Woman's Hour - The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, talks to Jenni about working with women in the community to help combat violent crime. She wants both the victims of things like domestic abuse and knife crime and those around them have the confidence to speak out about what’s happening in their area. She’s been working closely with mothers who’ve lost children to violence and is exploring how the Force can work with them to help protect our young people from being drawn in to, or becoming victims of violent crime. Stephanie Walker was 14 when she became pregnant. She was so impressed with how her midwife looked after her that she decided to go into the profession herself. Fourteen years on from the birth of her first child, Stephanie has just become fully qualified to deliver babies herself. She joins Jenni.Lady Barbara Judge, whose death was announced today, was on the Woman’s Hour Power list in 2013. She was described as one of the best connected women in the country – a real pioneer for women in the law, banking and business. Her roles included Chairman of the Pension Protection Fund, Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and UK Business Ambassador. She spoke to Jane about her influences and career.The history of women being empowered by the death of their husband is explored in the book Widows - Poverty, Power and Politics. The author and historian, Maggie Andrews, explains how many widows used their newfound autonomy and financial independence to improve women’s lives for the better. Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast on Wednesday 2nd September. Good morning. In the 1980s, a television series told the story of a group of widows who took over their husband's criminal activities after they died. It was updated in a film two years ago. Well, the historian Maggie Andrews has found truth can be stranger than fiction and has written Widows, Poverty, Power and Politics. Stephanie Walker had a baby when she was 14, 14 years on. She's a midwife following in the footsteps of the midwife who

cared for her. And the serial, of course, the third episode of Annika Stranded. Now, the past few months have been anything but normal for everyone, but for none more so than the Metropolitan Police. Lockdown saw significant falls in gun and knife crime in the capital, whilst domestic violence charities reported a huge increase in calls for help. Then there's been the Black Lives Matter movement, controversy over some officers kneeling in support, and of course over stop and search. At the centre of it all is the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida Dick.

Commissioner, how has the pandemic influenced the way you work? Well, a great deal, of course. Good morning. And I should start by just saying it's been a terribly difficult time for London and for the whole country. And, you know, well, so many thousands of Londoners have lost their lives and other people's lives have been turned upside down. And it remains a very worrying time for people. I'm very proud of the people of the Met because they carried on. As other people were, you know,

obviously and quite properly staying at home, they were out on the streets. We stayed very resilient and we've had very low absences. And as you said, we saw some changes in crime patterns and we took advantage of that to make lots of arrests, same numbers as usual, actually, whilst changing the way we deliver the service, being COVID aware in all ways. We continue to arrest about 500 people a day in London. And we were bearing down on violent criminals,

violent criminals, violent criminals, whoever they may be, organised criminals, gun criminals, domestic violence, I'm sure we're talking about. But we've also, of course, made huge leaps, as so many organisations have, in terms of the way we can work digitally, the way we can have meetings.

Those people who don't need to be in the front line were able to work from other places, particularly home. And I think we've worked more closely in many respects with our partners across London and the government. So what difference has it made to the way domestic violence is handled? Because the rising calls to the charities has been phenomenal. It has. And I should just say, of course, we've been a very important part of supporting the restrictions on people's lives, which has been a challenge for everybody and a challenge actually

for policing. I'm proud of the way that we have been, you know, when people have been out on the street, we've been talking to them, we've been engaging with them, we've been encouraging them and only using enforcement last. When I come, though, to domestic violence, obviously very, very different people. I mean, it's an awful thought. So many people in London live in quite confined spaces. They might have many children there. If you are living with a partner who is violent or of whom you are frightened, it is a horrible, horrible thought. And of course, as you say, some of the charities saw a big rise in calls to them. We did not and continue to have not had a huge rise. We've seen since lockdown eased a bit of an increase in the number of crimes reported,

but probably only in line with the annual year on year increases we are seeing. So we had to work really closely with charities and we had to reach out to people we knew were vulnerable victims and indeed aggressive offenders and keep in touch with people. We had to we arrested 100 people a day for domestic violence during the height of the lockdown period. So we carried on bringing people in and to justice wherever we could. How have you made sure it's safe for the victim of domestic violence to get through to you? Well, obviously challenging. As you know, there are many different ways people can contact us, but through the National Health Line, through 999 and Crime Stoppers 101. But what we have found is that also majority of people, many people will first speak to somebody beyond a police officer.

