Women detectives – Millennial Matriarchs

Continuing Meena’s celebration of women in unconventional professions. While forensic scientists do a lot of their work in labs, there is a band of sleuths that follow clues on the ground. These are the women detectives. Crime fiction through the ages has had its share of popular female detectives. From Jane Marple, the gentle (but canny) epitome of an old English aunt, to Mma Ramotswe, the generously proportioned Botswana detective, these fictional detectives have a dedicated band of followers. Not many readers may even stop to wonder if such sleuths exist in real life. Indeed, they do! And the real lady detectives probably date back as far back as the fictional ones.

In Victorian England several stories of female detectives appeared in newspapers in the 1850s and 1860s. These ladies donned disguises to pursue thieves, and spy on adulterous husbands. Most of these ladies were initially part of male-led detective agencies, but by the 1880s women were beginning to set up their own agencies. Maud West was one of the most popular and well-known private detectives of her time in England. She was famous for her disguises. In 1905 she set up her own private detective agency. Over the next century such lady detectives were in demand especially as they were discreet, ingenious, and smart at surveillance.

But it took until the early twentieth century for a woman to join Scotland Yard as a detective. On December 27, 1922, Lilian Wyles became the first woman in the history of the Metropolitan Police to join the Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D.) as an inspector. She was promoted to Woman Detective Inspector First Class on February 18, 1935.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, women were also entering what was considered to be a male domain. In 1856 a self-possessed young woman walked into the Chicago office of Pinkerton Detective Agency looking for a job, but not a job as a secretary. Kate Warne was hired, becoming the first female detective in the United States of America. She proved herself to be fearless, and adept at digging out valuable information. In one investigation she posed as a fortune teller to entice secrets from a suspect; in another she made friends with the murderer’s wife. The most defining case of her career was to foil an attempt to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln while on a train trip. She infiltrated the plotters by cultivating their wives and daughters. Her exploits encouraged other women to explore this field. Kate Warne rose to become the superintendent of the female bureau of the Chicago office of Pinkerton Detective Agency.

While Kate was into private investigation, the official law and order agencies still had to engage women. In 1913, Alice Clement was the only woman in the class of almost 100 new police officers in Chicago’s police force. And Alice made no attempt to colorlessly blend in with the uniforms. She flaunted fashionable dresses, ropes of pearls, and a sophisticated haircut, even as she brandished a submachine gun, and practiced martial arts. She was passionate about her chosen profession, famous for her undercover work, and solving difficult murder cases. The Queen of Dramatic Arrest as she was called, was feared by even the most hardened criminals of the day. Alice Clement was a major advocate for women’s rights including the right to vote. She also travelled across the United States making a case for police departments to include policewomen, leading to several cities opening up this career for women. The substantial presence of women officers in the police dramas that we see on TV today, are not just reel characters but reflections of the real women who are integral to investigation of crime.

It took almost a hundred years after these pioneering PIs, for India’s first female detective to make her presence felt. Rajani Pandit the daughter of a CID officer, did some instinctive sleuthing while in college. She tried to find out why one of her classmates was behaving out of character, unraveled the mystery; and informed the parents who were grateful. Rajani was now bitten by the bug, and began to pursue investigative work, more as a passion than profession. Her father was not too happy with his daughter’s choice of work. But news of Rajani’s successful investigations spread through word of mouth, followed by some media publicity. Cases started pouring in, and in 1986 she set up her own detective agency–Rajani Investigative Bureau. From a time when the idea of a female detective was met with disdain, Rajani and her bureau have solved 75000 cases. These cover a range, from extramarital affairs to corporate espionage, missing persons to murder.

Today more women are making a foray in this field. Perhaps the youngest female detective to set up her own agency is Tanya Puri. Still in her 20s she runs Lady Detectives India. The agency has half-a-dozen female investigators. They call themselves the Girl Squad, and usually work in pairs when out late on Delhi’s streets.

Female detectives nowadays carry out undercover operations, conduct surveillance, take charge of high-stakes investigations, cases of corporate espionage, and sensitive matrimonial investigations. Women in India can legally lead investigations.

What makes women excellent investigators? As a veteran male detective observed: They are highly perceptive, they know how to get access locations and discussions that men can’t, and they’re very organized. Women communicate empathy which engenders trust.

Mma Ramotswe summed this up neatly: Women are the ones who know what’s going on. They are the ones with eyes.

