[BITList] At Scotland Yard

[John Feltham]

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Wyles,  Lilian Mary Elizabeth  (1885-1975), police officer, was born at North Road, Bourne, Lincolnshire, on 31 August 1885, the daughter of Joseph Wyles, brewer, and his wife, Julia Grylls, nee Symons. After education at Thanet Hall, Margate, and at a finishing school in Paris, she studied law, as her father hoped that she would become a barrister, but she broke this off to take up hospital nursing during the First World War; a period of illness then led to convalescence in South Africa. In June 1918 she joined the women patrols run by the National Council of Women Workers, headed in London by Sofia Stanley, and was one of the first twenty-five women officially employed by the Metropolitan Police as women patrols in 1919. Promoted to the rank of woman sergeant within a few months, Wyles supervised the work of women police in central London and the East End. She was rapidly promoted inspector in 1921 with the intention that she should be attached to the CID to deal with offences against women and children. Despite the 'Geddes axe' of 1922, which reduced public spending, she was kept on as a statement taker (Sofia Stanley was dismissed); she was attested and given full powers of arrest in 1923, and remained attached to the CID for the rest of her service.

Wyles's career was not without controversy, most famously in relation to the Savidge inquiry of 1928. A member of parliament, Sir Leo Chiozza Money, and a young woman, Miss Irene Savidge, had been arrested by two uniformed policemen in Hyde Park for alleged indecency. The London magistrate Henry Cancellor dismissed the case and questions were raised in parliament about police perjury. Chief Inspector Alfred Collins was appointed to conduct an internal inquiry; Savidge was brought to Scotland Yard for questioning, Wyles accompanying her in the police car. Wyles later stated in her memoirs that she was abruptly dismissed by Collins when she offered to chaperone Savidge during the interview: 'as I was about to seat myself next to her, Mr Collins said to me sharply but decisively, "You can go, that is all"'  (Wyles, 190). Savidge claimed that Collins's subsequent questioning was improper and that he had touched her on the hand and knee. Further complaint led to the setting up of a tribunal of inquiry. Wyles was called to give evidence and at this point appears to have lied to protect both the force's reputation and that of her boss. She claimed not only that she had believed Collins to be 'most nice and kind' but also that she had only left the interview room after asking Savidge twice whether she would prefer her to stay  (The Times, 12 June 1928, 10). The tribunal report went on to recommend that in cases involving the taking of a statement from a woman 'on matters intimately affecting her morals', another woman should always be present  ('Report of the tribunal'). Previously Wyles had been viewed with hostility by her male colleagues; the Savidge case 'proved a turning-point for her and from now on she was accepted by men of the CID'  (Lock, 163).

Wyles's duties as woman inspector in the CID were mainly concerned with statement taking from women and child victims of sexual assault. This had initially been the specialist work of a civilian welfare worker, Eilladh Macdougall, who had been appointed in 1907 as a 'lady assistant'. With Wyles's arrival the work was split, Macdougall taking responsibility for the area to the south of the Thames until her retirement in 1932, with Wyles covering the north. Communication between them was non-existent; Wyles claimed that Macdougall ignored her and 'withheld information that would have been of inestimable value'  (Wyles, 119). Wyles herself struggled to carry out her duties as best she could with limited resources. She conducted interviews in her own flat, where she also stored spare clean clothes for girls who needed placing in hostels; a small allowance of 10s. a week was granted to cover her costs in 1935. Nevertheless, her significance lies in pioneering a role for women officers within the Metropolitan Police as specialists working with female and child victims of sexual assault and abuse. In 1932 (with Macdougall's retirement) she was asked to supervise five further CID women officers employed in statement taking (the number had risen to twenty-one by the end of her service) and she regularly gave training talks to new recruits. She saw the police function as distinct from that of welfare workers, stressing the importance of being legally minded; nevertheless she liaised closely with voluntary welfare organizations, referring to them cases that required longer-term care.

Upon her retirement in 1949 Wyles was awarded the British Empire Medal and went to live in Land's End, Cornwall. In 1952 she published her memoirs, A Woman at Scotland Yard, which has been described as 'somewhat self-serving'  (Fido and Skinner, 496); Wyles herself has been characterized by those with whom she worked as 'rather boastful and proud'  (Lock, 145). A Woman at Scotland Yard is partial, subjective, and opinionated, but this is precisely why the book is interesting: it reveals the processes through which one particular 'pioneer' policewoman negotiated a new occupational role and identity despite endemic prejudice.

Wyles died at her home, 15 Atlantic Crescent, Sennen, Penzance, Cornwall, of a heart attack, on 13 May 1975. She did not marry and had no children; indeed the marriage bar for women police in England and Wales was only lifted in 1946, towards the very end of her service. She described women of her generation as driven by 'energy, courage, hard work and self-sacrifice'  (Wyles, 118).

Louise A. Jackson 

Sources  L. Wyles, A woman at Scotland Yard (1952) + J. Lock, The British policewoman: her story (1979) + 'Report of the tribunal of inquiry in regard to the interrogation by the police of Miss Savidge', Parl. papers, Cmd 3147 (1929) + L. A. Jackson, Women police: gender, welfare, and surveillance in the twentieth century (2006) + L. A. Jackson, 'Care or control? The metropolitan women police and child welfare, 1919-1969', HJ, 46 (2003), 623-48 + M. Fido and K. Skinner, The official encyclopedia of Scotland Yard, rev. edn. (2000) + WWW [1981] + b. cert. + d. cert.
Archives Metropolitan Police Museum, women police, annual reports
Likenesses  photograph, c.1919-c.1921, Metropolitan Police, London [see illus.] · Elliott & Fry, quarter-plate glass negative, 1951, NPG




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