody now will have my old 123, but Devon & Cornwall are quite unusual. I think they just kept adding and adding, so you get these huge numbers that have to fit on.

Brendan Brookshaw

My number’s 3627 and we’re now on about 6700-odd.

Pat Jackson

When we amalgamated, we had police Plymouth City numbers, but on amalgamation, they added 1100 to our numbers, so, whatever our number was, we added the 1100 on and that was our new Devon & Cornwall number.

Kim Stevenson

So, we started off with skirts and we had the Juliet Bravo hats, the white plastic top ones. You might remember, with the chequered band on. We used to get issued twelve pairs of tights or stockings, you could choose, every six months, compared to the three pairs and you having to replace them fairly quickly. The shoes were the same. You had to wear certain shoes with lace-ups. Although, gradually over the years, that changed and you could have more comfortable, rubber-heeled ones. We didn’t have trousers immediately. That came in around the 1980s, when trousers were allowed. Yes, very similar, but more modern fabrics. Some forces had white shirts, we did, some forces kept blue shirts. I don’t know which Devon & Cornwall …

Brendan Brookshaw

White. Well, since I’ve been there

Anne Lockwood

It changed from blue, I think, when I was serving in the ‘80’s.

Pauline Bradley

We had loose collars when we first started.

Kim Stevenson

You had to starch them?

Pauline Bradley

Yes, we had to starch our collars when we first started.

Anne Lockwood

We used to send them to the Chinese place to have them starched properly. They were very, very stiff.

Kim Stevenson

Ties or …?

Pauline Bradley

Proper ties, not clip-ons. We had ‘tie your own’ ties.

Kim Stevenson

We had clip-on ties because that was a health and safety thing, wasn’t it? In case anyone grabbed you using the tie. What was it like in the 1980s then Ann?

Anne Lockwood

I joined in 1979. It was more or less the same, hat on as soon as you got out of the car. We didn’t have to wear gloves. I was issued with trousers, but they were only for inclement weather. I didn’t wear them for the first two years, and then after that, I used to wear them on nights because if any of the young policewomen from the Policewomen’s Department saw you wearing trousers during the day, they’d have a go at you. So, I used to wear them on nights. Later on, I was on Task Force and I used to wear them all the time then. But, very similar to you.

Ida Blackler

I don’t know whether the others would remember this because I think I had one of the last issue, but we were given plastic covers to put on our hats when it was raining. They were like a foreign legion hat. It was elasticated and went over the top of our hats and like a flap down, [laughter] which diverted the water down onto your shoulders and if you tucked them in to make it tidy, the water all went down … it got your stiff collar all soggy. So, it wasn’t an easy life.

Kim Stevenson

Can I ask a question about uniforms, trousers and skirts? When trousers came in there was a sense that suddenly you weren’t a policewoman anymore. You looked like the men and I think some of us quite liked wearing skirts because when we went into situations, you were regarded by people as a female and certainly in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, there was a lot more respect, I think. People didn’t just regard you as a police officer, male or female, as they perhaps do now. They treated you differently, even in fights and situations, they would sometimes back off a little bit more because they could see straightaway that you were a female, and you were wearing a skirt. They didn’t just take you all as an officer of the cloth, full-stop. Does that make sense, what I’m trying to say? Would you have worn trousers if trousers had been available?

Daphne Jago

I don’t think I would’ve liked to have worn trousers because I think that’s when it all started to go pear-shape in today’s society. I honestly think that because there is no doubt about it, in our era, the policewomen did look smart, they really did, because they were made to. I certainly felt my uniform was adequate for my job because I had plenty of pocket space and I could move freely enough in mine. The skirts then, of course, were longer than they would’ve been today. So, I think myself, it’s as you just said, it made them all look the same, wearing trousers, but of course that’s quite common now. They don’t even wear jackets now. We always had a jacket.

Anne Lockwood

Can I just say, when I joined, I worked on section with the men, so I was working shifts and I was doing exactly the same work that they do, whereas you ladies were doing a different type of work.

Pauline Bradley

We were earning seven-eighths of the men’s pay and we did a shorter working day. I think ours was seven-and-half when theirs was eight or something like that. Also, if we were out after 10 o’clock, we only went to The Octagon9 and worked with the policemen. You were never allocated a patrol on your own. You have to go back… when it was at Greenbank, they left The Octagon at midnight and then had to make their own way back to Greenbank on their own, which we didn’t do because I only worked in the city centre.

Pat Jackson

On the subject of respect for the policewomen, I totally agree with what everybody has said because I used to like late-turn duty. One of my favourite places to go was down Union Street, which was notorious. On several occasions down there, there would be big fights and we always knew the Naval Patrol was in the background and the policemen. If they were in the location with us, they would go in, but if the fight was particularly aggressive, they would push the policewomen forward because they knew that whoever was fighting would have more respect for us than they did for the policemen, and it would possibly break-up the fight. That used to make patrols a bit more interesting. [laughter]

Margaret Vickery

But that was the thing then, we had respect in those days. If we were seen in uniform, then we felt safe. Like one of you said, we had to leave the policemen at The Octagon at midnight and then walk all the way back, on our own, through the town to Greenbank, but it didn’t bother us because we knew we had our uniform on. Nowadays, would you be safe?

Judith Rowbotham

It’s interesting listening to you talking about the locations, Greenbank, the city centre. What were the station facilities like? Did you all live at home? Did you live on sight, on the job?

Pauline Bradley

There was no accommodation at all. We all lived at home. If you came from out of town, you lived in lodgings or something. There was no police accommodation. Originally the department was in the old Greenbank police station with the Plymouth chief constable and all the offices. The court was there. Then they built the new Plymouth city police station which was on the back of the, now, law courts. That was in the ‘60s and then in the ‘70s they built the current city centre. But the city centre station where we were, most of us, that city centre was very up-to-date, modern. We had a canteen and staffroom, but no showers or anything like that. We had a policewomen’s cloakroom with a toilet, but the rest of it, you shared with the men.

Margaret Vickery

There were cells at Greenbank as well, with the matron. There were prisoners kept in there overnight and if the matron wasn’t on duty, then one of us had to do that duty or one of the men if there were men in.

Ida Blackler

Talking of matron duties, I lived at Pomphlett10, which was about half-a-mile out of the city boundary and if we were doing matron’s night duty, we didn’t go in unless there was a prisoner, so, they would call us out. I had to go and sleep either at Margaret’s flat or at another policewoman’s who lived at Whitleigh11, which was much further away from the police station than my home would’ve been, but because I was in Devon County area, the city police weren’t allowed to come beyond the city boundary. It was ridiculous really, but that’s the way it was.

Anne Lockwood

When I moved to Plymouth, at first, I lived in a friend’s flat on West Hoe and shortly after I moved, my then to be husband was moving as well from Yorkshire, but they wouldn’t let him share the same accommodation as me at West Hoe. We had to have separate accommodation. So, I moved to a flat at North Hill and he was able to get a room, not in the same place as I was, but in the same block with a lady who had a spare room. They used to vet your accommodation and there was no cohabiting or anything like that because they used to check up. The other thing they used to check up on is, if you went sick, they would check up on that as well, or at least they did in the policewomen’s department. They always vetted the accommodation. When you wanted to move and buy a property, they vetted that as well because you got a rent allowance and obviously they had to make sure that it was suitable.