And obviously, if you're in a work environment, that might be a good place. Your friends would be a good place. And people who haven't been able to to socialize i am certain uh have found it harder to get through to us so what we were doing was um working with the helplines to make sure that as far as possible people knew we were still there we're out there we're doing our job uh we will come round we were ringing people up uh we were also of course as you know um we sort of amended the uh line. So if you dial 999 and then after that you press 55, we know what sort of person we may be dealing with. And we put posters up everywhere and try to communicate with people digitally to say you can talk to us. Now, obviously, people will have to, if they're sitting at home worrying, choosing your moment, knowing how to get hold of us. And I appreciate this. This has been really challenging.

But as I say, what we have not seen is a great rise in assaults. We have not seen nationally a huge rise actually in the worst end of this, the most awful thought, you know, a homicide through domestic violence. And so I'm not complacent about this at all. But I do think we collectively, everybody engaged in this, tried to give the best possible service during a very challenging time. And I'm encouraging anybody and everybody, if they were assaulted during lockdown

and they didn't find themselves able to tell us, to come and tell us now because we will deal with that. Now, as far as knife crime is concerned, I know you've seen Pastor Lorraine Jones recently, whose son was killed six years ago. We've heard this morning that Richard Taylor, the father of Damolola Taylor, is launching what he calls the Hope Collective

20 years after the death of his son. How does working with the parents of such children contribute to the work that you're trying to do? Well, a great deal. We work, obviously, in these terrible weeks and months after somebody has been killed, whatever age, but let's focus on youngsters. We work very, very closely with the family

in order to ensure that as far as we possibly can they get whatever support maybe of of help and we are able to bring people the perpetrator or perpetrators to justice and we have a very good record of bringing people to justice which is some comfort some of the time to to to the families but we do actually end up staying in touch with many of them and many of them um i think are if you like um inspired isn't the right word but but but find themselves wanting to help stop knife crime on the streets of London. And, you know, we've had a real challenge with teenage, for example, homicides, which have come down this year and indeed came down again last year.

And we've been focusing on this hugely. But I speak regularly to bereaved parents, sometimes in the aftermath of the event and often much later on. And I meet regularly with mums and dads to talk about their experience, how we can improve what we do as police, what we can do across the criminal justice system, but also to get their ideas of how we can stop knife crime before it starts. Now, obviously, trust in the police is something you're desperate to build. But what do the parents you work with say about stop and search? Well, I don't want to generalise too much, but it is fair to say a large proportion of them have said to me that they believe, as I do, that stop and search is just one thing that the police should be doing, but a very important thing. And it is not unusual for parents to say to me, we'd obviously like to see more officers on the streets,

but we would also like to see more use of stop and search. This isn't absolutely everybody, but it is a very, very common thing. And I suppose it's, you know, you and I, I'm sure, can't put ourselves in the shoes of somebody who's lost a child to the knife crime. But people then learn a lot about what has led to this particular incident and others as well. And most people feel passionately that if we can take knives off the street and guns through Stop and Search, which we do hundreds every month, that done professionally, done in a way that the young person, if it's a young person being stopped, sort of understands, that feels fair. Of course, all my officers have their body warm video.

Then it is a very important thing for us to continue to do against those people who are most violent, who carry knives regularly, or, you know, for example, prolific drug dealers of whom we've arrested record numbers in the last several months, where we know there's a huge amount of violence associated with the gangs associated with that. What do you say to people who insist that there is a racist element in the stop-and-search procedures?

Well, stop-and-search search in London and I suppose in the UK is something that resonates in some communities much more than others, I think, and has a history. You know, I joined in 1983 and this was before we had the power we now have, but you'll remember perhaps, Jenny, how people felt about police use of searching on the street then. And I fully appreciate that for some communities who are sadly often within our black communities, both those most victimised by knife crime, most affected by serious crime in so many ways. If you're living in an area like that and you're concerned about your child

and you have a lower level of trust than I would like in your police because of the history and whatnot, then there will be concern about officers' interactions, stop and search and arrests and potentially use of force. So my job, I set out to reduce violence and to improve the trust of those communities who have least trust in us. I don't accept that my officers are biased when they are undertaking stop and search. I look at the outcome rates that we get and they are the same across different ethnic groups and different communities. And that tells me that they are dealing with each case in terms of what is happening there and the issues and the intelligence and the evidence. But I do understand that for some people, stop and search is still seen as something that worries them. So I'm doing the load in schools to try to help young people understand their rights, understand who we are, why we do it. We involve our communities massively on the streets. If somebody makes a complaint, it will be investigated.