On this Women’s Day celebrating the spunk in every woman—past, present and future!

–Mamata

Not chocolates and roses. Here is a Women’s Day post that is about gore and crime.

Though not often associated with forensic science, women down the ages and across the world have played a huge role in defining it. We celebrate a few of them.

The Dollhouse Decorator

At a time when women were expected to add beautiful touches to drawing rooms, Frances Glessner Lee was building miniature crime scenes.

Often called the ‘Mother of Forensic Science’, she started recreating dollhouse-scale reconstructions of unexplained deaths in exquisite detail. This stemmed from her inherent interest in solving crimes, and inputs from a close friend who was a medical examiner, who believed that investigators often disturbed crime scenes, missed small but critical evidence and jumped to conclusions too quickly.

These “Nutshell Studies” became training tools for investigators at Harvard University. Every curtain hem, every blood spatter, every overturned chair was re-created down to the smallest detail. Trainees had to study the model for a fixed amount of time, take notes, propose the cause and manner of death, and defend their reasoning. Thousands of police personnel were trained using these tools which contributed greatly to the professionalization of forensic science

Born in 1878 to a wealthy family, she was denied a formal education in medicine simply because she was a woman. Later in life, after inheriting a substantial fortune, she used her resources to support the emerging field of forensic science at Harvard University.

The Woman in the Mass Graves

Fast forward to the 1990s.

In post-genocide landscapes in Rwanda and the Balkans, a young forensic anthropologist named Clea Koff was working with teams assisting the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

She is best known for her work investigating mass graves and gathering forensic evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity for United Nations tribunals in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Rwandashe worked in exhuming mass graves of victims from the 1994 genocide, documenting and recovering remains used as evidence in genocide prosecutions; in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovoshe participated in multiple missions documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Her efforts in unearthing skeletal remains, establishing identity, and collecting evidence to support criminal prosecutions helped in proving many crimes against humanity.

She is also known for her widely read memoir The Bone Woman.

The Woman Who Said, “Check Again.”

Then there is contemporary Britain.

Angela Gallop, born 1950, joined the Forensic Science Service in 1974 as a senior biologist — one of the few women in the laboratory at the time. She visited her first crime scene in 1978, investigating the murder of Helen Rytka by the Yorkshire Ripper.

She contributed decisively to many cases: in the case of Roberto Calvi, she could prove murder rather than suicide; her meticulous re-examination of microscopic blood evidence helped to identify the real criminal in the Lynette White murder; she found evidence to tie the murderer to the crimes in the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path Murders. Her work helped to re-open several cases like the Rachel Nickell murder

She was also involved in the review of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, finding no scientific support for conspiracy theories.

After her contributions to the government, she founded Forensic Alliance, an independent consultancy known for revisiting controversial cases.

She was one of the first people to warn about confirmation bias–the human tendency to decide first and prove later. Her stance was always that evidence must lead.

Thanks to her, criminals were brought to book, and maybe even more importantly, innocents were released.

And Closer Home…

Dr. Rukmani Krishnamurthy is widely recognised as India’s first woman forensic scientist.

She entered forensic science in 1974 (the same year that Angela Gallop began her career!), joining the Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratories (DFSL) in Mumbai at a time when the field was overwhelmingly male-dominated and went on to become Director of DFSL Maharashtra and later took up many senior forensic leadership roles.

Dr. Rukami Krishnamurthy

She led major forensic examinations in high-profile cases such as the 1993 Mumbai blasts, the Matunga train fire, Joshi-Abhyankar serial killings, dowry deaths, and others.

Under her leadership, forensic labs adopted advanced methods including DNA profiling, cyber forensics, and lie detection techniques. She helped transform Indian forensic practice from a peripheral support function to a central scientific pillar in criminal investigations.

Another star is Sherly Vasu, a trailblazing forensic pathologist and surgeon, known for her deep impact in medico-legal work in Kerala. She completed her MD in Forensic Medicine and became the first woman forensic surgeon in the state. She headed departments of forensic medicine at prestigious medical colleges and later served as Principal of a medical college. She has not only trained generations of forensic scientists, but has conducted around 15,000 autopsies and contributed to evidence in many criminal cases.

So this Women’s Day, let us pay homage to these women who made their mark in a very offbeat career path—bringing criminals to book. It is women like them, who quietly established that expertise is all that counts, who have paved the way for all women in all careers.

Happy Women’s Day!

–Meena

Tag: Women detectives

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