Brendan Brookshaw

Can I ask a question?

Anne Lockwood

Yes.

Brendan Brookshaw

I remember in ’88 when I joined, all the male officers had a 14-and-a-half inch truncheon which went down your trouser-leg. The women had these tiny, little truncheons which used to go into their handbags, and almost invariably, if we got into a fight they would use the handbag as a swing, rather than get the truncheon out, [laughter] so, I wondered if you were issued with anything like that?

ALL

No.

Anne Lockwood

I was issued with one of these truncheons and it was wrapped in tissue paper and I thought it was a joke, but obviously, it wasn’t. If I had clobbered them with my handbag, it would’ve done a far better job than this little truncheon. In fact, I’ve still got it. It’s about that long, with a little leather strap. I don’t think I ever took it out or produced it. I just treated it as a joke.

Judith Rowbotham

It was about four to six inches long.

Daphne Jago

I have to say, we were there for the purpose of looking after children and women mostly, in those days, and we certainly did that. I think today, in today’s society, I would like to see that still the case, to be truthful because I think we had a lot more satisfaction and good endings to things with women, whereas now, everybody seems to be treated equally. For example, in our day, if you attempted suicide and somebody rescued you and you were in hospital all night, we used to have to sit all night. We used to have to sit to see whether they came out of it and if you were sitting with somebody who had tried to take their life and is trying to get back into life, the sounds of that in the middle of the night at 1 o’clock in the morning, is not the nicest sound, but we used to do that. I think women should still be dealing with women. That’s my honest opinion.

Brendan Brookshaw

I only find that amusing Daphne because I’ve only really been barely assaulted in my 30 years and one of them was by a woman. [laughter]

Daphne Jago

Well yes, that’s today’s society, isn’t it? Women are brought up a lot differently I think, now, and they are seen as equal to men, but I still think there’s a case for women dealing with women and children. I suppose I’m diversing a bit and I hope that’s alright, but I know one of the first things I did when I came into the police force was, I had to go and take statements from five children who had had incest with their father. I can’t imagine a policeman having to do that. These children ranged in ages and it was terrible. It opened my eyes because I hadn’t been in the job all that long, but CID used to call for a policewoman to do those things and to be with suicide people. As I say, anyone that’s tried to take their life and has failed, they’re not the best when they come around, I can tell you.

Judith Rowbotham

Cindy, you were going to say something earlier.

Cindy Page

Well, someone mentioned the police matrons. We had police matrons and they had a uniform as well, but because the police force has a very cryptic sense of humour and probably still now, to what we had then, and if you didn’t have a sense of humour, you wouldn’t have got on at all. I know _____ _____ was the particular matron on duty, and we heard that she had a lady in the cells and on side she had tattooed ‘mild’ and on the other side ‘bitter’. [laughter] On another occasion they gave ____ a lady to strip off, because obviously we stripped them off for their own sake as much as anything else, and this in fact was a man, but they fooled Winnie into thinking it was a lady. You just had to get used to their sense of humour.

Pat Jackson

Following on from what Daphne was saying, we as policewomen did specialise in what we did dealing with women and children and not having anything to do with the male side of it. One of the big things for us was, once you started a job, you saw it all the way through from beginning to end to maintain continuity. There was none of this handing it over a third of the way through or halfway through and somebody else taking it over, involving two or three people going to court to give evidence. That one person dealt with the whole thing and went to court and gave the evidence and saw it through from beginning to end. I agree with what Daphne was saying. I think, because we liaised with the children’s department, the probation department and we handled it all, it was a much better way of dealing with things from the policewoman’s point of view than perhaps it is today where they’re integrated.

Judith Rowbotham

You’ve been talking about the extent to which your experiences were not the same, the work you were doing wasn’t the same, I’d like to come back to that a bit later, but I do want to ask you a little bit more about the physical environment in which you found yourself working, the actual stations. What was Greenbank like, the women’s department? Was it actually set up to make it convenient for women? Did you have, for instance, sufficiency of loos?

Daphne Jago

I don’t know. It wasn’t set up for policewomen in my day, when I joined, that was in 1956, women were pretty new in this particular force. There was only ever five of us when I joined and that one for each shift and one spare if you were off on holiday, and you just had to fill in and that was the way it worked. We had a small office at Greenbank, as it was at the time, and we used to just come in and deal with that. Our uniforms got left there whilst we did our duty, and they were still there when we came back.

Pauline Bradley

There was a restroom there, and a women’s restroom upstairs. It was like a cupboard, but we could go up there. There was a sliding door and that was a very small restroom for the policewomen. We never used it apart from when we’d been down in the canteen and we may have needed somewhere to recover.

Daphne Jago

There was a substation at West Park for a while and I think that was one of the best things I did in my service. They decided that because we were doing such a lot of mileage between Greenbank and West Park12 and different parts of the city, that they opened up this section and the men were out there and they had to welcome one policewoman on the station. At first, I don’t think they thought that that was going to work, but it did, marvellously, because the men thought it was wonderful to have a woman on the station and we worked really well with them, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with them. It was one of the better things I did because you actually got things done and completed there a lot more because it was a smaller amount of men to that one person.

Margaret Vickery

Yes, it was my favourite police station as well. I actually had a commendation from there, which was very funny because for more than six months, this man was wanted for indecent exposure and his description was embedded on all our brains. You paraded every morning, and his description was read out, and one day, I was in the office and I looked out the window and there he was sitting on his bicycle. The description was a tool-bag, he’s in overalls and he was just sitting there. ____ ______ was in that station with me and we went out together and got him back into the station and I got a commendation for that. The sad thing was, he was quite newly married and I thought that was very sad. But, that was a good station.

Pauline Bradley

I think later on there were policewomen at Devonport as well. I never served at Devonport, but I know that at that time there was a policewoman at West Park, some in the city centre and a couple at Devonport who worked from the Devonport station.

Anne Lockwood

Do I remember some of you ladies saying you were sitting on late shift and mice would run over your feet? Was that at Greenbank?

Ida Blackler

We had this little meal room and a place to hang your uniform and toilet and wash-hand basin, and I can remember a mouse actually sitting on my foot. I don’t mind mice, so it didn’t matter. That was at Greenbank.

Kim Stevenson

Were there any policewomen at Stonehouse?

Pauline Bradley

It was Union Street, The Octagon police station. In our day they went there from 10 until midnight. If there was a policewoman on that shift, that’s where she’d spend the last two hours of her shift, patrolling Union Street with the men.

Kim Stevenson

Were there some women’s refuges around The Octagon as well?

Pauline Bradley

There still are, I think.

Kim Stevenson

Did you have any involvement with those?

ALL

No.

Margaret Vickery

If we had any missing girls, we always knew where to find them. There were certain pubs around the town, one down near The Octagon and there was a pub at Coxside. We always used to round up the missing girls from these particular places.