And the vast majority of the time, the officers are extremely professional and very courteous. But we've got a gulf in understanding, and I do accept that. What about the issue of officers taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter? Why did you instruct them not to do it, which almost seemed that it didn't do any good for relations between your officers and the neighbourhoods they serve? So we had a couple of officers who took the knee, as it's called, during I think it was the first large Black Lives Matter protest. And I think they probably did that out of a sense of wanting to show some respect,

but also because they were being, and had been throughout the day, screamed and shouted and abused much of the time. And they felt perhaps that it would take the heat out of the situation if when people were screaming at them, take the knee, take the knee, take the knee, that they did so. However, this was, as you know, towards the end of a protest which became extremely violent. And sorry to say, although the vast majority of Black Lives Matter supporters were not violent, the next three large protests also had a very violent element.

And my view is we are professional police officers. We have a job to do, which is keeping the public safe. We have to be alert at all times to doing that. And actually to take the knee in an operational situation is something that may distract you and make you or your colleagues or more to the point the public less safe not more so I was very clear about that. How effective is the drive to recruit more women and ethnic minorities into the force?

I work and live in this wonderful city it's's the most diverse city on the planet. And I want the best of the best people and I want a service which is as broadly representative of its public as it can be, because I think that gives us the best, you know, the best opportunity to have the confidence of the public and to be effective. We have hugely increased the numbers, if I start with black and minority ethnic officers in the Met over the last sort of 10 and 20 years. So at our sort of point of entry over the last couple of years, and we are growing, as you know, we've generally had somewhere between about 20 percent and 28 percent black and minority ethnic recruits as police officers. Overall, we're now just over 15% officers. And as a service, because we have lots of people in forensics, intelligence, all sorts of other roles who are not officers, we're just under 20% black and minority ethnic. So that is a huge improvement.

It's not as far as I would like to go. We focused also a lot, as you've said, on recruiting women and different ways to attract and keep women with us. You can join part-time now. We are, you know, I think much better than we were at supporting people through maternity. I have a large number of senior women officers. My board is half female. I have four assistant commissioners. Two of them happen to be women at the moment. And I generally have well over a third of my seniors are women, which may not be as good as some organisations, but it's a very traditionally male-dominated environment, as you know. So we're doing far better than most police services. And in many of my meetings, women will be in the majority. We've got women flooding into detectives and

specialist roles that perhaps in the past would've got women flooding into detectives and specialist roles that perhaps in the past would have been seen as quite male dominated um so i think we're making huge progress i'd like to speed it up even faster uh so so from so from your from your perspective having risen as high as you have and been in the police for a very long time how would you sell the life of a police officer to any woman who might be thinking of it as a career? It's a brilliant life. I mean, it is so interesting. It can be challenging, but out of the challenge comes such satisfaction. Very fulfilling. You get to help people every day. You can see the difference that you make. It's varied. There are so many different career

opportunities across somewhere like the Met. So every person has a different set of experiences, but you can learn fantastic, varied skills. You're working with people. It's a team. It's a team organisation. We will look after you. We really do. People really, you know, love it when they work here. And we're very flexible, increasingly so. And it's important. And I think, you know, boys and girls, so many people nowadays have a really strong sense of justice and social justice and want to help people. And that's what you can do in the job. And I've got women thriving in every single level, rank, specialism, having a great time, enjoying the job. Commissioner Cressida Dick, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.

And if you have anything you'd like to comment on, on what the Commissioner had to say, we'd like to hear from you. You can send us a tweet or indeed you can send us an email. And Commissioner, thank you. Now when Stephanie Walker was 14, she became pregnant. 14 years on, she tweeted that when she met her teenage pregnancy midwife, she absolutely knew midwifery was the path for her. And she's done it. She wrote, I had my last shift last night as a student midwife, delivered a total of 48 healthy babies over three years and had the time of my life doing so. And she joined us from Whitley Bay. Stephanie, how did you cope when you found you were pregnant when you were only 14? So yes I did struggle at first

as you can imagine being 14 finding out you're pregnant and I was I was in year 10 at the time so bearing for my GCSE I didn't expect. It was a big shock to the whole family. Very disappointing time for them all. And it was quite difficult to adapt to that. I knew straight away I had the support in place to be able to continue with my pregnancy. So I knew that was the right thing to do for my situation. It was very overwhelming. Joyce Strachan was your midwife. How did she help you through the pregnancy and the birth of your son? When I first met Joy, she was my community teenage pregnancy midwife.

