Why Should I Know About the Women of Scotland Yard

Stephanie Queen is my guest blogger today.  She writes is a USA Today Bestselling writer of romantic suspense, and her latest novel, Beachcombers, has just been released.  It’s book four of her Scotland Yard Exchange series.

More below.

Please welcome Stephanie.

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Why Should I Know About the Women of Scotland Yard
by Stephanie Queen

It’s all because of a story, more precisely a character named Shana George who happens to be a Special Investigator with the Scotland Yard—also known as the Metropolitan Police—in their Specialist Operations Counter Terrorism Command. Before I wrote the story, The Beachcombers, a romantic suspense novel, I had to do some research. I moved Shana to Martha’s Vineyard as part of the Scotland Yard Exchange Program with Boston (that’s a whole other story), but first I had to find out all about women in the Scotland Yard. What do women really do at the Yard?

The answer is: Everything.

From Matrons to Women’s Police Service to their current day status as Officers, women can now be found in every role in the Metropolitan Police Service—more commonly known in the states as Scotland Yard.

It all started in 1983 when a female visitor was appointed in 1883 by the then Metropolitan Police Force to attend to female convicts. Six years later, fourteen more women were hired and they were called the Matrons. In 1914 Scotland Yard set up women patrols known as Voluntary Women Patrols to control all the women coming to town to hang around army camps. Then in 1918 when women were given the vote—women over 30 that is—the Met started recruiting women officially to deal with female criminals and children.

In 1922, When women officers were cut, Mr. Shortt M.P. said in the House of Commons that policemen’s wives could do Women Police Work. Lady Astor retorted that police did not choose their wives for patrolling streets or escorting prisoners. In 1923 fifty officers were re-sworn, this time with full powers of arrest.

Fast forward to the 1970s, with attitudes toward women changing, women officers were mixed with the men on all shifts and departments and new specialist mixed gender teams. Today women officers are assigned to every role within the Service including some of the highest ranks.

Of course Shana George is a superstar with “skills” and you can read all about that in The Beachcombers and in the Beachcomber Investigations series books including Beachcomber Baby and Beachcomber Valentine.

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THE BEACHCOMBERS
Book 4 of the Scotland Yard Exchange Series

Dane Blaise desperately needs a vacation at his beach shack to rest his soul, but he can’t refuse a mission to rescue a woman in distress-especially when his old friend, Governor Peter John Douglas, asks him for help.

Shana George can’t turn down the first assignment in her new job at Scotland Yard, even if it means traveling all the way to Martha’s Vineyard in the U.S. and going undercover as a beach bunny heiress to enter a surfing contest–the very things she left Australia to escape.

Neither Dane nor Shana were looking for the explosive and unholy attraction that keeps them off-balance from the minute they meet.

While trying to find the missing heiress alive and trying to put the French conman, Jean Luc Ruse in jail, they discover that Jean Luc answers to men far worse than him.

Once Shana becomes the new target of the nefarious international slavery scheme, Dane needs to protect her or risk losing his soul for good. 

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Visit Stephanie Queen’s website at www.StephanieQueen.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Stephanie-Queen-198484900209330/timeline/.