Listen to the Podcast: Re-Feminist History
Email me: kelly@thebitchwhisperer.me
Hi!
So as I announced in my previous post, this blog will now be used to highlight the women we talk about on the podcast, formerly named "Bitchstory", now called "Re-feminist History". Doo-do-dooooo!
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First up, Isabella Goodwin, the NYPD's first female detective. And what a badass she was!
Isabella Loghry was born in Greenwich Village, Manhattan in 1865. Around 1885, aged 19, she married John W. Goodwin, a police officer. The couple had six children, of which four survived. Goodwin was widowed in 1896, when she was 30 years old. Obviously this put her and her children in a precarious position and she needed to find work.
The New York City police department had only just started hiring women as “police matrons" to look after female and child prisoners ...so basically, legal babysitting. Goodwin applied and was hired. It was a low paid position, making only $1000/year, which amounts to about 30K a year in today's money. She had ONE DAY OFF A MONTH! She served in this position for 15 years.
The police commissioner, as history would have it, was Theodore Roosevelt, and he expanded that role to include dealing with female crime victims, sex-crime cases and matters involving children and babies. But women were still not considered officers.
Goodwin had been recognized for her skills going undercover, posing as a hapless society lady to expose various swindlers. So when the department was stumped in 1912, they utilized her skills again.
There was a case involving a midday robbery where "taxi bandits" beat up two clerks and stole $25,000 in downtown Manhattan. Even with 60 detectives assigned to the case, no one could solve the robbery. So they asked Goodwin to go undercover.
The best part of the story, apart from her badassness, is the robber's name: Eddie "The Boob" Kinsman.
So she posed as a maid at a seedy boardinghouse that Eddie frequented to see his girl, "Swede Annie".
Lisa and I are flummoxed as to how this has not been made into a movie, because these names alone scream for it...but anyway...
Goodwin snooped and eavesdropped and buddied up to other bad guys' girlfriends until she had enough evidence to nab "The Boob". "Goodwin knew she had the goods on the crew when she finally heard Swede Annie say, 'Eddie the Boob turned the trick, alright.'"
(Hello!?! Movie people!! )
As a result of her success in cracking a case that 60 (male) detectives could not, she was appointed as New York's first female detective and given the rank of 1st grade lieutenant. Her salary was raised from $1000 to $2,250/year.
“There is many a 6-foot detective with a gun on his hip who does less valuable work for his $3,300 a year than Mrs. Goodwin, a slight, quick moving little woman whose brain more than keeps pace with her body,” The New York Herald wrote in 1921. (I bet all the male cops loved that article!)
In the 1920's she helped oversee the newly created Women’s Bureau, and helped with cases involving prostitutes, runaways, truants and victims of domestic violence. She was way ahead of her time, because these types of women were abandoned by most of society. She retired in 1925.
In 1921 she married a man 30 years younger than herself (go girl!) and they were together until she died in 1943. Her tombstone bears his last name, although it lists her birth year as 1871 instead of 1865 (which census records validate). Maybe she lied to him about her age. heehee. I am tickled by this idea.
Next week I'll tell you about a woman who didn't arrest mobsters but instead MADE monsters (damn I'm good haha) but was robbed, over and over, of credit. (Any woman who has been in corporate America understands that!)
Sources for today's story are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Goodwin
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/obituaries/isabella-goodwin-overlooked.html