UK Edition
Sislin Fay Allen, first black policewoman in the Met and in the UK – obituary
After joining up in 1968, Jamaican-born Fay Allen was congratulated in the street by members of the public, but she also received hate mail
Sislin Fay Allen, who has died aged 83, was a nurse who in 1968 – two months before Enoch Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech – became Britain’s first black female police officer, a year after Norwell Roberts had become the country’s first black policeman since the 19th century.
Fay Allen, who generally went by her middle name, applied to the Metropolitan Police while she was a nurse working at Queen’s Hospital in Croydon, having spotted a recruitment ad in a newspaper during her lunch break.
When she filled in the application form, she recalled, “I penned at the bottom of it that I was a black woman. I didn’t want, if I had succeeded, and when they saw me, [them] to say: ‘I didn’t know she was black.’ ”
When she had told a friend at work about her application, the friend had said: “Don’t be so silly, they’re not accepting black people.” Fay Allen was able to tell her: “Well, I have news for you …”
Her success in getting the job attracted wide attention. “On the day I joined I nearly broke a leg trying to run away from reporters,” she recalled last year. “I realised then that I was a history maker. But I didn’t set out to make history. I just wanted a change of direction.”
Sislin Fay Allen was born in Jamaica, at St Catherine Parish, west of Kingston, in March 1938. The second youngest of 10 children, she was brought up by an aunt who was a judge – which inspired ambitions of joining the police.
She emigrated to Britain as part of the Windrush generation and qualified as a state registered nurse. She was working at Queen’s Hospital, which specialised in geriatric care, when she saw the advertisement that changed her life.
Fay Allen trained at Peel House in Pimlico, then was posted to Fell Road police station back in Croydon so she could be near her family. On her first day on duty she experienced a mixture of stares and people stopping her to congratulate her.
Although the Met received a few racist letters – which they kept from her, fearing that she might leave the force – she recalled experiencing more prejudice from the black community than from her colleagues or from white members of the public on the streets: “I was asked how I could leave nursing and join the police force. It was like joining something degrading.”
While she was shielded from the worse of the hate mail, the threatening letters she did see made her question whether she was doing the right thing, but she persisted, and spent a year on the beat in Croydon. She was then posted to the Missing Persons Bureau at Scotland Yard, later returning to Croydon.
She left the Met in 1972 and moved back to Jamaica with her husband, who had also been born there, and their children. She joined the Jamaica Constabulary Force and received a welcoming letter from the prime minister Michael Manley.
In retirement she settled in South London for a while before returning to Jamaica, where she lived at Ocho Rios on the north coast of the island. In 2020 she was given a lifetime achievement award by the National Black Police Association and was interviewed at home by Sky TV as part of Black History Month. “I was glad that I was able to inspire so many people to take up the challenge,” she said.
Sislin Fay Allen is survived by her two daughters.
Sislin Fay Allen, born March 1938, died July 5 2021