So I saw Joy from my first appointment in the community and she just spoke to me with with an equal respect she just the way she communicated with me totally empowered me that I was in control of this and I can I can have great outcomes and it wasn't the end of the world she spoke positively about what I can achieve and just totally empowered me to be a better parent and just to take more control of my life and when I left that appointment I just knew that that was the way that was the path for me I knew the way that she'd spoke to me just I'd love to be able to help other mums in that position and so I knew I'd want to I wanted to start a career in midwifery eventually. So how soon did you manage to get back into education after Daniel was born?

I think it was about three or four weeks after. I put him straight in a lovely little child mine down my street, expressing my breast milk and sending it round. It was quite full on. But just to be able to return and sit my GCSEs is that that was what I really wanted to do I had a clear um goal in my head I wanted to be a midwife so I needed good GCSEs unfortunately I didn't get the GCSEs I needed to go and do my A-level so I took the long way around and went to college

um but I struggled with I was 17 by the time I got to college with a two-year-old. And I knew I'd get back to it eventually when I was in a better position in my life. So, yeah. We know there's been a big decrease in teenage pregnancy in recent years. But I understand the rate is highest in the Northeast. So when you volunteered with a teenage parent support group as you were training, what sort of advice did you give from your own experience? I think it was important for them to see that it's not the end of the world.

So part of the programme that we offered to the young mums was to educate them about their further educational options so we'd take them to the local college and discuss what supports in place in terms of transport and child care assistance to enable you to get back into education so we did a lot of focus on that and empowering them as individuals, what their rights are as parents. Just from the start, basic antenatal education, up into all sorts of things, just to really empower them as parents, really. How easily did you manage to complete your training?

Because not only did you have Daniel, who's now 14, you married and you had two more sons. How did you manage Daniel who's now 14 you married and you had two more sons how did you manage that's right so I've got Isaac and Freddie who are seven and six as well so to get my GCSEs up I did a night class at college over an access course so that worked well to balance that once the children were in bed and I have a really supportive husband and my parents are foster carers so they're available um they're around the corner as well. So everybody's just really mucked in and helped me. They knew that midwifery was a really intense degree to do. Alongside your education, you've got 37 and a half hour weeks on placement.

So balancing that with assignments, it was really intense. But I've just had a a great support network really now you said in that tweet which went viral about um your history you said you've had the time of your life delivering 48 healthy babies what is it you love about being a midwife I don't know where to start with that answer really it's just all so basically it's just so interesting to start with um the anatomy and physiology that you learn along the way is just so like it's really it's really it's amazing and um but just supporting women through and parents through that through that transition in their life it's such a vulnerable moment in their lives and it's just such a um it's just so overwhelming to be a part of that that journey that they're on and it's just all lovely but particularly delivery is lovely

Stephanie Walker many congratulations on now being a fully qualified midwife. And thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. Thank you. Now still to come in today's programme, Widows, Poverty, Power and Politics. The historian Maggie Andrews on the women who were empowered by the death of their husband. And the serial, the third episode of annika stranded now you may remember that last week was listener week where all the subjects we talked about were suggested by you one of the discussions was about losing your belongings pat who's 95 told us her story i live in newlyn and

i live right on the seafront and there was a pub next door to me, and I've always lived on this front. And at 20 to 1, one Sunday morning, somebody was shouting, get out, pack your houses on fire. And the whole of the pub was alight, and it caught light to mine too. So I just dashed down the stairs, and the beams all fell on the bed that I'd come out of. And I just got out in time, and I stood on the front of the harbour and watched my house burn to the ground.

Now, you're now 95, Pat. Yes, I was 94 at the time. It was a year ago. What particularly pained you that had been lost from such a long life? Well, everything I lost. The only thing that I really saved was I'd always written a diary. And luckily, it was in a leather trunk. And the leather trunk didn't burn. And all my diaries were saved. And so were all my clothes because they were locked into wardrobes. And it was only smoke damage. I was lucky. But everything else went, furniture and everything. And photographs. And unfortunately, I haven't any relatives, so I can't claim any back or anything from anyone.

