The Constables and the ‘Garage Girl’

Abstract

In the summer of 1928, the arrest on a disorder charge of a young woman in north London who gave her name as Helene Adele led to a press sensation after she claimed that the officers had falsely accused her in order to discredit her claim that one of them had sexually assaulted her. The constables were ultimately prosecuted, convicted and discharged from the Metropolitan Police. This article considers the Adele case in the context of intense concerns about the possible abuse of police powers—particularly in cases involving women—in the late 1920s. Adele was catapulted onto the front pages of Britain's sensationalist press: her serialised memoir appeared in a newspaper and was reprinted in a women's magazine. However, her case was more than just a tabloid spectacle. Contributing to historians' reconsideration of the sensationalist inter-war press, this article shows how the coverage of the case fit into the press's interest in young working-class women's lifestyles and sexuality, highlighting how ‘human interest’ journalism could be intermixed with social critique.

KEYWORDS:

• Crime
• gender
• police
• press
• human interest

Acknowledgements

I thank Lucy Bland and two anonymous readers for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. Newman and Houlbrook, ‘Press and Popular Culture,’ 643.

2. Ramey, ‘Bloody Blonde’; Siemens Metropole and Verbrechen; Davies, ‘The Scottish Chicago’; Herzog, Crime Stories; Seal, Women, Murder and Femininity; Shore ‘Criminality and Englishness’; Brown ‘Criminal Mobility’; and Bland, Modern Women on Trial.

3. Bingham, ‘An Organ of Uplift?’ 653.

4. Houlbrook, ‘Fashioning an Ex-crook Self,’ 3; and ‘Commodifying the Self Within,’ 327.

5. Seal, Capital Punishment; and Wood, Most Remarkable Woman, 132–51.

6. Emsley, ‘Sergeant Goddard’; Shore, ‘Constable Dances with Instructress’; and Wood, ‘Third Degree,’ ‘Police and Public,’ and ‘Watching the Detectives.’

7. Slater, ‘Lady Astor’; Wood, Most Remarkable Woman, 154–63; and Clayton, ‘Police Savidgery.’

8. Miller, ‘Bobbed Haired Bandits,’ 65. See also Morgan, ‘Celebrity.’

9. Victoria Rd. is now Chillingworth Road, south of the Holloway Road Underground station.

10. See also Wild and Curtis-Bennett, Curtis, 240–45; Fido and Skinner, Enyclopedia of Scotland Yard, 3; and Emsley, The Great British Bobby, 208–9.

11. Emsley, ‘Indulgent Tradition’; and Wood, ‘Police and Public.’

12. Wright, Police and Public, 45.

13. DPP response to questionnaire, The National Archives, HO 45/25860/13.

14. White, London, 288, 294.

15. Rawlings, Policing: A Short History, 160.

16. Bland, Modern Women on Trial, 119–20, 134–36.

17. Bland, Modern Women on Trial, 106.

18. Nead, ‘Courtroom Sketching.’

19. Bland, Modern Women on Trial, 25, 104, 106–7, 180–81.

20. Bland, Modern Women on Trial, 25, 67, 118, 184–86.

21. See Emsley, Great British Bobby, 209–10; Clayton, ‘Police Savidgery’; and Wood, ‘Police and Public’ and ‘Watching the Detectives.’

22. Slater, ‘Lady Astor.’

23. Reading University Library (RUL), Special Collections, ‘Nancy Astor Collection.’ MS 1416/1/1/524. All cited documents are from this file. I am grateful to Richard Stowell for bringing this source to my attention.

24. Goddard to Astor, September 7, 1928, Astor Collection.

25. Memo, ‘Helene Adele: Charge against Two Metropolitan Policemen,’ n.d., Astor Collection.

26. Goddard to Poole, October 16, 1928; Furse to Astor, November 5, 1928, Astor Collection.

27. Memo, ‘Notes on the Helene Adele Case,’ n.d., Astor Collection.

28. Memo, ‘Notes by I. G. Goddard about the Helene Adele Case,’ n.d., Astor Collection.

29. Goddard to Astor, [wrongly] dated August 3, 1928, Astor Collection.

30. Giles, ‘Playing Hard to Get.’

31. Browne, Rise of Scotland Yard, 326.

32. Wood, ‘Third Degree,’ ‘Police and Public,’ and ‘Watching the Detectives.’

33. Houlbrook, ‘Commodifying the Self Within,’ 340–48.

34. Bingham, Gender, 48; and Bland, Modern Women on Trial, 1.

35. Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, 153–60; and cf. Kohn, Dope Girls.

36. Tinkler, ‘Women and Popular Literature,’ 143.

37. Tinkler, Constructing Girlhood, 166.

38. Curran, Douglas, and Whannel, ‘Human Interest Story,’ 306, 311.

39. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 493, 494.

40. Bingham, Family Newspapers?, 6; and Bingham, ‘First Draft of History,’ 315.

41. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy, 23.

42. Bingham, Gender, 10.

43. Wood, ‘Reader Responses.’

44. Chesterton, In Darkest London, 79.

45. Wood, Most Remarkable Woman, 152–73.

46. See, e.g., Slater, ‘Lady Astor’; and Wood, ‘Police and Public,’ 91–6.