Elizabeth Constance Bather OBE (11 October 1904 – 8 January 1988) was a British Women's Auxiliary Air Force and police officer who served as the second commander of the London Metropolitan Police's A4 Branch (Women Police), from 1946 to 1960 and was the first female police officer in the United Kingdom to be promoted to chief superintendent when the rank was introduced into the Metropolitan Police in 1949.
Elizabeth Bather | |
|---|---|
| Head of A4 Branch (Women Police), Metropolitan Police | |
| In office December 1946 – December 1960 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Elizabeth Constance Bather 11 October 1904 Winchester, Hampshire, England |
| Died | 8 January 1988 (aged 83) Nately Scures, Hampshire, England |
Family and early life
editBather was born in Winchester, the second of two children born to Shropshire-born Arthur George Bather and Sheffield-born mother Lilian Dundas Firth, who had married in August 1895,[1] a steel-manufacturer's daughter, and their only daughter. Arthur was a housemaster at Winchester College at the time of Elizabeth's birth, hence her birthplace. He was also a Church of England priest, a cricketer for Hampshire and an archaeologist of ancient Greece.[2]
She was educated at St Swithun's School in the city. On 14 January 1928, she was fined £3 with 30 shillings costs for dangerous driving after a collision with a motorcyclist at West End.[3] From 1937 to 1946 she was a magistrate in Winchester, one of the youngest in the country, and also a member of Hampshire County Council.
WAAF career
editOn 5 April 1939, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) with the rank of company assistant (equivalent to pilot officer in the RAF, the lowest commissioned officer rank)[4] and was already living at RAF Odiham by the time of the 1939 Register that September.[5] She served in Bomber Command, rising to be senior staff officer in charge of WAAFs, and also went to Canada in 1941 to help set up the Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She was promoted squadron officer in March 1942 and wing officer in January 1945 and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 New Year Honours.
Police career
editIn 1945, Bather joined the Metropolitan Police with the rank of chief inspector and the following year succeeded Superintendent Dorothy Peto as head of women police, being promoted to superintendent herself. At 5 feet 4 inches, she only barely met the minimum height standard for the force. As head of A4 (Women's) Branch, her immediate superior was the Assistant Commissioner "A".
Bather attempted to "feminise" the female officers, redesigning the uniform in 1946 and allowing policewomen to wear makeup on duty. In 1946 she also removed the bar to married women joining and serving policewomen getting married which had been in force since the 1920s. She gave evidence to the Wolfenden Committee in favour of decriminalising homosexuality. She died in Nately Scures and is buried at Odiham.
Bibliography
edit- Biography, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Biography, Who Was Who
References
edit- ^ 'WEDDING OF MISS FIRTH AND MR. ARTHUR GEORGE BATHER', Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 8 August 1895, page 4
- ^ Cambridge University Alumni, 1261-1900
- ^ 'WEST END ACCIDENT - Winchester Woman Motorist Fined - BISHOP'S WALTHAM MEN'S EVIDENCE', Hampshire Advertiser, 25 February 1928, page 14
- ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, 19 September 1939, page 6359
- ^ "1939 Register Booklet. County: Hampshire. Enumeration District: EEIX. District: Hartley Wintney Rural District, Line Number 32, Schedule Number 1, Registration district 105-3, Volume Number: 2379".