Conservative Middleborough

Middleborough has always been a conservative town. Its ban on public swearing in 2012 achieved fairly widespread notoriety, but was not the first action of its kind. One hundred years ago, in a similar act aimed at maintaining a semblance of decorum among its residents, Middleborough police were tasked with ensuring that the slits in women's skirts did not exceed what was considered proper - 15 inches to be exact. At the time, the action attracted the attention of Chicago's The Day Book  which published the following notice on January 19, 1914.

  How high may a slit skirt be slit?
   "Fifteen inches!"
   Such is the decree of those intelligent guardians of propriety, the police. Any longer breach in the skirt is considered a breach of the peace - at least in the puritanical minds of the good people of Middleboro, Mass.
   Chief of Police [Harry] Swift of more-than-moral Middleboro has shown that fifteen inches is the very ultimate maximum of leg that can be decently shown. And so he has turned loose on the streets the "slit-skirt censors" - a detachment of patrolmen armed with two-foot rules instead of clubs.
   But the rule is, in fact, unnecessary, for each censor has so delicate a sense of decency that he can tell at once, and infallibly, by the tingle of shame which passes over him that when he sees it, that a certain slit skirt is revealing a sixteenth of an inch more of limb than the first fifteen inches which alone can be gazed upon with perfect propriety.

It's not quite clear just how far the measure progressed or how long it lasted. The Boston Globe in February 1914 reported that the story had reached as far as the west coast where Chief Swift was the subject of at least one cartoon and news clipping.

Sources:
The Day Book (Chicago), January 19, 1914, p. 9.
Boston Globe, "Middleboro Fame Reaches the Pacific", February 8, 1914, p. 16.

Illustrations:
"See What's Here - A Slit-Skirt Censor" from The Day Book(Chicago), January 19, 1914, p. 9

Representative woman's walking suit from 1913 featuring a decorously-buttoned slitted skirt. Women in Middleborough showing an inappropriate amount of leg were subject to being cited for indecency.
 

The Work of the Victorian Constable

Though Middleborough’s law enforcement agents prior to the reorganization of the Middleborough Police Department in 1909 may have been virtually preoccupied with cases of liquor law violations as noted in the two previous posts, other crimes were on the constabulary’s agenda, as well.

As with liquor laws, there remained a strong social imperative to prosecute laws based upon public morality. Thanks to the efforts of organizations such as the Law & Order League, and others, Middleborough’s Victorian police force engaged in maintaining the sacredness of the Sabbath through enforcement of Sunday “blue laws”. In 1881, the Middleboro Gazette somewhat tongue-in-cheek called for the establishment of a day police, “as employment can be furnished in the way of looking after boys, especially on the Sabbath. ‘The woods are full of ‘em.’” One of Herbert L. Leonard’s first actions as Chief of Police in May, 1901, was to notify local lunch counter operators that they would be required to remain closed on Sundays, prompting one local newspaper to ask “where can a visitor get something to eat on the Sabbath when it is past dinner time at the hotels?”

(Ironically, however, in January, 1886, when local constables arrested a local member of the Salvation Army “for disturbing the peace by playing the hallelujah organ in the street”, Judge Vaughan quickly dismissed the case upon the grounds that the gentleman “had disturbed no one to such an extent as to warrant his holding the defendant for trial”).

Despite this preoccupation with the enforcement of public morality laws, the early Middleborough police grappled with more serious crimes, most commonly burglary and horse thievery.

Burglaries occurred throughout the period preceding 1909 with the most notorious being the robbery of the town safe in 1871. A string of burglaries occurring in the years around 1880 prompted many residents to arm themselves, and a mini-boom in the sale of firearms was noted in May, 1880. One of those arming himself was grocer Ira Tinkham who in the fall of 1882 used his weapon to fire upon an intruder. In November, 1887, a North Middleborough resident similarly fired upon suspected hen thieves who “left hurriedly.”

The increased number of guns in homes, however, would create its own issues as reported by the local press in January, 1888. “One of the ‘didn’t-know-it-was-loaded’ idiots lives at North Middleboro and one day last week let his gun go off in the sitting room of his house, much to the damage of his furniture and fright of the other occupants of the building. No one was hit by the shot.”

Yet another series of high profile burglaries during the winter of 1885-86 further unsettled the community, particularly following the invasion of elderly Hartley Wood’s home by masked burglars who tied up Wood and his sister while burglarizing the home. So reprehensible was the crime that Middleborough Selectmen offered a $500 reward for the capture and conviction of the perpetrators.

Another frequent crime was that of horse thieving which appears to have peaked during the mid-1880s when Selectmen offered another substantial $500 reward for information leading to the conviction of an unknown horse thief then active in town. “…The town fathers propose to break up the stealing business because it is in their power to do so.” Despite the reward, little concrete information was forthcoming, and the summer of 1887 witnessed a number of horse thefts affecting “several of the well-to-do farmers” in town, including Eleazer Thomas at Rock. Horse thieving would remain a fairly common crime during this era, though occasional lulls in such criminal activity were noted as in June, 1889.

