Document Of The Month: A Woman’s Place is in The…Police!

This March is Women’s History Month, when we celebrate the achievements of some incredible characters who have championed women through the ages.

Locally, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, we have a number of heroines of whom we can be extremely proud, and many of these are unsung, never before heard of by the general public.

One such unsung heroine was Elsie Yates who, together with a small number of ladies, was one of the first females to sign up with the East Riding Constabulary. She was in fact the third person to join as a ‘Woman Police Constable’ (WPC).

It was at the beginning of the Second World War, and the number of men required for active duty with the Armed Forces created a shortage of police officers, so it was down to characters like Elsie to step up to the plate and fill the void.

Sadly, Elsie passed away in 2012, so it’s fortunate that, a few months beforehand, she spoke to the East Riding Archives & Local Studies Service about her experiences as a WPC in wartime the East Riding of Yorkshire, and committed her memories to record.

Now, this recording has been made available by the Archives on East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s YouTube channel so that everyone can hear Elsie’s remarkable story.

Sam Bartle, collections officer, said:

“Elsie was an amazing woman. At a time when a woman’s ‘place’ was still considered to be ‘in the home’ she got stuck right in to the task at hand without a thought for whether or not it might be considered socially unacceptable for a woman to be in the police force.”

“Yet, she still had a great sense of duty for the social conventions of the day, and when her husband returned from the Army after the war, she hung up her uniform to become a housewife without any hesitation.””

Many of those pioneering police women signed up out of necessity rather than any feminist ideals, but they are undoubtedly heroines of women’s history for this region.