Schools Garden Delight

WPC Moss

Gladys Moss was born in Gloucester on 20th of February 1884. Her parents were Samuel and Fanny Moss. In 1906 with her widowed mother, elder sister Geraldine and younger twin brothers she moved to Worthing.

In 1915, during the First World War, Gladys Moss was a nursery governess. She was sent to Rangoon in Burma to collect two children and return with them to England. She then moved to London and joined the Women’s Police Volunteers. This organisation had been formed to counter the rise in violence against woman and also to curb what Commander Margaret Damer Dawson called ‘female criminal behaviour and immorality’. The policewomen wore an armband with the letters ‘WP’ and training consisted of note taking during cases being heard in the magistrates’ courts. When on patrol, Gladys Moss, who was five foot five and petite, chanced upon a baying mob encompassing two women who were fighting in the street. She scattered the crowd by shouting “clear off the lot of you!” then grabbed and frogmarched the combatants to their homes while telling them to “behave themselves.”

In 1917 Gladys served with the Ministry Of Munitions and was posted to patrol a munitions factory in Hereford. Here she discovered the butt of a cigarette that had been smuggled into the building. She arrested the culprit, who was a woman tasked with filling artillery shells with explosives. It was fortunate that the entire factory hadn’t been blown up and killed everyone inside.

After the war, the Women’s Police Volunteers were disbanded and Gladys Moss returned to Worthing and the role of governess. She then replied to a vacancy in the Worthing Gazette to be a special constable for the West Sussex Constabulary. She was thirty-five years old when she became the first policewoman in Sussex on the 15th of November 1919, at Horsham. There was in those days the macho locker-room culture that persists in the police today. Male colleagues respected WPC Moss, with one policeman lending his heavy overcoat for her to wear on a night patrol in heavy rain. They accepted she was there to do a serious job, not to make them cups of tea. They knew from experience that Gladys Moss could provide a different approach to investigating the most delicate of cases.

Although based at Worthing, station senior officers and Scotland Yard detectives called upon Gladys Moss to work on their cases right across West Sussex, often including Steyning. In order to get to where she was needed Sergeant Billy Beacher at Horsham taught her to ride a motorcycle. She became the first policewoman motorcyclist in the country; often stopping rather surprised speeding motorists. Sergeant Beacher also taught her to defend herself and she became skilled in Jiu-jitsu martial arts, which came in handy when dealing with known violent criminals.

The Littlehampton Libels Case ran from 1920 to 1923 and involved a series of shocking poison pen letters that had already led to a wrongful conviction. WPC Moss was instrumental in solving this case. In another of her cases, in 1936, two false complainants were charged with an act ‘calculated to produce a public mischief.’ WPC Moss also crewed the Worthing Police Ambulance during the period that it was the constabulary that provided ambulances for West Sussex. The vehicles were paid for by charitable

Gladys Moss

donation and operated by police officers. WPC Moss’s final case was on the day of her retirement at the age of fifty-seven in 1941, during the Second World War. With German bombing raids destroying towns she investigated a forgotten house light that had been left shining out, in breach of the black out law. During her twenty-one years of service, Gladys Moss was only the policewoman in the West Sussex Constabulary. She said, “Being a policewoman needs a lot of patience and perseverance and would only suit the right type of woman. Women are essential in the force. There is a lot of work behind the scenes, searching and taking statements from women, which they would only care to give another woman.” Sources: The Old Police Cells Museum. New Call and Bailey’s Weekly Thursday 17 September 1936, page 3 Daily Mail.

Countdown Clock Trial

LIGBON

You have 2 minutes to fi nd as many 3 or more letter words as possible. Plurals are allowed. The 6 letter word will always be simple! Good Luck! 6 Letters: 2 • 5 Letters: 5 4 Letters: 8 • 3 Letters: 13