To Walk A Fair Beat - 

A History of the South Australian Women Police 1915-1987

by Patricia Higgs and Christine Bettess

The Past And Present Women Police Association, 1987, 234 pages, ISBN 0731603605, black & white photographs, hardcover, dust jacket

Very Good Condition, gift inscription on flyleaf by one of the women mentioned in the book

'To Walk a Beat provides an important edition to the history of South Australia as it imports the role of women police in society.

It explores the reasons why, in 1915, the government and police departments were reluctant to the innovation of a women police branch and how they eventually acceded to public pressure and appointed Kate Cocks and Annie Ross on equal terms as male police officers - the first in the British Empire.

The role of women police as a plain clothes section during the succeeding sixty years, through two world wars ... the razz-ma-tazz of the twenties ... the poverty and hardship of the Great Depression ... the bodgie/widgie era and the violence of the Vietnam Moratoriums is also examined.  Reasons why, in 1974, changing police patterns required the women police branch to be disbanded and its officers absorbed into the mainstream of the force and, for the first time into uniform are also investigated.'