With her hair in a primlooking bun and round spectacles Edith Smith didn’t look much like a pioneering crimefighter. The former midwife was already in middle age when she became the first policewoman in Britain to be granted the power of arrest 100 years ago.
The nation was waging a war against Germany and hundreds of thousands of men were fighting overseas. So the decision was borne more out of necessity than a genuine desire to promote equality.
Nonetheless Edith patrolled the streets of Grantham, Lincolnshire, in the knowledge that her sex no longer prevented her from marching offenders off to the cells. At the time the place was an unruly barracks town, likened to the Wild West. – READ MORE
