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Shorncliffe is less than two miles from Folkestone and housed 40,000 Canadian
soldiers who landed in Plymouth in February 1915 on their way to barracks at
Shorncliffe, with the officers based in private houses throughout Folkestone.
This transformed the previously genteel holiday resort overnight into a home
for soldiers, who were welcomed into the town by the local people and developed
strong ties with them, to the extent that there is still an annual parade
through the town to remember them, the image below shows their enduring memories by a plaque in the town:
Both pictures courtesy of Folkestone Then and Now http://www.warrenpress.net/FolkestoneThenNow/FolkestoneThen_Now.html
Although very much welcomed by the local community, they were thought
by some residents to have money to spend and inevitably crime developed. A
further problem was the level of venereal disease in the troops [1]. The
police said the town developed a particular problem of brothel keeping and
solicitation in 1915, when they closed four brothels [2; 3], seen by the
Chief Constable in evidence to the Watch Committee as insufficient. In February
1916, the month in which Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) Regulation 13A was
passed, 37 convicted prostitutes and those convicted of brothel keeping were evicted
from Folkestone [4]. Considerable discussion at the Watch Committee in March
1916 involved members being told, three months into the employment of two women
police, that now Magistrates had increased powers to expel certain women from
the town, the Committee no longer saw the need for women police, although they
were said to have carried out their work to the satisfaction of the Committee
and the Chief Constable, the decision to employ them should be revoked. Those
convicted under 13A had entered the town since the start of the war and as they
had now been evicted there was no further need for the women police. However, the
Archbishop of Canterbury intervened writing that he “had been following the
doings of the women police all over the country with great interest.” He
promoted them as carrying out work which it was almost impossible for a man to
do. Following a vote, the motion to revoke the appointment of the women police
was lost by 12 votes to 6 and they were retained [5].References
[1]
Beaupré, D. (2007/2008) En Route to Flanders Fields: The Canadians at Shorncliffe During The Great
War. London Journal of Canadian Studies. 23,
45-65.
[2]
Wynn, S. (2017) Folkestone in the Great
War. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military.
[3]
Correspondence concerning the desire for special regulations (13B) for treating
venereal disease in Folkestone (1916).
3AMS/B/05/01.
London School of Economics, The Women’s Library.
[4]
Levine, P. (2003) Prostitution, Race, and
Politics: Policing venereal disease in the British Empire. New York and
London: Routledge.
[5] Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate and Cheriton Herald, March 4th, 1916 p. 2
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