Role: Women Police Volunteers, police constable
Edith Smith was born in Birkenhead joined the WPV in 1914. Founded in 1914, the Women Police Volunteers (WPV) was staffed by volunteers such as Smith. It was founded by Nina Boyle and Margaret Damer Dawson, who fell out over its anti-prostitution role in London and elsewhere in February 1915, with Boyle leaving the organisation and Dawson reforming it as the Women’s Police Service (WPS) with herself as head. Smith remained with the WPS and in August 1915 she was appointed the first woman police constable in England with full power of arrest.
She worked in Grantham and travelled around the country giving talks on women’s policing.
Smith left the WPS (renamed the Women’s Auxiliary Service after the war) after working seven days a week for a period of two years.
She died on 26 June 1923 after she took an overdose of morphia, five years after leaving the force. The coroner returned a verdict that she took her own life while temporarily insane. Her life is commemorated in Grantham Museum. Smith is commemorated today through blue plaques at her house, church and the police station in which she worked.
