help found the town of Costa Mesa, California. When Long Beach formed its police force in 1908, Captain Tom Williams brought Fanny Bixby onto the force because of her extensive philanthropic work in the city. She was sworn in as a special police matron on January 1, 1908, making her one of the first women police officers in the country. The Los Angeles Herald reported of her appointment that California was "now demonstrating that when necessary a woman can become a policeman, or should we say policewoman?" Fanny Bixby had charge of all cases involving women and children and was authorized to make arrests. She refused any pay, and thus did not become the country's first paid policewoman — that honor would go to Alice Stebbins Wells two years later. Fanny Bixby worked with the Long Beach police force for four years. Antiwar activities An admirer of Leo Tolstoy, Fanny Bixby was a socialist and a pacifist. She published some poetry in the California Socialist Party's newspaper, the Oakland World, and she attended at least one antiwar meeting in Pasadena before the Espionage Act of 1917 made it risky to speak out against the government. After the war, she published her views in a number of antiwar pamphlets. She was strongly against militaristic symbolism, such as standing for the Pledge of Allegiance, forcing children to sing the national anthem in schools, and saluting the flag. Her 1920 play The Jazz of Patriotism was about a woman who is ostracized for refusing to salute the flag. It premiered at the Egan Theater (later the Musart Theater) in downtown Los Angeles. Publications The Revolution Non-resistant (1919) The Jazz of Patriotism (an Anti-War Play) (1920) The Repudiation of War (1922) Militarism in America (1926) How I Became a Socialist (n.d., published as Fanny Bixby) Tolstoy and the Tolstoyan Life (n.d.) Personal life Fanny Bixby met her future husband, W. Carl Spencer, at a Socialist Party meeting in 1917. They moved to Costa Mesa (then named Harper) in 1919, where they raised five adopted children and supported many others. Formerly a dockworker, Carl became a developer, and Fanny continued her philanthropy to such effect that in the decade they lived there, the town grew from 250 to 3,000 residents. The couple donated land to the city for a park and a library. Fanny Bixby Spencer died of cancer at the age of 51. A