The West's First Woman Police Officer
A daring new appointment brings a female officer onto the beat to clean up public behavior in her community.
Miss Pauline Christie has been sworn in as a full-fledged police woman and is believed to be the first woman in the west to wear a star. Miss Christie has made a vigorous campaign against expectoration on the streets, and the police department decided she would be better able to enforce the ordinance than any one else, which was the principal cause of her appointment.
“Miss Pauline Christie has been sworn in as a full-fledged police woman and is believed to be the first woman in the west to wear a star.”
The struggle for women to hold positions of institutional authority remains a recurring theme in civic life, though the specific 'offense' she was tasked with curbing—spitting—reflects the era's fixation on public sanitation codes.
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