Daphne Jago

When children went missing, we used to have to go and bring them back. Somebody from the office would arrange a carriage for you to go and collect these children from whichever constabulary had the child. I know on one occasion I had to go as far as Scotland to pick somebody up. The carriage was booked for you and the guard would lock the door. You’d pick up the child, bring the child back, but the parents would have to pick them up from the station, and they would have to pay the cost of the rail fare of us having to go and pick them up. Another thing we used to do was trips to Exeter with prisoners from the day’s magistrates court - any women that were given a sentence. I think the thing I used to hate, and I have always remembered, is when you went in the gate to the jail the babies were out in the garden, babies that had been born in the prison. The men in the prison used to make these little wooden cots with little canopies over. If you happened to be the prisoner and had your baby in there, they’d stay with the mother, of course, for the first few days. That really used to upset me because it was a poor start for a child to say they were born in prison. Another thing we used to do was, we used to do observations on brothels. You’d sit in the back of a car, an unmarked car, with your superintendent and he’d say “right, now” and you’d charge in and you’d get these men that were half dressed. I remember one day there was a chap doing up his … “you’re not going to tell my wife, are you?”. I think we had quite a lot of fun with that. Well, you had to take it as fun, otherwise, you would never have worked with it.

Brendan Brookshaw

I was going to ask that question. I’ve got all the delicate questions. I was sergeant for Union Street and the Barbican13, back in the day, and of course we had a lot to do with prostitution and the individual girls. Was that a particular role that you carried out, liaise with prostitutes?

ALL

Yes.

Anne Lockwood

I can remember one night doing a late-shift and you went out with a man down Union Street and we were down Union Street. In the ‘60s, Union Street was shoulder-to-shoulder with Naval Patrol, Royal Marine Patrol, police patrols, loads and loads of matlows and lots of fighting. We were stood on the corner by The Palace14 and as we were standing there, one of the local prostitutes who had a sister who was also a prostitute, walked down past us, and as she walked down, I looked at her and she was wearing the most gorgeous fur coat. I don’t think I’d ever seen one so nice. I watched her walk down, and when she got to the opposite side of the road, bearing in mind it was crowded, she shouted out “you know what to do if you want one, don’t you?”. Needless to say, I haven’t got one and never had one. [laughter]

Pauline Bradley

I did observations, usually with the policemen involved. They took a woman with them because they were going to be dealing with them, so that’s why a policewoman was on the lot. We didn’t usually get a brothel to deal with ourselves. I never did one in the Union Street area. They were always up at North Road or Mutley or somewhere like that. I think a lot of prostitutes that lived in the Stonehouse, Devonport area protected each other. I don’t know whether anybody else ever did brothels down there, but I never ever came across an awful lot. It was as if they protected their own area. If a brothel was set up, it was somewhere in a more residential area.

Daphne Jago

We always went because there was likely to be children involved. It was in a house, which was always the main reason for going, to bring the children out. The one I was thinking about particularly was up on the Hoe. That night, they were so keen to get into this brothel, I was in the back of the car with the superintendent and when he said “go”, you went. Actually, that one was really full that night and there were two children. We had to take the children into care. I don’t know if they exist anymore now, do they?

Brendan Brookshaw

Brothels?

Daphne Jago

Yes.

Brendan Brookshaw

Yeah, they do. [laughter] That’s a professional answer, not … [laughter]

[RECORDING JUMPED]

Anne Lockwood

… it’s what we dealt with as policewomen, but when we didn’t have any jobs involving women and children, we then went out on patrol which was the same as the men. You had the same training as the men, three months at training college. So, we came back fully trained. I remember I broke my wrist learning self-defence at training college. But yes, we were only dealing with women and children when it was needed. When it wasn’t, then we were out around the city. In those days, that was interesting too. We used to patrol the city centre and in those days, shops stayed where they were and people used to ask us the way or where so-and- so shop was. We could tell them which street. We couldn’t do that now. I know I’ve asked a policeman before, where a certain shop was and he couldn’t tell me.

Judith Rowbotham

About how much time did you spend on women and children issues? How much time on things like going out on patrol?

Daphne Jago

I would say about 85-90% of the time. There was always something to do, either there were children involved in indecent exposure or …

Pauline Bradley

By the time I was there, there were a lot more policewomen, so there weren’t as many jobs to go around, so you spent a bigger proportion on being out on patrol. If there were four of you on duty and only two jobs, the rest of you would be out your whole shift. You’d go out in the morning, come back for lunch, go out again in the afternoon. It might be the Hoe, the Barbican, the city centre, Cattedown, all over the place. We had set patrols.

Ida Blackler

Going back to what Daphne said earlier, if you were out on division at West Park you hardly ever went on patrol.

Judith Rowbotham

How much time did you think you spent on women and children issues?

Daphne Jago

Well, at West Park, 90% I would say. Not so much in the city centre, maybe 60-70%.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Cindy?

Cindy Page

About 60% I would think.

Judith Rowbotham

Anne?

Anne Lockwood

I would say probably the same because in an area like Plymouth which was predominantly the sort of area where visitors came, I think they liked to see the presence of a police officer, particularly a woman. If you were out on patrol, you were constantly being stopped and asked questions in the city centre.

Judith Rowbotham

What about you Pat?

Pat Jackson

I would say it was about 60-70%, but one of the beauties of being a policewoman, that I enjoyed, was not knowing what I was going to be doing when I went on duty that morning. You didn’t know whether you were going to be in a car in plain clothes, whether you were going to be on patrol, whether you were going to be dealing with a shoplifter or even escorting a female prisoner to a proper church. You just didn’t know and that was one of the beauties of the job.

Judith Rowbotham

It was very varied.

Pat Jackson

Yes.

Judith Rowbotham

Is that pretty much all of your experiences?

ALL

Yes.

Brendan Brookshaw

I think that’s a common police experience, actually. The variety and the excitement is a real draw.

Jill Annison

Can I just ask a question? Jill Annison. I was just hearing you say about taking prisoners to [inaudible] church and when you mentioned about going to prison, was that [inaudible] church as well or …?

Daphne Jago

I never went to [inaudible] church. I’m talking about when they were out of court and had to go to Exeter.

Jill Annison

Ok. That’s what I assumed you meant. So roughly, what were the dates
then?

Daphne Jago

Well I started around ’56, so, we’re talking around the ‘60s.

Jill Annison

Thank you. That’s really interesting.

Ida Blackler

Another thing that was quite primitive was we didn’t have a car at the department at all.

Judith Rowbotham

What period was this?

Ida Blackler

Well, I joined in 1959, so, early ‘60s. Our woman sergeant, as she was, had to go and beg for a car if there was something urgent, otherwise we went on a bus. We didn’t have radio or anything. We had to pay our fare and then draw expenses when we came back. If we wanted to contact the department and there wasn’t a police-box handy, we used a public phone and reverse the charges. [laughter]

Anne Lockwood

Another thing that had a lasting effect on me was Vauxhall Street because at Vauxhall Street there was a mortuary. Even now when I drive around or pass that area, I can still imagine smelling the carbolic soap because it left this horrible smell that you couldn’t get rid of for weeks and weeks. Even now when I drive past there, the smell of it, it was just so primitive, wasn’t it? That was something else we had to deal with, sudden deaths or suicides.

