All-Women Police Precinct

March is Women’s History Month. Our site always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.

One hundred years ago today … NYC inaugurated its first all-women's police precinct, under command of officer Mary Hamilton, who had joined the force in 1917, and whom some consider the department’s first woman police officer (Schultz 41).

Police Commissioner Richard Enright, having recently disbanded the 22nd Precinct in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, because of corruption issues, put the women’s squadron in charge of the station at 434-436 37th Street. (The building subsequently became a jail; the lot is now empty.) Isabel Goodwin, the first ever women detective for the NY Police Department, was named as Hamilton’s assistant. 

Dorothy Moses Schultz writes of the history that led to the all-women precinct, including the tight connections between women police officers and progressive social workers in the years leading up to 1921. Those links led to plans for the precinct:

The precinct, which Hamilton said was her idea—a claim no one disputed—was also to include a clinic and a temporary hospital for the care and venereal-disease testing of the girls in custody, and classrooms in which policewomen would receive their training. The officers were to be assisted in their duties by a "hostess committee" of women volunteers, including Enright's wife, who would arrange to show the runaway girls New York City before they were returned to their parents or guardians. Recreational and occupational interests were also to be provided for the girls. But, in keeping with the stern morality that formed the basis of this motherly rhetoric, it seemed unlikely the runaways would have time to sightsee and bond with  their hostesses. (50)

Of course, 1921 being 1921, women cops were not always treated in the press the same way their male counterparts were. Case in point, this news item about new uniforms, just a few days before the new precinct was launched:

“One of the features of the suit is that the vestee can be eliminated and the coat and skirt will comprise a natty sport or business costume.”

References/Further reading:

Schulz, Dorothy Moses. “A Precinct of Their Own: The New York City Women's Precinct, 1921–1923.” New York History, vol. 85, no. 1, 2004, pp. 39–64. JSTOR. 

– Jonathan Goldman, March 8, 2021

TAGS: women’s history, police, NYPD, law enforcement, social workers