The Girls Who Fought Crime

June 15, 2023
A retired Army major general unearths the story of one of the first detectives in the New York Police Department. Eder chronicles the life and work of Mary "Mae" Vermell Foley (1886-1967), who was raised by Irish and French immigrants in the gang-infested Gas House District of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Sharp, energetic, and determined to make her own way in the world, she began working for the city when she was 17. From clerking at a settlement house to organizing for the Women's Police Reserve under the auspices of the newly formed International Association of Policewomen (1915), Foley was interested in police work from an early age. Married with small children, she convinced her husband that the police force was the future. With the passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, it was an opportune time for her to join the NYPD. By the time Foley was selected and began her training in 1923, there were 55 women serving as "full police officers," making the department 8% female. Early on, Foley spent time on the "Masher Squad," which "had the mission of stopping perverts and other so-called mashers bent on harassing or even assaulting women on the streets of New York, at subway stations, and even in movie theaters." Widowed in 1928, Foley became a detective in Queens, serving in the homicide division. In 1935, women were finally "issued their own uniforms." Foley went on to serve under Manhattan District Attorney Thomas Dewey, protecting female witnesses in the Luciano crime boss case, among others, and later worked undercover to expose the pro-Nazi actions of the German American Bund. She retired in 1945, and in 1961, the borough of Queens proclaimed her birthday Mae Foley Day. Though the prose is average, Eder presents an informative historical portrait of a largely unknown trailblazer. An inspiring work about a persistent woman who succeeded in a challenging profession.

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September 18, 2023
Retired Army major general Eder (The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line) profiles in this colorful account the “tough, intrepid” Mae Foley (1886-1952), who became one of New York City’s first policewomen in 1923. Originally assigned to the so-called “masher squad,” which policed crimes committed by men against women (from pocket-picking to murder), in 1925 Foley was promoted to detective and attached to Manhattan’s 19th Precinct. In 1930 she transferred to the 108th Precinct in Queens, where she investigated the 3X Murders, a still unsolved series of shootings by a killer who signed eerie letters to the press as “3X.” (On one occasion, Foley acted as bait for the killer, but caught a garden-variety mugger instead.) At various points in her career, she raided bootleggers’ stills as part of the squad that enforced the Volstead Act during Prohibition; fought Nazis on Long Island; and kept safe the sex-worker witnesses testifying against gangster Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Eder also describes how Foley stood up for herself and her sister officers against the patriarchy of the police force, where women were held to higher standards than men. Eder’s vivid and raucous narrative brings to life the cops-and-robbers jousting of Prohibition-era New York. Aficionados of the city’s underground history should take a look.