In 1888, a Victorian woman wrote to The Times newspaper rightly indignant that Scotland Yard refused to countenance the idea of female detectives being sent to investigate the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel.
Sir Charles Warren, London’s police chief, had just breezily dismissed the idea of women being recruited to investigate the Whitechapel murders. The Irish-born women’s suffrage campaign Frances Power Cobbe was furious at Warren’s attitude and penned the letter, reproduced below, blasting the police.
This was published on October 11, 1888, and I’m proud to have the original newspaper in my extensive collection of old newspapers going back three hundred years.
The advantages a woman would have in this case were obvious to Frances Cobbe. Not least the ability to “extract gossip” from other women on the streets that might help identify the killer.
Unlike her male counterparts, a female detective wouldn’t attract attention to herself by pounding the beat in an almost military manner, sticking out like a sore thumb. And Frances added that women like Florence Nightingale had already proven themselves in challenging situations, such as the Crimean War.
Contrast Cobbe’s constructive criticism with another adjacent letter on the same page of the newspaper from a parson moaning that his vicarage had been ransacked by thieves in broad daylight because the police were too busy in Whitechapel.
