Women police in NSW: a history of firsts

Following political pressure by women’s rights campaigners, and with personnel shortages caused by men enlisting to serve in World War I, Inspector General of the NSW Police James Mitchell was authorised to appoint two women police officers. Advertisements in newspapers specified that ‘[a]pplicants should be under 30 years of age, capable of enduring hardship and fatigue, of good character and address and fair education’.³ From the 400 to 500 applications that were received, Mitchell selected Maude Rhodes (aged 36), an inspector at the State Children’s Relief Department, and Lillian Armfield (aged 30), a nurse at Callan Park Hospital for the Insane in the Sydney suburb of Lilyfield.

Their duties were wide-ranging, though centred on the protection of women, girls and children, with an emphasis on upholding the moral standards of the time. A list of duties signed by Inspector General Mitchell states, among other things, that the women police were to ‘watch the newspapers [for advertisements] … endeavouring to decoy young girls’, ‘patrol slum neighbourhoods … to look after drunken women’, and ‘keep an eye on houses of ill-fame, and on the wineshops and hotels frequented by women of the town’.⁴ Regrettably, the women were paid less than their male colleagues, and were required to resign if they married. They also had to take out their own insurance, sign an agreement indemnifying the NSW Police against liability if they incurred work-related injuries, and renounce their claim to the police pension.⁵

Rhodes was discharged in 1919, after which she became involved in campaigns for women’s rights.⁶ Armfield had a distinguished 34-year career in the police, receiving the King’s Police and Fire Service Medal for outstanding service in 1947 and the Imperial Service Medal in 1949; however, on her retirement in 1949 nothing had been paid into her superannuation. Episodes from her career are vividly narrated in her 1961 biography Rugged angel, containing the only firsthand account from an early woman police officer.⁷ The numbers of women police recruited in the decades after the appointment of Armfield and Rhodes remained relatively low: four by 1925 and eight by 1929, increasing to 36 by 1946.⁸

In 1948, Amy Millgate and Gladys Johnson were invited to join the NSW Police Traffic Branch to direct traffic, after Commissioner William MacKay saw women playing a similar role in police forces overseas. This was also the first time since the appointment of women to the police force in 1915 that they were issued with a uniform, which was developed by Millgate and Johnson themselves based on military attire. Previously, women police had worn plain clothes with few stipulations, though ‘if they wore anything bright or floral’ they would be asked by Special Sergeant Lillian Armfield ‘if they thought they were going to a garden party’.⁹

The first women’s uniform worn in 1948 consisted of a ‘feminine’ dark blue military-style tunic, with skirt, shirt and tie. In 1972, new uniforms were issued to the entire NSW Police Force. For women police, the tie was replaced with a feminine ‘butterfly’ bow tie and a new hat was introduced, nicknamed the ‘tea cosy’ or ‘flowerpot’ due to its shape. (This hat was issued to women police for the next 40 years, until 2010, when they were given the same cap as their male colleagues wore). High-heeled or court shoes were also issued, along with a handbag. Trousers were not issued until the early 1990s.¹⁰

The highly impractical clothing that women police were expected to wear for much of the 20th century was recalled by Armfield in her memoirs. In 1929, Armfield was undertaking arduous surveillance of the cocaine supplier ‘Botany’ May Smith outside Smith’s Surry Hills terrace in Sydney, hoping to catch her in the act. After seeing Botany May remove a loose brick in her outhouse, behind which she stored cocaine, Armfield sprang into action. But Botany May ran into the kitchen to get a scorching hot flatiron. ‘I wasn’t going to argue with a red-hot flat-iron, and I pulled up my skirts and ran for my life’, Armfield recounted.¹¹

The first women police at a Passing Out ceremony (1958)

A Passing Out ceremony is the culmination of the formal training of police and military personnel. Graduates of the NSW Police are reviewed before senior officers and dignitaries, and then take an oath to ‘cause His Majesty’s peace to be kept and preserved’.¹² Until the mid-20th century, women police received limited training, in part due to their restriction to a narrow range of duties. It was not until 1958 that two women, Janice Mossfield and Noellie Hobart, graduated from the same training course as their male counterparts, excluding physical training, swimming and pistol practice.¹³

The raft of anti-discrimination measures passed in the 1970s, along with changing social attitudes, led to what has been called the ‘apex of this period of change’, namely the assignment of four women to general police duties.¹⁶ The early women police had been expected to play a maternal role; later they were expected to be teachers helping children with road safety; but now they were finally deployed in society on an equal footing with male officers. In 1976, four women were assigned to general duties on a trial basis: Claire Britton to Mascot Airport police, and Christine Nixon, Christine Ridley and Margaret White to Darlinghurst Police Station.

Christine Nixon writes about her experiences in her 2011 autobiography, Fair cop. Darlinghurst Police Station was the busiest in NSW, located in the sex worker, drug and alcohol epicentre of Sydney. Nixon recalls that when she, Ridley and White arrived ‘we got a chilly reception from our police brothers, who almost universally regarded us as spies’.¹⁷ As with the tireless work of early women police, the ‘darlings of Darlo’ – as they were described – distinguished themselves through hard work despite ongoing wariness towards women police within the force. The trial was successful, and from 1980, women could choose assignment to general duties after graduating from the Police Force Academy in Goulburn. Nixon herself went on to have a remarkable career, as the first female Assistant Commissioner in NSW (1994–2001), the first woman to hold a commissioner rank in Australia as the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police (2001–09), and the first police commissioner in Australia to march in a gay and lesbian parade (the Midsumma Pride March, Melbourne, 2002).

The history of women in the NSW Police Force since 1915 has been a series of firsts. Formerly relegated to a limited and peripheral role, women have – through a succession of hard-won individual advances – become central to police work in wider society today. The women mentioned in this article – including Lillian Armfield, Amy Millgate, Gladys Johnson and Christine Nixon – are just some of the many women who have served the community through the NSW Police and whose images feature in the Justice & Police Museum Collection. Some firsts have been achieved even more recently, for example the appointment of the first female Commissioner of NSW Police (Karen Webb, in February 2022), while other firsts are yet to be achieved. Being the first is often a lonely, daring act for the trailblazer, but it is done in the faith that they will not be the last.

See these photographs and more in the Justice & Police Museum online catalogue.