Cindy Page

This reminds me of … when you’re new and come back and you’re all green, you learned at cost that when you saw an ambulance appear in the police yard, it was [inaudible] to the mortuary and you’d look around and the room would be empty, so, you’d be the one that would be sent. After a while you learned to evacuate the room with everybody else when the ambulance came into the police yard. I would say the ambulance men were always really lovely. They were fantastic.

Brendan Brookshaw

This is really fascinating. Several of you have mentioned training school. Where was the training? Did it happen in Plymouth or was it away?

Judith Rowbotham

Do you know Brendan, you’re very irritating because I was just about to ask that question. [laughter] Could I actually ask, because I want to go a little bit back, how did you all become conscious that there were opportunities in the women police? If I start with Cindy, what made you apply?

Cindy Page

A friend, initially, was going to do it. She got engaged and her would-be husband said “no”, but it just triggered me off thinking it must be a nice job and I would like to do it.

Judith Rowbotham

So, you learnt through somebody else about …

Cindy Page

Yes, it was somebody else’s idea, but I thought it was a lovely job to do.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Daphne?

Daphne Jago

As I said earlier, my mother brought us two girls up. I lived in Liskeard at that time, and actually the local policemen were always very important to my mother because when you went to dances and things locally, she got to know the policemen quite well and in the darkness, you’d have this voice saying to you “you’re going straight home aren’t you Miss Milne?” And of course, this would probably be the PC that was on parade, and I used to be fascinated by these policemen to think that they had such control and I just had a thirst to do it. I know that I went to this police station and asked for a form to apply, and I went home and told my mother I had done that and I was 20. She said that I would never manage that, but however, I did. The nearest force to take women at that time was Plymouth. In Cornwall, I think, there was Sergeant Adcock and she was the only policewoman and she was stationed in Truro, so Cornwall didn’t have any spaces at that time. Plymouth was just coming into its own, which was why, at the beginning, there were only the five of us and that was one to do each shift and one spare. Further on, in my service, they had all the trouble in Cyprus and we had secondments then to Cyprus. They were gone for two years and they had to be single.

Judith Rowbotham

Margaret, how about you?

Margaret Vickery

Well, from the age of about 13, I wanted to do it. My father was in the Navy for 24 years and there was something in me that just wanted to be in the police force, but I didn’t think I ever would. I actually got engaged when I was. 18 and still wanted to do it and then I was working in a shop, I was a cashier, and Daphne walked in the shop. We got talking and she told me that she had just joined and that’s what triggered me to do it. So, I broke off the engagement [laughter] and got myself there before I was 20 because I was then old enough when I came back from training, to be old enough.

Daphne Jago

Just adding to that, I think actually the police force at that time was opening its doors to policewomen and I think that was a big thing at the time to have the opportunity to do that. Opportunities for women then weren’t like they are today. You can do pretty well anything these days, but in those days, it wasn’t like that.

Judith Rowbotham

So, it seemed exciting.

Daphne Jago

Oh yes. The worse thing for me was having to come out when I got married. I was really upset about that. When you look back, you think about people doing things in retrospect. I often think that perhaps I should’ve done that because it was important.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Anne? I know that you didn’t join locally, but where you were.

Anne Lockwood

When I was at school, they used to take us to look at different jobs and they used to take us to the courts and things like that, so, from my early teens I was interested. You could join as a cadet, but in those days, you had to have permission, written permission, from both of your parents and my mother wouldn’t give her permission. So, I was put to do something that I didn’t particularly want to do and I did that and then when I was 20, I decided I’d had enough of it, I still wanted to go into the police force. I was living away from home at the time, at a college, and I arrived home for the Christmas holidays with all my gear and my mother said “why have you brought all that stuff with you?” and I said “because I’m not going back”, so she said “have they thrown you out?”, I said “no” – “are you pregnant?” – “no”. [laughter] I then said “I’m going into the police force” – “oh no you’re not” – “it’s too late, I’ve passed to go in and I am starting on the 7th January”. She never spoke to me for about six months afterwards and I think all the way through my service and I retired in ’91, she never really during her lifetime accepted that that was my job, although I used to keep reminding her. I used to say “this pays the mortgage and keeps the roof over your head”. She still never really accepted it. Obviously, my circumstances had changed and that’s what I had to do.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Pat?

Pat Jackson

I had a neighbour who was a policeman and he was very, very good to my family. Both of my parents had died by the time I was 10 and he was a very close friend of the family and he always had me on the police carnival tableau every year. I was a keen follower of the police and it was something I was very interested in, but I embarked upon another career and it went to the back of my mind until such time as I decided to join the ‘specials’ and give it a go and see what I thought of it. It just triggered on from there, but the seed was planted when I was about eight or nine and it just grew. I was very happy. I’m like Margaret, I was very sad to leave. I didn’t want to come out.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Ida?

Ida Blackler

Well, I was working in the traffic office as a typist, and it all seemed very exciting - the men rushing and what they called the ‘niner’ would go and somebody would dive out, and I thought this all seems interesting and exciting and worthwhile. I was talking to a dispatches clerk about it, and the next thing I knew, _____ came down and said “I believe you want to join the police Ida?” and I said “well, I’m sort of thinking a bit about it.” She said “well come with me, I’ve got some time to spare, come down to the cells and try on a uniform and see how you feel in it”. So, I went down and tried on the uniform. I went home and gave it a lot of thought, and as I said, my mother didn’t approve, but I think that made me more determined. I’ve never regretted it.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Pauline?

Pauline Bradley

I’m opposite to all the others. I left school at 15 with very little education. I think I’m fairly intelligent and I got mundane jobs, moved from Cornwall up to Plymouth as a teenager and then thought I need to be doing something. I got to 23, didn’t want to get married and thought I need to be doing something where I’m going to be paid to train, didn’t like nursing and things like that, so, I applied for the police force because they would be paying me while they were training me. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it wasn’t anything that I planned to do, it was just looking for something that would pay me to train.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Anne?

Anne Lockwood

I always wanted to be in the job when I was at school. I left school at 16 and a local policeman came to talk to me and he said, “we would recommend you went and did something else for a while, we don’t like taking people straight from school. You need a little bit of life experience”. So, I went away and worked in a bank for a few years and did odd jobs and eventually came back to it, and decided, yes, it’s what I want to do.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Kim?