Now, Pat, I know the piano was saved. That's right, my piano, my mother's piano. And your clothes were saved. That's right, yes, and a few bits and pieces. Why were they so important to you? Well, because I'd had them all my life. We were in the pub for 30 years, my mother and I, next door as landladies. And then when we moved, it was right next door,

so we brought all the furniture from the pub into the house that we were in. So everything in there was sentimental value because we'd been in there for 30 years before. And so when we came into the house next door, we brought everything from the pub into this house. So it had been all part of my life. The amazing Pat. Now, earlier this week, you may have missed

Willie Russell and Dame Julie Walters marking the 40th anniversary of the first production of Educating Rita. If you missed the live programme, you can always catch up of the first production of Educating Rita. If you miss the live programme, you can always catch up with us by downloading the BBC Sounds app and searching for Woman's Hour. Lady Barbara Judge, whose death was announced today, was on the Woman's Hour Power List in 2013. She was described as one of the best connected women in the country, a pioneer for women in the law, banking and business. Her roles included Chairman of the Pension Protection Fund,

Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, excuse me, Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, UK business ambassador, and she was the first woman to chair the Institute of Directors. Jane asked her how an American lawyer came to hold such influential positions in Britain. The true story of that is I was out of a job. I had had a career in America as Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange

Commission. What does that mean? The Securities and Exchange Commission is like the FSA here. It's the regulator of the markets, of the stock markets, of issuing securities and trading in securities. And for a lawyer, it's like God to be a commissioner of the SEC and I was fortunate to have that opportunity and to be appointed by the President of the United States when I was very young. Now I think I'm right in saying that you got that job because you'd gone on a holiday and made a friend. I did, I did, that is true. I went on holiday in China and it was a group tour, you know a bus tour, and on the tour there was one single lady, everybody else was a group tour, you know, a bus tour. And on the tour, there was one single lady. Everybody else was a pair.

And I was taking care of her. I kept putting my arm around her and taking me off on my various trips. And people kept saying to me, why are you taking care of her? She's very difficult. She's one of those glass half empty people. But I kept saying, hush, she could be my mother. She could be me. You have to take care of women when they're alone. So I did. I kept taking care of her. And she turned out to

be the most senior woman broker in Wall Street. I didn't know that on the trip, but that's what she was. She's the one ultimately that recommended me to be a candidate for commissioner of the SEC. The moral of that story is be nice to other women, especially single ones. Tell me a little bit about your mum, I know has been an inspirational figure to you. My mother worked in an employment job until she was 88 as a dean in a college.

She taught women to work. She believed that women should work, not because they were poor, not because they were single, not because they were single, not because they were alone, because they had a brain, and they should use it. And they should earn money, because money was independence, and that was important.

So yes, of course she did. When I was young and wanted to be an actress, she said, Barbara, we're not having any starving actresses in this family. If you want to act, you can go be a lawyer and act in front of the jury. And you did. Well, I'd never been in front of a jury, but I be a lawyer and act in front of the jury. And you did. But I'd never been in front of a jury, but I have been, became a lawyer and did it for a long time. So she encouraged us and she encouraged all the things I did, always told me that I should continue with my job, not to feel guilty about anything other than a good job is harder to find

than a good nanny. Yeah. Well, let me pick you up on that because I know you have a son and he was left with a nanny whilst you continue to pursue your career. Now, brilliantly for a lot of people, you do not, you simply refuse to regard that as an issue or a problem. I absolutely do. I called my mother. My mother said to me, when a little baby is born, what do they need? Being fed, being diapered, being bathed. An 18-year-old girl can do that. You don't have to do that if you don't want to. If you want to keep working, spend all your money to pay the 18-year-old girl. A good job is harder to find than a good nanny. And I said, Mom, the baby won't know its mother. And my mother said,

you're wrong, Barbara. A child always knows its mother. You have to be there when the child gets smarter than the nanny. I know you passionately believe that women must have children, don't you? Absolutely, if they can. Yes, of course. If they can, it's a wonderful experience. I never expected to be an earth mother, but I am. I'm very attracted to children when they're about nine, eight or nine, when they start talking and they can have ideas and you can have a word with them. And I wouldn't want people who could

have the experience not to have it. Working is not a substitute for children. I don't believe if you can have it, you need to have both. Why has your career has changed? Your approach, I think, to work has changed in the last couple of years with much more focus on women and mentoring women. Why do you think that's happened? Well, in the beginning, I never thought it was an issue. Remember, my mother said women work. I'd watch my mother work. My friends, my personal friends were all going to have jobs. We were much more getting on with getting a law degree.

