Dawson, Margaret Damer OBE – Founder of Grantham’s policewomen

Margaret Damer Dawson (1873-1920)

MARGARET Damer Dawson, the daughter of surgeon Richard Dawson and his wife, Agnes Baird was born at, Hove, Sussex.

She was educated at the London Academy of Music.

Although she later helped found a home for abandoned babies, her most notable early activity was campaigning for the humane treatment of animals.

In 1906 she became organising secretary of the International Animal Protection Societies in 1906. She was also active in the in the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society.

Although not a suffragette, she was interested in feminist issues as the campaign against the traffic in women and children, and served on the Criminal Law Amendment Committee in 1914.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Dawson was asked to help find homes for Belgian refugees. She was shocked to discover attempts by British men at railway stations attempting to recruit Belgian women as prostitutes.

It was then she formed the Women Police Volunteers (WPV).

The government had always opposed the idea of policewomen but with the outbreak of war and many policemen joining the Army, it was thought better to have women volunteers to help run the service.

A key reason it was accepted was that her members were willing to work without pay.
 Miss Dawson’s brother-in-law, Captain Kensington, was stationed in Grantham, and he arranged for “police women” to carry out patrols in the town, to protect young women in the town from the attentions of the 25,000 men from the 11th Division encamped just outside at Belton and Harrowby.

Thus, the first women police officers in the UK carrying out actual policing duties were Miss Dawson who became Commandant and Mary Allen, a member of the Women Political and Social Union who had been imprisoned three times during the campaign for the vote, Sub-Commandant.

The couple lived together from 1913 until Dawson’s death in 1920.

Dawson, Allen, and a Miss Ellen Harburn, were based in Grantham.

They wore a uniform designed by Miss Dawson, but had no powers of arrest. They moved drunks on, visited the families of girls they believed were in “moral danger”, and enforced, controversially, a curfew imposed on the women of Grantham by the Army. If they came across a couple lying together on the ground, they would be prodded with an unrolled umbrella.

When the Armistice was signed, there were over 357 members of the Women’s Police Service. Commandant Dawson and Subcommandant Mary Allen, and Dawson were awarded the OBE for services to their country during wartime.

She retired through ill health in 1919 and she was replaced as Commandant of the Women’s Police Service by Mary Allen. She died the following year.