Kim Stevenson

Similar really. To this day I don’t really know what it was that triggered me to want to join. I just remember joining the cadets at 16. I do remember my grandfather instilled a very strong sense of right and wrong and justice, so I was interested in wanting to right the wrongs of the world and put those that do the wrong things away. I was just looking, I think, and ended up falling into the cadets, but with hindsight, you were given the right advice Anne, because at 16 or 18, starting … you were talking earlier about women police officers only dealing with women and children. At 18, I wasn’t equipped to deal with children. I had no knowledge of how to look after children. I’d never done that. I had no younger siblings that I had to look after. I had no real understanding of taking statements of incest. The first ones I did on rape I really didn’t know what I was doing because I really didn’t understand. From a 1960s closeted background, which we all had, we didn’t talk about such things. So, being thrown in and having to deal with those sort of statements, with language and words you’d never heard of, you didn’t know what the meanings were. I don’t think that I was an effective officer at that age. I think you need life experience first, but then I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t done that. Like you all said, I don’t regret one minute of it. I chose to leave rather than being forced out, that’s the difference, but great experience. Brendan, why did you join?

Brendan Brookshaw

Oh right. I did a biochemistry degree and in my last year at Kingston in London, I was thinking “oh my god, I’ve got to earn a living at some point, what am I going to do?” I had jobs with Pfizer and other big chemical companies all lined up, and I just had this horrific sense that I was going to be stuck in a lab for the rest of my life. It just didn’t seem to fit with me, so I thought what can I do where I’m going to be a force for good in society. It sounds very trite now, but I wanted to do something good and also, I wanted to work with people. I realised that everything I did … if I was in the rugby club, I was captain, whatever I was in I was either the captain or the chair and I thought I’d like to have the influence and lead people. I never wanted to join the military because I thought I didn’t want to get shot at. I come from Plymouth and I’ve loads of military friends. Then it suddenly popped into my head, I thought I’d join the police. I’ve got 42 first cousins on my dad’s side and I’ve no police relatives at all. There were a few that I booked in when I was a custody sergeant, but no police relative at all, so I just applied and joined the Devon & Cornwall Police. There’s a real strong theme because when I went and told my parents that I was joining the police, they went absolutely mad. They were horrified, and even to this day, my mum, she never tells anybody that I’m a police officer. She says “my son’s a chief inspector”. [laughter] They didn’t like it at all. My dad said “why do you want to join that bloody bunch of thugs?”.

Jill Annison

Can I just follow up on that? A number of you said that your mothers, in particular, were very disapproving and I wondered whether, picking up on what you’ve just said, was it something about the police or whether they thought you’d be dealing with things that weren’t quite nice or that you were in danger, I don’t know.

Daphne Jago

I think as far as my mother was concerned, we two girls were the only things she had left, and I think, for her, in the end, it made her very proud, which was, I think, something as a thanks from us because my sister was a nurse, so we both had good careers. I think in the end she felt extremely proud of us and, of course, we did it on our back. I think she was afraid that she’d be left entirely on her own.

Jill Annison

Did she think it was a career rather than a job for you?

Daphne Jago

I think she thought it was a job when I took it, and then as time went on, she realised that it was much more. I have to say my biggest regret that I’ve ever had was to leave it. I think to this very day, until I die, I shall always think that I was very hard done by because I don’t think that should ever have been allowed. Fortunately, my husband did more than 30 years and so I had a connection with it, but it certainly wasn’t like doing the job. I loved it and I would recommend it to any girl who wanted to do it, except to say, it is different times to when we did it.

Jason Lowther

That brings me to what I want to ask you, are there any aspects of modern policing that you’re glad that you didn’t have to deal with?

Pat Jackson

I don’t think I would like to deal with the violent attitude towards the police now. It was just beginning to change as I left. I was out on patrol in Mayflower Street with one of my male colleagues just before I left, and that was my first experience of having stones thrown at me. That was very disquieting. I think he, as well as myself, were a little bit concerned about this because although we didn’t retaliate and engage with them, we just walked away, they followed us and continued throwing stones. That was my very first experience of it and I wouldn’t relish that in today’s climate. Having said that, I think it’s like everything, the youth of today know how to deal with this because they’ve been brought up with it. To us, it’s foreign and it was foreign all those years ago to us. I think the youth of today, they’re used to going to clubs, they’re used to the drugs, they’re used to the fights and everything that goes with it, and they’re better equipped to deal with it than we are or am I wrong?

Judith Rowbotham

I think you could well be right. I’d like to go back, if I may, to the question that Brendan first posed which was having asked you all how you ended up deciding to join the police, the training that you had, did it differ? One of you said it was the same as that experienced by the men. Where did you go? Was it in any area different? If I start with Pauline this time.

Pauline Bradley

I went to Ryton-on-Dunsmore and did my three months training along with men from all the midlands forces. The men from Plymouth didn’t go there, they went somewhere else, but the women at my station went to Ryton-on-Dunsmore, so we were with the Birmingham, Coventry, what I call the heavier forces and we did exactly the same training. In fact, I can see one of the Coventry men fainting when they were talking about death of some kind and he fainted, but we were treated the same. We went on the parade ground with the men. We marched and were taught drilling with the men. The sergeant, with his drill stick, put in inappropriate places, was exactly the same to the women as to the men. It wasn’t any different. We went back at the end of 12 months and did a fortnight and at the end of two years and did a fortnight. I did all mine at Ryton-on Dunsmore, exactly the same as the men, no difference at all.

Judith Rowbotham

You had the same classes?

Pauline Bradley

Yes, we sat in class with the men. I suppose there were half-a-dozen women from different forces with 30 men, exactly the same.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Ida?

Ida Blackler

Well, I went to [inaudible] for my initial training course and like Pauline said. We trained with the men. We did civil defence, self-defence, and someone broke their arm - everything. Traffic - there were roads in the camp where we were, and they used to set up accidents for us to deal with. There was a courtroom and we had to give evidence. We had very good training. It was strict training and it stood us in good stead. Our intermediary, after a year, we did that at Greenbank and then we went to Ryton for our end of two-year probation. There again, by then we were all from different forces anyway and we were re-meeting people that we did our initial course with. Some had done jolly well. I do remember two of the men fainting when we went to Stafford police station, and they showed us some pictures of a woman whose husband had literally buried an axe in her head. One fell over the flight of stairs, he was stood at the top of the stairs, and the other one slid down a filing-cabinet and banged his head on an open drawer on the way down. [laughter] Apart from that, it was uneventful.

Judith Rowbotham

Men have no stamina sometimes. [laughter]

Pat Jackson

Mine was very similar to Pauline’s. I started off at Ryton. I did my intermediate at Ryton, but I finished my two-year probation at Warrington. For what reason, I don’t know because Ryton was still going, but for some unknown reason they decided that we had to go to Warrington for our last training thing before we passed out, and then it was back to the station and being thrown in at the deep-end and getting on with it.

Judith Rowbotham

But again, no difference in the training.

Pat Jackson

No, exactly, integrated with the men. In fact, I’m still in touch with some of my male colleagues I did training with, so, it’s been quite nice.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Anne?

Anne Lockwood

I did my initial training at Bruche in Warrington. At the time there were six of us. Six females started out and about 400 men from forces which were mostly Liverpool and Manchester, that sort of area. They were really quite rough diamonds. I think in the end we were left with four women. I went back there for my initial refresher and then for my final refresher, I went back there as well. It was hard. It was an old RAF camp, and we were living in Nissen hut type places. The food was absolutely disgusting, and we complained. I always remember the commandant told us that if we had any complaints about the food he wanted to know at the time. One day I actually found a live worm in my fish. I marched from the back of the dining-hall to the front and said, “sir, I have found a worm in my fish” and he looked at me and he said “shush, don’t say it too loud, they’ll all want one,” [laughter] and I went and sat down and that was the end of it. But, the food still continued to be bad.

