The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
their motivation clear. It spoke of the necessity for police matrons,
‘in order to prevent suffering from the possible vice, brutality,
or incompetency in illness of male officials’. 19 It is clear that
NVA women had no trust in male police and feared, doubtless
as the result of their considerable experience, that they might
take the opportunity to further assault the victims as well as
showing general insensitivity. The call for police matrons was
part of a wider demand for the employment of women in all
areas where men might cause distress to women and girls. In
1891 the NVA adopted the policy that women and children
seeking help should, if an examination was necessary, only see
women doctors. The reasons given were very practical. Women
and children who had been assaulted by men should not have
to suffer examination by another man which could seem like a
second assault. It was more difficult to get the police to accept
the need for women police doctors. Nesta H.Wells, the first
woman police surgeon, started her duties in Manchester as late
as 1927. In an article in the Shield she stressed the importance
of women and girls who had been sexually assaulted being
examined by women. 20
It was in the power of the judge to ‘clear the court’ in sexual
abuse cases. This was usually taken to mean clearing the court
of all women including, often, women justices and women jurors.
The AMSH of a 1916 survey of the treatment of sex offences in
ten towns in Britain, stated:
It seems to us that cases of indecent assault and criminal
assault, above all cases, justify the institution of women police
officials. It is appalling to think that a frightened child must
stand up in a court full of men to give her evidence, when
she ought to be in a woman’s lap, with only those officials
present who are absolutely necessary. 21
A 1915 article in the Vote stipulated the need for women police
for the same reason. In this case the employer of a 13-year-old
girl who had seduced her shortly after she went into service
was acquitted because the girl was too terrified to give evidence.
The writer comments, Think of a child taken into a court full of
men – her one terrible experience of a man had naturally made
her suspicious of all men—and she had been asked questions
the meaning of which, in most cases, she could not have
understood.’ 22
The women campaigners wanted women magistrates and
women jurors as well as women police. A Miss Muller outlined
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