Carrie Hart was a New York City reporter who’d helped her with a case the year before. She was tired of writing about society luncheons and had persuaded her editor that a profile of New Jersey’s first lady deputy would be of interest to readers.
Sheriff Heath had allowed it, thinking that a story about the unfortunate women who came into the jail, and the ways that a female deputy could advise them, would win support for his ideas of rehabilitation and reform. His detractors believed that jail should be a grim and miserable experience, thus deterring criminals from doing the sorts of things that might land them there. The sheriff had to fight for decent hygiene, wholesome food, and simple medical care for his inmates. He was even criticized for offering them improving books to read and church services on Sunday. To persuade the public, he was willing to let a reporter into the jail.
Constance had agreed to the interview although she disliked the way the papers talked about her. Every newspaper in the country had a women’s page in need of comedic and dramatic filler, which meant that a story about a cop in a dress might circulate for months all over the country, always with creative alterations from enterprising copyeditors, until she hardly recognized herself in the headlines.
Owing to the flurry of stories about her last case, in which she wrestled with an escaped fugitive on the subway steps in Brooklyn, Constance was subjected to a barrage of letters from lonely men and enterprising employers. She’d had a marriage proposal from a doctor in Cuba, an offer of a job as a factory foreman in Chicago, and a set of keys to a jail in El Paso if only she’d consent to come out West and run it.
Her sister Norma took great pride in answering those letters. She spent hours composing sharp-tongued retorts and reading them aloud. Under her pen, the rejection of impertinent propositions had been elevated to an art form.
Constance had a feeling that this story would only bring more letters her way. The sheriff held up the paper to show her the headline, then cleared his throat and read aloud.
Girl Sheriff, a Real Lecoq, Detects Crime in a Novel Way
“A woman should have the right to do any sort of work she wants to, provided she can do it.”
Miss Constance A. Kopp, Under Sheriff of Bergen County, N.J., took a reporter back into the women’s ward of the county jail at Hackensack, carefully locking the door, and into one of the light and airy cells before she would talk. And Miss Kopp works: she was busy when the reporter arrived at the appointed hour. It was an hour later before the Under Sheriff could stop long enough for an interview.
“Some women prefer to stay at home and take care of the house,” she continued. “Let them. There are plenty who like that kind of work enough to do it. Others want something to do that will take them out among people and affairs. I always wanted to do things from my early girlhood years.”
Sheriff Heath put the paper down. “Was this to be a story about jobs for women, or about our inmates?”
“The inmates, of course,” Constance said. “But she had to paint a picture for the reader. She warned me about that.”
“No one warned me,” he said, reading on. “She says that you took her around, introduced her to the inmates . . . Ah, now she gets to it.”
“The inmates are free to come see me at any time,” said Miss Kopp. “Besides being out on active work in connection with the duties which fall upon Sheriff Heath, I am matron of the prison. I am always friendly with the women. That is the way to win their confidence. In the end they always tell me the truth. They have learned that this is the only way I can help them.”
“You try to help your prisoners, then?”
“Certainly. Often a little help is all they need to get back on the road to straight living—sometimes help against others, but very often help against themselves. They come to me often at midnight, after I have gone to bed in my cell. At midnight a woman will tell almost anything if she finds one who is sympathetic to tell it to.”
“That’s exactly why you hired a matron, so don’t complain about it,” Constance put in.
“Oh, but there’s more to it. And you haven’t seen the pictures.”
“Pictures? You know I didn’t agree to?—”
He held it out to her. A sketch artist had drawn a slimmer and more fashionable version of Constance in two scenes: comforting a crying girl, and wrestling a fugitive.
“I never saw an illustrator, and he obviously never saw me,” she said.
He read down a few more lines and said, “It says here that Miss Kopp has no desire to give up her work for matrimony, in spite of the proposals that have come to her from the newspaper publicity which her office has given her. She wants an active life.”
“If only that were enough to put a stop to the proposals.”
“Refusing to speak to reporters would put a stop to them,” the sheriff said.
“You asked for the interview!”
“I wanted a story about our good works.”
“Is that all of it?”
“I didn’t read the part where she wrote about your fetching appearance,” he said.
Constance groaned. “You might as well.”
He cleared his throat and read, “‘Miss Kopp is a young woman of abounding energy. She is large of build but . . .’” He faltered, and couldn’t look at her. She snatched the paper away from him and read, to her utter dread:
. . . large of build but well-formed, and carries off her size regally, as the novelists would say. Her eyes are the velvety brown shade which matches her hair in color, again giving the novelist a chance for a page of descriptive matter.
She threw it back at him. “I can’t believe Carrie wrote that.”
He took the paper up again. “You haven’t seen the list of ‘Miss Kopp’s Ideas on Detection of Crime.’ Are you planning to write a book? This looks like a table of contents.”
“What are my ideas?”
He leaned over it and said, “‘The requisites for a woman who wants to do police work are determination, fearlessness, persistency, sympathy, love of work, and the ability to throw one’s self into the lives and feelings of the prisoners.’”
“You must admit it’s a fine list.”
He turned to yet a third page and scanned the last few paragraphs, which were tucked at the bottom corner below an advertisement for rubber gloves. “Why, here’s the bit about reform, at the very end, after everyone has stopped reading.”
Much has been said during the last few years about prison reform and making such institutions reformatory rather than punitive, but none of them has worked out a more comprehensive scheme than the one devised and followed by Miss Kopp. Fortunately, she is supported by a progressive sheriff, Robert N. Heath, who has been a close student of modern prison management since he was appointed under sheriff five years ago and despite opposition, he has helped to work out these plans.
Now he looked up at her in utter despair. “I wasn’t aware that I was the one who helped you with a prison reform program.”
“You know I never said that.”