There was a lot of prejudice against women, getting jobs, getting through. But when I didn't get a job, I never thought it was because I was a woman. And when I did get it, I never thought it was because I was a woman. I thought it was because I was a person. I either did well in the interview or did badly. It wasn't in my head. What was in my head was just to be equal to men, to be a person, and to progress in the same way they did and at the same rate that they did. I was always a believer in that. And it was only later, only now, and I'm getting older

and I don't have a daughter, so I really feel that it's important to tell my experiences to other young women so maybe they won't make the mistakes that I made, or maybe they'll appreciate what's changed since then, that I've started focusing on it. But I mean, what do women have to do differently, do you think, in order to give themselves the best opportunities? Well, first of all, I think they have to be serious. I think it's really important to be serious and to let everybody know they're serious. If you want to progress in your career, you have to tell people you're there, not just for your health,

but because you want to progress and to get to the top. You know, I passionately believe that you have to make the right first impressions and continue to give people the right impression of who you are. And I always say that's because I almost got fired from my first job because looking like a tart. I mean, tell me what you were wearing. It was the, it was, what decade are we in here?

It was the 70s. We're in the 70s. Yeah, and how were you dressing? I had very long blonde Farrah Fawcett major hair. I had very mini skirts, very, very mini and crocheted blouses. Now, I thought I looked great, but my mother thought I looked terrible and she hated it. And it wasn't until they called

me into the office one day of the senior partner and said, Barbara, we're going to fire you. I said, fire me? You can't fire me. I'm doing the best of anyone in my class. They said, you are. That's true. But you don't look like a lawyer. So you're going to have to leave. I said, well, you can't do that. So I walked out of the office and I stopped in the office of a friend of mine, a male friend, and told him the story, outraged. He said, you know, Barbara, you're too smart to look this dumb. They were right. And I took my long blonde hair and I put it up in the boring way you see it today. Well, it's not boring. It's smart. Different. I took my short skirts. I put them down in the appropriate length. And I took my blouses and put them way up to the top of my collar. And I have become the person then in the 70s that I am today.

But the immaculate vision that is before me now, I mean, it is absolutely the Barbara Judge look. Is that the real you? Or is there the sort of 70s hippie chick still in there somewhere? Well, definitely when I go to the shops and I see the short skirts, I think, God, I wish I could wear them. But my little mantra is if you were wearing short skirts, mini skirts in those days, you're too old to wear them now. Lady Barbara Judge who died on the 31st of August when she was 73. Now you may remember a television series in the 1980s

written by Linda LaPlante called Widows. It told the story of a group of women who took over their husband's criminal activities after they had died. A film called Widows told a similar story in 2018, this time set in Chicago. Whilst we generally think of a widow as a rather sad, grieving woman with very little money and not much of a social life,

the historian Maggie Andrews has found there's often been a rather different outcome. Her book is Widows, Poverty, Power and Politics. Maggie, what drew you to write about widows? Well, both my co-writer Janice Lomas and myself, we were

doing some work on the suffrage two years ago. And we were really struck by the way in which the leaders of all three big suffrage organisations, Mrs. Pankhurst with the Women's Social and Political Union, Mrs. Fawcett with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and Charlotte Despard for the Women's Freedom League. They were all widows. And we thought that there must be more than a coincidence. And the more we looked at work, the more it was. It was really significant.

I think there was a sense that because they were widows, they were respectable. They couldn't be ridiculed in quite the same way that single women could. But also the idea of widowhood, these women who paid their rates, ran a household, but were denied the vote, had become very fundamental in some of the arguments showing how unfair it was

that women didn't have the franchise. And so once you look at the franchise, you realize how significant women are. And then the more you look at other areas where women have trailblazed, led the way in politics, in public and cultural life, the widow becomes a really significant character in there. How did the financial position those three women were left in influence the work they did? Well, it was very varied.