Judith Rowbotham

So, it wasn’t luxury accommodation.

Anne Lockwood

No.

Ida Blackler

We were told by the powers that be, they had one-and-ha’pence to spend on every person for a meal, so, they had to find something that would keep us going for one-and-ha’pence.

Brendan Brookshaw

When I was at Chantmarle [police training college] in ’88, one of the first things we were told was the Home Office provides 55 pence a day for your food and it was awful. This must be a thing for police caterers. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

Margaret.

Margaret Vickery

All I was going to add … Ida and I went away together, and I was just going to say yes, it was an army camp. We actually went away between Christmas and New Year, so we had the three months of winter in Staffordshire. I’ve never known the cold. Brought up in Cornwall, we did have snow up here every year, but I looked out of the window one morning and the trees were all covered in an inch of white, and I thought it had snowed, but that was frost. I’ve never known frost like that. It was cold.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Daphne?

Daphne Jago

Well, I went to [inaudible] as well and I went on the 7th January and I’ll never forget that because like Margaret said, it was very, very cold. I had a drill sergeant that had just come out of the Shropshire regiment and so he was very keen with his pace stick. We used to go swimming at 7 o’clock in the morning and an army lorry used to take us. There was no way of getting into this thing other than climbing on it, so you can imagine doing that in a skirt. We used to do that into Newcastle-Under-Lyme and we’d do our swimming test in there and then we’d get brought back. It was much like army standards really. I think it was just the place that brought that about.

Judith Rowbotham

I think you said to me Daphne that by the time you got back from the swimming training, getting out of the lorry was …

Daphne Jago

Almost exhausting. I think we fell out of it by the time we got back because at that time of year, like Margaret said, it was just so cold and if you go swimming for an hour, you were numb, but there was a classroom after that, so you couldn’t give in.

Ida Blackler

It was getting back into uniform after you’d been swimming. It was so difficult. I remember the drill sergeant threatening to stick his drill stick up your nose and stir your brains up.

Daphne Jago

That’s right, “I’ll stir your brains up” he used to say.

Ida Blackler

Horrible little women, one and two, that was us. He just didn’t like West Country people.

Margaret Vickery

I remember a girl, ______ she was called, we were really friendly with, on the passing-out parade, she couldn’t coordinate her legs. She was so nervous and because I’d broken my wrist I wasn’t allowed on the parade. I had to stand on the side and I was watching poor ______ and her legs were going like this, all out of step with everybody else. It was really weird, but that was being frightened of him.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Cindy?

Cindy Page

Pauline and I went to Ryton-on-Dunsmore. My joining date was the 11^th July 1966. I led a reasonably sheltered life and those 13 weeks were the funniest, most wonderful elements of my life. I’ve never laughed so much in my life. The accommodation was adequate. It was clean. It was very vigorous. We were sent on cross-country runs and on the drill parade with the boys. We had Sergeant _____, who was an ex-RSM and he’d come alongside you if you weren’t stepping out properly and say “left, right, left, right, left, right or I’ll stick this drill stick up your rectum and march you around like a mobile lollipop”. [laughter] You either took it or you didn’t. What would they say now? But, I’ve never enjoyed it so much in all my life. I went back there on my finals and I’m still in touch with people that I trained with now. It was lovely.

Judith Rowbotham

Pat, you said when you came back you plunged straight back into work. There was no sort of easing in. So, the training was expected to thoroughly equip you for …

Cindy Page

We had a tutor constable. We were all assigned a tutor constable when you came back from training school for the two years that you were on probation.

Judith Rowbotham

Was that a male constable or a female constable?

Cindy Page

A female.

Pauline Bradley

And not always on the same shift as you. You might not see them for a week, so it wasn’t very tight tutoring. You still went out on patrol on your own and things like that.

Daphne Jago

I suppose in Plymouth we were the earliest ones in the city. I think we thought it was a great experience, but I don’t think any one of us here today would’ve had it any other way. I think we’ve all enjoyed our time. I have to say, after my upbringing it was the making of me, certainly and I just think it was a fantastic thing to belong to. As I said earlier, I wished I could have continued much longer. Women today do have much greater opportunities than some of us ever had.

Judith Rowbotham

Brendan, do you have another question?

Brendan Brookshaw

Can I be a pain again and ask another indelicate question?

Judith Rowbotham

It depends on how indelicate it is.

Brendan Brookshaw

Part of my role as head of police complaints and counter-corruption is obviously corruption threats and for the police, at the moment, that is sexual misconduct by police officers, and in the main, that’s male police officers, both towards female colleagues and to members of the public. So, my indelicate question is, do you ever feel that you suffered from sexism or harassment when you were working?

Pauline Bradley

A little anecdote, I walked into the city centre police station one day, and one of the very jolly well-known policemen had this box which he would share about with other policemen and I, being innocent said, “you never share all these goodies that you get with the policewomen.” There were policemen around and he handed me the box, “you can have them”, and it was a box of condoms [laughter] which he got from one of the local hairdressers. There were no pills back in those days and he got them from one of the local hairdressers and was sharing with the other policemen on duty. I put my foot right in it. Other than that, no, they were very good to us.

Margaret Vickery

There was one at the police city centre station that didn’t like policewomen. I can’t remember his name now, but he was the only one. He was nasty to any of the policewomen.

Ida Blackler

I can remember when I was still typing, but was in the throes of joining and one elderly sergeant said “us have done without e before us had e maid, and us’ll do without e after”.

Margaret Vickery

Was that ____ ____, Ida?

Ida Blackler

Yes.

Margaret Vickery

Right, I’ll tell you a little story about ____ ____. He was a right giggler. I had to accompany him to a place in North Road with the medical officer of health and he had to go and certify a lady who, sadly, had lost her marbles. We go to the top of this house and right at the top she had a room and when we got in this room she was in bed, fully covered up. When we arrived, she sat up, she was fully clothed, saw me, grabbed my hand, stood on the bed, walked to the end of the bed and she’s standing there saying “what are you doing here? get out of my room, this is my land, my empire”. _____ started to giggle and she saw this giggle, but I was in line with the smack that went out and that was the only time I ever got hit. When that happened, the medical officer of health grabbed hold of her and off she went. It was sad, but that was ____ ____. He was always up to tricks. There were so many tricks they used to play on people. I remember they had some new policemen recruits in the traffic department and they let the story go around that royalty was coming and that they had to be on duty down through Royal Parade. In those days all the police cars were black. _____ and some of his colleagues drove down through the Parade, stuck a flag on the front and made out that that was the royal car and these young recruits were standing there saluting. Again, _____ _____.

