Shirley Becke
Shirley Cameron Becke OBE QPM ( maiden name: Shirley Jennings ; born April 29, 1917 in Chiswick , London , † October 25, 2011 in Chichester , West Sussex ) was a British police officer who was a pioneer in the British police force and was the first woman in the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the association of the senior management of the police force in England , Wales and Northern Ireland .
Life
Studied and joined the police
Shirley Jennings, daughter of an engineer in the gas industry, studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic after attending Ealing Grammar School, where she was the first woman to qualify and graduate as a gas engineer. As a young woman, she then worked for the Gas Light and Coke Company , later the North Thames Gas Board .
When numerous younger male police officers were drafted for military service in the British Army during the Second World War , she applied to the Metropolitan Police Service (MET) in 1941 . Since she was responsible for the police work, she stayed there after the end of World War II and worked in the immediate post-war period for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in West End Central , one of the most difficult areas in the MET's area of responsibility. She was involved in criminal investigations in Soho and was promoted to sergeant in 1952 . During the investigation into fraud, she met the sworn auditor Justice Becke, whom she married in 1954.
Rise in the police force and member of the ACPO
After being promoted to inspector in 1957, she was appointed superintendent in 1960 and as such was the successor to Winifred Barker as head of the women's unit (A4) of the MET from 1966 to 1973 .
In 1969, the dissolution of the separate female police units was initiated due to the legislation on equal pay between female and male police officers. As a result, from 1973 onwards, all female police officers were accepted into the general police service, although this did not mean that they were met with the same level of acceptance, and the fight for equal opportunities continued for a long time.
The founders of the female police force in 1914 were Nina Boyle , a militant suffragette , and Margaret Damer Dawson , an activist against white slavery . The police officers recruited had to be single or widowed at the time and were forced to leave the police service after they got married or had a child.
Through her work, Shirley Becke contributed significantly to the reputation and further representation of women police officers in the British police force. She was the driving force behind the advertising campaigns to recruit women in the 1960s and the redesign of uniforms by Normal Hartnell , the fashion designer for the British royal family.
In 1969 she was promoted to the rank of Commander, which resulted in her becoming the first woman to be accepted as a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the federation of the executive level of the police forces of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Most recently, she was a member of the management staff of the MET from 1973 until she retired in 1974. She was awarded the Queen's Police Medal in 1972 for her contributions to the recognition of women in the British police force . In 1974 she was appointed officer of the Order of the British Empire .
After her retirement, she worked from 1974 to 1979 as the London regional administrator for the Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) and from 1976 to 1983 as Vice-Chair of the WRVS.
Today, a quarter of the police officers of the MET are almost feminine and the fictional DCI / Superintendent "Jane Tennison" - by Helen Mirren in the ITV - television series Prime Suspect was played and on the true investigator Jackie Malton based - is part of the national landscape. Malton, who began her ministry in the year Becke's retirement, said of Shirley Becke:
- “She was a huge inspiration. She is still very much revered and she achieved everything with great grace and dignity which I found with great grace and dignity. ”('She was a" huge inspiration admirable. ').
Web links
- Shirley Becke obituary: Metropolitan police commander and first woman to join Acpo. In: The Guardian . December 8, 2011.
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Becke, Shirley |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Becke, Shirley Cameron (full name); Jennings, Shirley (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British Police Officer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 29, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chiswick , London |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 25, 2011 |
| Place of death | Chichester , West Sussex |