A Girl in Blue: Memoirs of a Metropolitan Woman Police Officer 1967-73

The role of female officers serving with the Metropolitan Police changed forever in 1973 with the so-called integration with their male counterparts; the WPC became a PC, equal in every way except gender. The move was not universally welcomed, however, and not just by male officers.

This book tells the story of Lois Willoughby-Easter's almost six years as a Girl in Blue - a young female police officer serving with the Met in the years immediately before integration. It is a story probably typical of many WPCs who served in the late Sixties and early Seventies, facing what would be seen today as sexism and bullying, and eventually earning the respect of their male peers, albeit sometimes begrudgingly.

Lois Willoughby-Easter was born in Cheltenham in 1948, but when her parents separated she and her mother relocated to south London. There she attended several schools, but due to her disrupted upbringing her academic achievements were limited. However, after gaining a Bachelor of Education degree with Art at East Anglia Polytechnic in 1990, for 25 years she worked in London as a primary school teacher, determined to try to unlock each child's true potential. On retirement Lois decided to record the experiences of her early life and the events which, in 1967, led to her becoming a Metropolitan Woman Police Constable at the age of nineteen. Her career was varied, and although Women Police had the same powers of arrest as their male colleagues, Lois often undertook the specialist work which women officers did prior to their integration with their male counterparts in 1973. Lois lives with her husband, a retired long-serving police officer, in a restored farmhouse in Norfolk. They are both interested in Police history, having carried out much research through the Metropolitan Police historical collection. Lois is also a member of the Metropolitan Women Police Association. She has had several poems published and is a confident artist, inspired mainly by the wonderful landscapes Norfolk has to offer.