Pauline Bradley

The only sight of sexual harassment I can remember is we had to go swimming every week to get our bronze medallion. We went to the swimming pool at the Royal Naval barracks, which was basic. All the changing facilities were little single rooms, but with that much space under the door and that much space above the door. The policeman who was taking the classes would stay out of the water until all the policewomen got in there to change back into their uniform and he’d suddenly jump into the pool and be walking up and down the pool looking underneath. We all hated him for it because we knew what he was doing. In this day and age, you wouldn’t take it, you’d be out there and bop him one.

Kim Stevenson

I was going to say, I think my generation is in the middle because we did have sexual harassment. It was completely different. There were colleagues that were inappropriate in what they said, in things they tried to do, in things that they would show you, and it’s just occurring to me, because you were almost like this separate… but also that must have meant that the senior officers had real respect for you as well. In my experience, which isn’t that much later, so 1977 is only two years after the Sexual Discrimination Act came in or thereabouts, was actually quite different. Today, the policewomen that were subjected to the kind of things or the things that we saw, would know exactly what to do because it’s people like Brendan that have set up proper systems that are accessible to go and complain to. We had nothing like that. You couldn’t complain. You just had to ignore it or make sure that how you operated you were better than … you had to be as good as the guys, if not better, to be accepted in the first place. That’s what equality kind of brought in, the Discrimination Act. You had to handle it in your own way because in those days, those sorts of things wouldn’t have been taken seriously. I was young and naive as well, often not even to know that what was happening was inappropriate. When you look back with hindsight and you look back now with all the #Metoo campaigns and everything else, you realise that actually a lot of what was going on, was not, in any way, acceptable.

Daphne Jago

I think _____ sort of thought that we were her family. She did defend us, at every cost. She would say “my girls aren’t doing that”.

Ida Blackler

But she did use to mother us a bit, but then of course, again, we’re going back to early days. It’s not at all like that now, is it?

Judith Rowbotham

Did you have any sexual harassment from the public? One of you, I think it was you Daphne, said that your uniforms may have been smart, but they weren’t glamorous.

Daphne Jago

Well, they weren’t glamorous, but they were smart. We just got trained and did it to the best of our ability. Again, like I said from the very beginning, we all looked very smart, and I have to say in today’s world, that doesn’t happen. I’m sorry about that, but I look at them sometimes and think if I’d come with nail polish on, ear-rings in, and my hair in a ponytail and I went around questioning people with police here and no hat, I don’t really know how you gain respect these days. You’ve got to have respect by looking at somebody who is really good at their job, and I don’t see that anymore.

Cindy Page

One area, as far as the public’s concerned, that I’m pleased there is an improvement is in domestic violence. I’ve been out with a PC before - they’d always call a policewoman if they had to go and answer a domestic violence, and on the way, you’d get “don’t get involved maid because it’s only a domestic”, so, I’m really pleased to see them in a more protective role. When I look back, I see women didn’t have any means of supporting themselves if they left their partner or husband and there were usually children involved. Another thing is, if you got involved, you’d be hours taking statements and the very next day she would come back and withdraw her statement. Overnight, they made up in some way and she’d change her mind. I am pleased to see now that both men and women who are abused in the home are dealt with adequately.

Luke Fisher

I just wondered in respect of your point Daphne, something that perhaps equality has done has meant the public are no longer supposed to respect a uniform. We’re supposed to respect people these days. We’re supposed to respect individuals and so, I think, the theory is, the perception is that the fact that a policewoman doesn’t have a hat on or has nail varnish, shouldn’t be an issue because the public are supposed to perceive it differently to how the public perceived it in your day.

Daphne Jago

Well that’s where we agree to differ, I think.

Luke Fisher

I’m talking about a difference of 40 years. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying that I think the perception has changed. I wasn’t around and I can understand, up to a degree I was brought up to respect a uniform. I’m 37, I was brought up to respect a uniform. I think these days the focus is on individuals and on people, not on a uniform.

Judith Rowbotham

Yet appearances still count.

Luke Fisher

Yes, and it’s interesting what you said that sometimes in the big fights the policemen pushing the policewomen forward because of the perception that they would distil the fight quicker. I’ve worked for many years behind bars, pulling pints, not as in prison [laughter] and there are times when absolutely, I would suggest that one of the barmaids went to try and calm down those two gents because they’re going to respond to her a lot more than they are going to respond to the six-foot-six prat with the long hair. But there are times when we didn’t do that, and if it was particularly violent then my inclination would be, no girls, you step back, I’ll try to get punched this time. There are still times when I would send a barmaid in to try and calm the men down, then deal with it as a man. So, I don’t know if that’s necessarily changed a huge amount.

Judith Rowbotham

One of the things that intrigued me when I was looking at prosecutions and police arrests in the period from about the 1870s up until the First World War, was that there were many arrests made for bad language. What I realised was that it was the language particularly being used by sailors. There’s one notorious incident where … there were the flower class of corvettes and one of them launched in Devonport was initially named HMS Pansy, and it led to a certain number of incidents until it was renamed HMS Heartsease. Bad language was the euphemism for provocative language, if you like, likely to lead sailors from one ship to fight with sailors from another ship or the merchant marine to fight with the marines or the Royal Navy - various things like that. Was that something that tradition in any way echoed in your experience? The language on the streets was something that you needed to take account of.

Pauline Bradley

Nowadays, all the women swear anyway, but in those days, very, very few women swore and accepted swearing, but when you were in your job, in your uniform, you just took what the language was because you were dealing with different grades of people and that was their common language. It wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. Today, even sitting on a bus, you’ve got to accept that there will be bad language, but in those days, that was part of your uniformed job, you just ignored it.

Pat Jackson

I always used to say I accepted that language when I was in uniform, but I don’t accept it now, and I don’t. My husband will tell you, I very often say that to people. What I accepted, bad language wise, the f-word particularly, I just can’t stand it now and I won’t have it in my company. Perhaps I’m a prude, I don’t know.

Pauline Bradley

It’s when you had to read it out of your pocket-book in court.

Luke Fisher

Lawyers still enjoy doing that now. There’s no fun like swearing in court. [laughter]

Pat Jackson

That was another experience we had as policewomen as well. We always seemed to get a rougher deal than the policemen when we went to court to give evidence. They always treated us … needed more information, more detail. The policemen used to go in, swear the oath, give their evidence, out, but not policewomen. We really used to get asked impertinent questions.

Kim Stevenson

Do you think that was because of the kind of cases that you were dealing with?

Pat Jackson

It could possibly have been, but they did seem to make it much more difficult. I remember on one occasion we had a particularly … I don’t think he liked policewomen, he was the clerk, and I used to do shorthand at 120 words a minute and I watched this man writing his shorthand and he still complained that I gave my evidence too quick, he couldn’t keep up with me and I was watching him write it. I knew what he was writing, and I made a complaint to Miss ____ about it because I thought it was totally unnecessary. Certainly, for policewomen in court giving evidence, it was much more difficult for us than it was for the policemen.

Judith Rowbotham

You’re nodding your head, Margaret.

