Controlling Women

Violence against women is out of control. The conviction rate for rape is so low that most survivors think it pointless to report it, or live to regret doing so. Ruthless trafficking gangs run a flourishing criminal sex trade. Women have no confidence in the Metropolitan Police. Does it sound familiar? These stories are in the newspapers on a regular basis. But here the year is 1914.

In the fitful, fateful summer of 1914 five women used the chaotic conditions of war to try force through a groundbreaking reform. They included a militant suffragette and friend of Christobel Pankhurst; the widow of the former Bishop of London who had once campaigned against women having the vote; an aristocratic anarchist who could trace her roots back to the Nortman conquest and a journalist born in the East End slums to a single mother in the workhouse infirmary. Their cause was female police officers and this is their turbulent story.

Sandra Hempel is a former Times journalist and a contributor to other national media, including The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday. Her previous books include the award-winning “The Medical Detective”, the story of the fight to unearth the secrets of disease that killed millions across the globe, and “The Inheritor’s Powder”, a Victorian true-murder mystery, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. She also lectures and appears on radio and TV.