Tribute finally paid to Doncaster's Winifred Bishop – a woman in a man’s world

She was the first female Superintendent in South Yorkshire Police. She was awarded the British Empire Medal for her services to policing.

In August 2019, SYP representatives attended her funeral after she died in her Sheffield care home aged 99. At the time, no living relatives of Miss Bishop were known to the force, so they couldn’t pay tribute with her family. But now that has changed.

Known as Winnie to her closest associates, her friends and colleagues at the force called her Miss Bishop. In fact, so insistent was she on being referred to formally that Ann Marsden, her second cousin, laughed when she saw SYP referring to her as ‘Winnie’.

“I got into trouble once for calling her Winnie,” Ann, aged 75, who lives in Intake, remembers. “I got a clip round the ear! We were only allowed to call her Cousin Winifred.”

Ann was raised by her grandparents, with her grandfather being Miss Bishop’s uncle on her mother’s side. Ann’s mother, Violet, was Miss Bishop’s cousin.

“She was very formidable, she scared me to death,” Ann adds. “She was very good looking, very pretty, but very fearsome.

“Cousin Winifred moved to Sheffield from Doncaster when I was 10, but before then I remember the first time we went round to her family’s for tea - it was very strict. Adults were served butter while the children got margarine. While the adults sat to eat, the children stood. It was very much ‘children should be seen and not heard’. Cousin Winifred definitely picked up that discipline from her mum.”

Miss Bishop carried that discipline into her work.

Having been born on 5 January 1920 in Doncaster, she spent her early life growing up there with her parents Annie and Henry Bishop. Her father was a builder.

Her first career was as a nurse, but policing was to be her true vocation. She first joined the Women’s Police Auxiliary in Doncaster. In those early days it was so different, with women not having the full powers of PCs like the power of arrest.

Then in 1946, Miss Bishop was one of the first two members of the Women’s Police Auxiliary who were accepted as a full PC in Doncaster.

Little is known about PC Bishop’s early career, given the absence of written records and the death of many of her contemporaries in the years since she retired. We do know she received a Chief Constable’s Commendation for dealing with the exploitation of women in brothels.

After serving as a PC, Miss Bishop was promoted to Sergeant in Doncaster. Then in 1956 she accepted promotion to the rank of Inspector on transfer to Sheffield City Police.

Further promotions followed, placing her as the officer in charge of the policewomen’s department in Sheffield City Police, which then became Sheffield and Rotherham Constabulary and, latterly, South Yorkshire Police in 1974.

She would ensure a tape measure was always to hand, to check that a woman police officer’s skirt was an appropriate length from ground to the hem. She also liked to make sure lace-up shoes only had four lace holes, not three or five!

It is believe she had reached the rank of Chief Inspector when she received her British Empire Medal as mentioned above. She also received a Long Service Award while she was Chief Inspector.

Miss Bishop was eventually promoted to Superintendent, the first female officer in South Yorkshire Police to achieve this rank. And after her retirement in 1976, she continued to live in Sheffield.

In 2013, she moved herself into a care home as her health and vision deteriorated. She maintained her high standards there too and the staff respected her wish to be called Miss Bishop, unless they were held in true affection and then they were allowed to call her ‘Miss B’.

“I wrote to Cousin Winifred in later years on behalf of my grandmother when her eyesight was failing,” added Ann. “Cousin Winifred lived on Abbeydale Road at that point. She named her house, and it was pronounce ‘Crim-eh-cur’. But the spelling was Crimecar. I think that was a personal joke from her.”

Ann herself was with SYP. Joining as a youngster, she was with what was then Doncaster Borough Police and worked on the radios. It’s where she met her ex-husband, who worked in the Criminal Records Office. They have since divorced.

“I initially wanted to be a police officer too and wrote to Cousin Winifred asking for her thoughts and advice. She asked me how tall I was. I told her 5ft 3ins, and she simply replied ‘no, no, no, that’s way too short’. She was supposed to be a fantastic officer, who worked at what was a difficult time for women police officers. Women took a lot of what was then called ‘banter’, and we gave it back too. Then, policewomen weren’t allowed to work past 2am while on nights.”

And Ann, who has also lived in Hertfordshire and York for three decades before returning to her Doncaster roots, is still full of admiration for her Cousin Winifred.

“I’m very proud of her. She didn’t talk about it much. She was quite distant about it. But we know what it meant to her, and what it meant to us too.”