Margaret Vickery

Yes. I remember being grilled in the magistrate’s court with one job. I think it was a shoplifting job I had which went on for weeks and weeks. There were children involved and it just escalated because this one child was caught shoplifting, and bearing in mind we used to do patrolling in plain clothes in the stores in those days, now they have their own. I must have caught the child and then with questioning, she told me that she had given lots to this friend and that friend, she couldn’t remember what shop she had stolen it all from. We had to round up all this stuff from all her friend’s homes. I had so much stuff, I didn’t know where it had all come from and I had a long table, like this, in the city centre police station, all laid out with all this stuff and I invited all the managers from all the stores to identify their own stuff. So, in court, this took an awful long time and I remember I just relished the job of answering the questions and standing up to this clerk who kept on and on and on, but I gave it back to him. I remember, whoever it was, a chief inspector probably, saying at the end “well done you”.

Pauline Bradley

For standing up to him.

Margaret Vickery

Yes.

Pauline Bradley

I think they were like that to all police officers in a way. It wasn’t only the women. They tried to make the police look wrong. That’s part of the court procedure, isn’t it?

Jill Annison

Can I just jump in there because probation’s my particular area of expertise and right at the beginning I think you said that you worked alongside probation and the children’s services, and of course, in probation, in those days, you had to have a woman probation officer to work with female offenders and with children. So, I just wondered whether you got any experiences of working within court or in other arenas with probation staff.

Daphne Jago

I personally got on with all the liaising, with the children’s department and the probation officers and the welfare people. The cooperation between our policewomen’s department and those departments was very good in my time. I would have no complaints about it at all.

Pauline Bradley

I didn’t have any problems with it. In my particular instance, I didn’t come across it an awful lot.

Margaret Vickery

If children were involved, especially if they had to be taken into care …

Jill Annison

Yes, I suppose that’s what I was wondering about because I was a probation officer around that time and I remember male police officers quite often saying “they’ve been let off” or “they’ve been put on probation”, but my memories of working with female police officers, particularly in connection with children or with young women, was that the welfare concerns came much more to the fore. That was in common across the police, probation, children’s services and everything.

Daphne Jago

They always used to let us know the results of our cases. I don’t know if anybody else can remember, but there was always a newspaper man who used to sell the papers outside the Hyde Park Hotel on Mutley Plain and one morning I went up to do the point and there had been a baby dropped on the doorstep where this newspaper man always sold his newspapers. We had to get the police car down and then they traced the woman, eventually. We also used to accompany them at their medical examinations. You always had to be present for that. Then the job went onto CID and I didn’t hear any more about it, except to say, they kept me informed that the baby was fine. It transpired that it was a married man’s baby and obviously they had deposited it as soon as it was born. To save its life was wonderful, but I do remember, distinctly, being on the point sometime later, and I couldn’t say now how long, but two lades came up from Thorn Park and Thorn Park was a remand home. Anyway, she came up and she got to me and said, “you’re the lady I spoke to when I had my baby” and I didn’t know who she was. She said, “I’m the lady who dropped the baby on the doorstep of the Hyde Park Hotel and I want to thank you for all you did”. That must have been 18 months or more after. So, I said, “more to the point, where’s your child?”, she said, “he’s wonderful” and she still had him. I thought that was one of the loveliest stories, but it was wonderful that she recognised me. I didn’t know who she was because it was quite a while after. It was a happy ending to a very sad story. Now, it happens all the time. I think they always kept us well informed, and they were always there for us.

Judith Rowbotham

I wondered if there was anything that any of you wanted to add any stories that you remember about triumphs or not triumphs, but you haven’t talked about so far that you would like to contribute.

Ida Blackler

I got locked in a brothel. [laughter]

Brendan Brookshaw

That’s your story and you’re sticking to it. [laughter]

Ida Blackler

I went out with some policeman in a car and did observations. It was a flat, but it was on a slope and the men at the bottom were to flash their lights to the men at the top when we were going in. My job was to go down and knock on the door and give a false name and when they saw the door open and the shaft of light, they would all converge, but the residents had taken all the bulbs out of the lights and the men didn’t see the shaft of light and I was in and the door was locked behind me. There was one room with three or four prams in and a coal fire and the other rooms were occupied at that time, but there would be customers. I was rescued in time. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t very funny at the time. [laughter] I even dyed my hair for that. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

What colour?

Ida Blackler

Red. [laughter]

Pauline Bradley

I remember a naval wife and her husband was away and she had a very disabled child. It must’ve been when we were Devon & Cornwall because I think they lived at Wembury. The child was very disabled and had become strong enough to hurt her and she was on her own with this very, very disabled child and in the end, she suffocated it. She went into hospital, and I was on suicide watch with her, sat in the hospital, and I think that was one of saddest things because she dearly loved this boy. He’d just got that he was stronger than her and she could see that she either had to let him go into a home because she couldn’t cope with him anymore and she actually put a pillow over his face. I did suicide watch with her in Devonport Hospital. I always remember and think that’s one of the saddest things I ever dealt with because she was so distraught to what she had to do. Her husband was aboard ship and away and he was an officer. It was quite a nice family, but …

Pat Jackson

I had a very sad experience with a lady whose husband was in prison charged with murder and serving a sentence. She had two daughters, and they were in the welfare accommodation and she stole a hand of bananas and a packet of sweets because she had no money. This was to buy her daughter’s friends at school. They would take them to school and pass them around. She got done for shoplifting, obviously, and prosecuted and the welfare got involved, but she kept the two children. This woman was so distraught because she had no money, no home, her husband in prison and she was struggling to bring up the two daughters. She actually committed suicide. She took some tablets and she wrote a note to the policewomen and it was directed to the policewomen at every stage as she was fading away, having taken these tablets, having committed suicide. The eldest daughter subsequently became a prostitute. I don’t know what happened to the other daughter. That was the saddest thing I had to deal with and it upset me for quite a long time.

Pauline Bradley

I think those are the things that we remember, the sad things that we had to deal with.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Anne?

Anne Lockwood

I think the saddest thing was it was one Christmas and it was whilst I was at Plympton and there was an accident at Yelverton. This guy who was in the Navy was coming home on leave to his wife at Plympton and he gave a lift to a friend, somewhere at Yelverton. I don’t know what happened, but somehow, he skidded off the road and hit a boulder and was killed outright. I had to go around with a policeman who actually knew the family and tell her. It was his second wife and at the time she had a small little girl, and she was very, very pregnant and we had to break the news to her that he’d been killed. When we went first to the house, she opened the door and said to the policeman, who she knew, “come in, George won’t be very long, I’m expecting him home”. We could actually smell the dinner cooking and that always sticks in my mind, even at Christmas and when I ever go to that area of Plympton, and that’s many, many years ago, when I first went to Plympton, so, we’re talking about ’68-ish.

Judith Rowbotham

I think, unless there’s anything else anybody would like to add, what I’d like to do is thank you for putting up with our questions for the last two hours and for putting in such hard work and giving us such a fascinating time. I could carry on talking to you and listening to you for at least another two hours, but I do think you’ve earnt early release for good behaviour. Thank you very, very much indeed for what, I think, will be an absolutely fantastic witness seminar contribution.

[Applause]

End of Recording