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

Shortly after war broke out in the late summer of 1914, people in Britain were witness to what was, for the times, a curious sight. Women, generally in pairs, wearing lettered armlets and darkly colored clothes or official looking uniforms, began patrolling after dark in streets,. These were the new women police and patrols of the war years, who lobbied for a permantent female police, an aim that was realized already during the war. A female police continued to exit  and develop in peacetime Britain. The main function of the female police, mainly staffed by middle class women,  was  the policing of working class women and youth with the aim to control and reduce their "immoral" and "inappropriate" behavior. The British female police became a model for the development of  female police  forces in other countries lilke Germany and the United States after World War I.