Mrs Pankhurst was really quite short of money and she had several children so she was she had to take a job then when she moves down to London she's paid by the Women's Social and Political Union but really for the rest of her life she almost is living an itinerant existence. She never really has a proper home of her own. She is very pulled, I think, by that need to make money, to do speaking tours and also the need to be a mother to her children. And it causes a lot of tension, I think, in her personalhood, really, from 34 years old onwards, living with her sister, not running a household, not having to, not being short of money, but, you know, not really having a proper life. Now, Charlotte Despard is very different. and Shanghai Bank and she's very nicely off and she uses her own money indeed to fund the Women's Freedom League but all of them are in a very different position than you know many of the poverty-stricken widows that there are for whom just the struggle for survival and to keep

their children is in itself you know know, all-consuming. Who are the earliest examples of emancipated widows you found? We found quite a lot really right a long way back. So we find people like Bess of Hardwick in the Elizabethan period who with four very careful, astute marriages and widowhoods becomes the second wealthiest woman in England after Queen Elizabeth. You know, from having been left at the age of 30 with six children and two stepchildren, she very carefully manages her own career through the court, through astute marriage to become wealthy.

And we can find people like Catherine Fegnell, who in the 16th century is a businesswoman who takes over her husband's business when he dies. They're importing wine, they're dealing in drapery, all sorts of things. And by the time that, you know, she's widowed for the second time, she's someone who sits at the top table at the drapery's company election dinners. So, you know, you find them in business, find them in the 19th century in the black country, running big sort of, as a nail mistress,

running big companies, and you find a lot of writers. So they're absolutely there through the sort of 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. What was life like in those earlier times for widows whose husbands had not been wealthy? That was very much more problematic. If you look back at sort of really through that period, right into the 20th century, when you do get the first widow's benefits, it is a really hard existence, very dependent on friends, on community to help you out, having to ensure that you were respectable and behaved appropriately, or the charity that you relied upon could be taken away. And there are some absolutely heartbreaking stories. Charlie Chaplin,

the famous actor's mother, struggles hugely trying to keep her children and look after her children and indeed ends up in a mental institution from the stress of it. She has a complete breakdown. And she's not alone. who are literally living in one room with their children, frantically sewing on piecework, shirts and collars and hats and things like that, just to try and scrape together a living. So for many of them, it is absolutely horrendous. But for others who are a little bit better off, they maintain their respectability. Actually, the fight against poverty and to prevent themselves slipping into poverty becomes a real impetus to work, to become writers,

to do all sorts of things using the family connections they have and to really make their mark in society. I think after World War II, the concept of marriage changed somewhat. Romance and love became more important than a marital financial arrangement. How did that change the perception of the widow? I think it does change quite significantly as that second half of the 20th century, as you say. To begin with, the horror of being a widow, it is about grief, but it's also a very financial issue. But as marriage becomes more a romantic relationship and as the expectation that women can and will be financially independent, both within marriage and outside marriage marriage you get a very different sense of

widowhood and yet particularly if somebody is widowed young which is much more unusual in the end of the 19th 20th century than it was for instance in the 19th century and the idea of the tragic emotionally bereft widow becomes very much more important and for them it's much more about an emotional loss, the loss maybe of somebody they'd have children with or that they would have shared their life with. So it does shift. Which of your widows most impressed you?

Oh, it has to be Amelia Fleming. She was the second wife of Alexander Fleming, the famous scientist who discovers penicillin. And he's a lot older than her when they get married, some 40 or 40 years older than her. And they have a short marriage. And when he dies in the 50s, she's very tied up with the sort of formal elements of being a widow of a great man. But then she's a scientist in her own right. She slowly goes back to Greece,

which is her home country. And when the junta comes in in 1967, she really becomes a big humanitarian campaigner. She's actually imprisoned by the junta. She comes to Britain and they think they've expelled her and got rid of her. But she writes a very forceful book about how appalling they are and how they've treated her. And after the junta got rid of in Greece, she goes on to become an MP, an MEP, and this amazing human rights campaigner, as well as somebody who is a scientist and a doctor. So she is someone who uses the name and the association that she has with a very famous man to really look after and care for the welfare of so many other people. I was talking to Maggie Andrews and her book is Widows, Poverty, Power and Politics. Do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to the author of the BBC drama The Cry. Helen Fitzgerald has written a new novel that was bought for the screen before she'd even written it.

Ash Mountain explores sexual abuse in a small town community in Australia as bushfires burn. So that's tomorrow, two minutes past ten. Join me then. Bye bye. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. A new podcast drama series on BBC Sounds. No Place But The Water. The story of a hotel at the end of the world where there's no place else to run to. But there's just one thing, one thing I try not to remember.

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