Feminist Freikorps: The British Voluntary Women Police, 1914-1940

This text examines the Women Police Service. Formed in 1914 by middle-class veterans of the militant suffrage campaign in Britain, at odds throughout its history with authorities and mainstream feminist organizations, and often operating in defiance of the law, the Women Police Service combined authoritarianism and feminist activism to create its own concept of policing between world wars. The WPS was a feminist organization dedicated to the supervision and control of women themselves.