Lola Baldwin: Portland's Municipal Mother
First American Police Woman
Baldwin’s appointment, which distinguished her as being the first law enforcement officer in an American municipality did not come easily. Police work of any kind was considered man’s work and Baldwin’s nomination was greatly supported by female suffragists and male sympathizers. Baldwin began her duties by being temporarily commissioned by the Travelers’ Aid board. This board was dominated by social feminists interested in the welfare of young women visiting Portland during the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition.
Role of Municipal Mother
Portland was in a period of great growth after the 1905 Exposition. Many immigrants, particularly low skilled women were drawn to Portland in hopes of filling blue and white collar positions and domestic jobs. These women were frequently without family, living alone in boarding houses and were susceptible to the vice elements of the city.
Feminists were swift to capitalize on the gender specific rules of the day. The norm of women during this time was one of chastity and moral purity, the center of the home. Such being the case, prostitution was seen as sexual delinquency, the antithesis of Victorian morality. It was therefore the primary task of Lola Baldwin to turn the tide of such behavior in Portland. Writer, Louise Bryant assigned the contemporary term “Municipal Mother” to Baldwin because it was her job to apply what was held as the social norm in every home to the wider perimeters of the city of Portland.
Social Hygiene
The role of municipal police women was also supported by the ideals of “social hygiene.” This concept of social hygiene was inspired on the medical germ theory and formed the structure of rational reform targeting the goal of cleaning up the dirty deviance in society and making it both physically and socially safe for women and children in the community.
Social hygiene spurred Portland into action. The years 1905 to 1918 saw phenomenal growth in social action and change. Oregon State University staff writers said that Baldwin and other supporters of social change created a “municipal policewomen's division, juvenile, morals, and domestic relations courts, a citizen vice commission, a state institution for sexually delinquent girls, a city venereal detention hospital for prostitutes, and pushed a variety of state and local protective legislation for women and children.”
Health Care Reform
During this same period, Mayor Lane appointed Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy as Health Officer and reorganized the health department in for increase efficiency. Lovejoy viewed prostitution and venereal disease as public health threats as well as morality issues. In 1908, Dr. L.W. Hyde founded the Social Hygiene Society and invited Baldwin and others interested in public health to serve as charter members of the organization. Three years later, the name was changed to the Oregon Social Hygiene Society dedicated to sex education, building a vice commission to study prostitution and venereal disease in Portland and to work on local and state legislation geared at health care reform.
Lola Baldwin’s role as police woman and Portland’s Municipal Mother was as much about caring and education as it was about law enforcement. While Baldwin was out to end prostitution, her role was equally one of compassion for women and children in Portland Oregon communities.
Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation
In 1999, a non-profit organization honoring Baldwin and continuing the work of recovery from prostitution was founded in Portland. The foundation offers assistance and counseling to persons previously involved in the sex industry. It also offers a court mandated Portland Prostitution Offender Program for convicted offenders in need of treatment.
For more information on this foundation, click here.
Lola Baldwin
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