Mina Caroline Ginger Van Winkle (March 26, 1875 – January 16, 1933) was a crusading social worker, suffragist, and groundbreaking police lieutenant. From 1919 until her death in 1933, she led the Women's Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (in Washington D.C.), and became a national leader in the protection of girls and other women during the law enforcement and judicial process. Her provocative statements about gender and morality in the jazz age brought her further national attention.
Biography
She was born Wilhelmina ("Mina") Caroline Ginger in New York City in 1875. From 1902 to 1905, she worked at Fernwood Home, a municipal reform school for girls in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She graduated in 1905 from the social work program of the New York School of Philanthropy.
In 1905, while associated with the National Consumers League and the Newark Bureau of Associated Charities, she exposed the harsh conditions in which immigrant child laborers from Italy worked in New Jersey farm fields.
On October 27, 1906, she became the second wife of Abraham Van Winkle, wealthy president of a manufacturing company (and a widower 36 years her senior) who had financially supported the Bureau of Associated Charities. During their marriage, she engaged in social work on a volunteer basis. Her husband died on September 30, 1915, at age 76. She resided in Newark, New Jersey, until approximately 1917.
Suffragist
In 1908, Van Winkle organized the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women of New Jersey, which in 1912 was renamed the Women's Political Union of New Jersey. She was the head of New Jersey chapter of the Union at the stage when the American suffrage movement clashed with eastern political machines and supporters of lawful drinking fearful that suffrage would lead to prohibition. Her tenure as president of the Union included 1915's unsuccessful effort to amend New Jersey's constitution by referendum to give women the right to vote. Following that defeat, the New Jersey chapter of the Union merged into the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, whose officers governed the resulting organization.
Near the beginning of the presidential election year of 1916 (and several months after her husband's 1915 death), she announced that she would establish a legal residence in Kansas, which had extended to women the right to vote in presidential elections. It is unclear whether she carried through with that announcement.
As the suffrage movement was on the verge of succeeding through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, she was a speaker at the 1920 National Woman's Party convention.
U.S. Food Administration official
Soon after the United States' entry into World War I, the Food and Fuel Control Act of 1917 established the United States Food Administration, with a mandate to voluntarily reduce the domestic consumption of food and produce, while increasing home production. President Woodrow Wilson appointed future president Herbert Hoover as its head, and Hoover appointed Van Winkle to organize and direct its speakers' bureau.
Police lieutenant
In 1916, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia began to hire policewomen. In the summer of 1918, Police Major and Superintendent Raymond W. Pulliam established a woman's bureau, originally directed by Marion O. Spingarn. By October of that year, Van Winkle was one of four members of the Bureau. After Spingarn left in February 1919, Van Winkle became the Bureau's director, with an initial rank of detective sergeant (and, by December 1920, as a lieutenant).
The Bureau's initial responsibilities included "girl welfare work," prevention and detection of store crimes, and supervision of movie theatres, dance halls, and similar places. However, its greatest emphasis was on casework. Van Winkle stated that "prevention and protection are more primary than prosecution, and those who have done wrong should be intelligently aided toward a better life." Most of the officers in the Bureau in 1920 were trained as school teachers, nurses, or social workers, and included one lawyer.