1-192-512 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Policewomen being inspected by Mary S Allen in London, May 1915. Mary S Allen, on the left, had been a WSPU organiser and had a vivid career as a suffragette. It is perhaps surprising to realise that she who had been imprisoned three times, staged a hunger strike, and been force-fed while in prison for breaking the windows of Government buildings in London and Bristol in 1909, eventually enrolled for this form of war work. After the war she ultimately attained the rank of Commandant.