Petty crimes were part of the local constabulary’s work, as well. In October, 1889, the Muttock schoolhouse was ransacked. “The vandals, if detected, ought to be turned over to the tender mercies of the scholars for about an hour,” commented the local newspaper.

Flower thieves struck during the summer of 1885, stealing plants and returning them at night, leading the Middleboro News to quip, “If the party who stole the geranium and pot from Center Street a few nights since, will call at the house, they can have the saucer belonging to the pot.” Similarly, fruit thieves were noted during the autumns of 1885 and 1887, stealing barrels of apples and vegetables left untended overnight.

Clothes were stolen from clotheslines at North Middleborough (February, 1887) and elsewhere (February, 1890), including the family washes of Edward O. Parker and Charles E. Leonard. Meanwhile, Titicut boys were discovered tipping over stone walls and turning out street lamps (“and storing up legal difficulties for themselves”).

Because late 19th century convention held that “peddlers are nuisances, sometimes thieves, and frequently sell their customers rather than the goods”, itinerant salesmen were the frequent subjects of police observation. Middleborough generally took a firm approach towards unlicensed peddlers, ordering them out of town. Tramps were more often than not treated in a similar fashion.


More serious and more violent crimes were fortunately uncommon. Though incendiarism, or arson, was a rare occurrence, in 1875, an arsonist was believed to be at work. One local newspaper’s advice: “Shoot him.” Domestic violence was not unknown, with cases noted in March, 1886, and April, 1904.

The most serious threat to local law and order, however, came in 1903 with the Independence Day rioting of that year, during which Deputy Sheriff Everett T. Lincoln was shot in the face and Night Watchman George Hatch was forced to flee before a rampaging mob. The town was ultimately charged $455 “for police work in connection with the alleged celebration”, a princely sum in those days. District Court Judge Kelly who presided over the initial trial of nine defendants implicated in the rioting, took a hardline approach and suggested that “if the officers had sprinkled the town house steps with a few prostrate bodies from the crowd, they would have done the right thing.” Middleborough residents initially agreed, though once the sentences were to be handed down, many urged clemency for the convicted rioters.

While the 1903 riots greatly disturbed the community, they ultimately contributed to helping reform the system of local police protection. Six years after the riots, the administration of the Middleborough Police Department would be officially reorganized in 1909, and it is from that time that the modern Middleborough Police Department is said to date.

Illustrations:
"The Norwich Citadel Concertina Band", picture postcard (detail), c. 1907.
Concertinas were popular instruments in the early Salvation Army movement as seen in this photograph of a Salvation Army band based in Norwich, England.  In 1886 when Middleborough constables arrested a Salvation Army member for playing a "hallelujah organ" in the streets, the instrument in question was undoubtedly a concertina.  Judge Francis M. Vaughan found the disruption caused by the concertina playing did not warrant the defendant's arrest and he dismissed the case.

"Pegs", photograph by donnamarinje, July 27, 2007, republished under a Creative Commons license.

The Early Middleborough Police Department and Liquor Laws

Mertie Romaine notes of the Middleborough Police Department in her History of the Town of Middleboro that as late as 1909, “the constables were devoting their attention almost entirely to enforcing liquor laws.” The early Middleborough Police Department’s preoccupation with the enforcement of such laws was the consequence of a strong social and moral imperative within the community which sought to combat public drunkenness during the last quarter of the 19th century and beyond. The Middleborough constabulary which then was emerging as a modern police force was regarded by local temperance leaders as the perfect vehicle to enforce temperance laws and exhibit the community’s moral conscience.

During the mid and late 19th century, temperance (the moderation or total abstinence from drinking alcohol) became not only a powerful social movement, but a political one as well. Locally, temperance organizations such as the Sons of Temperance, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Good Templars all promoted the temperance cause and were supported politically in their struggle by the Prohibition Party, led locally by undertaker George Soule. Not only did these organizations generally oppose the consumption of liquor, but they supported the criminalization of its sale as well.

The temperance groups were able to wield considerable influence within the community, so much so that prior to the close of the 1874-75 school year, total abstinence pledges “binding the signers to abstain from the use of alcoholic stimulants and tobacco in any form” were freely circulated in the Middleborough public schools.

Undoubtedly the pledges were a response to what the community saw as a resurgence in intemperance with the Middleboro Gazette complaining at the start of the year of the rise in public drunkenness. As if to corroborate the claim, 16 men were subsequently brought before the district court and charged with public drunkenness and engaging “in a free fight with knives, clubs, fists and pistols.”

The crack down on liquor law violators was stepped up during the 1880s simultaneous with the local constabulary’s growth and evolution as a modern police force. In conjunction with the temperance organizations, the Law and Order League, established in 1884 as a predecessor of the Committee to Suppress Crime and active through at least the end of the decade, focused nearly exclusively upon moral issues. Within months of its foundation, the League could claim that whereas in 1882 there had been 20 local liquor dealers in town, by March, 1885, there were none.

Liquor law violations and public drunkenness were considered grave matters at the time and the League consequently supported an aggressive prosecution of the community’s liquor laws. Convictions were frequent, and the sentences meted out harsh. In mid-1887, provisions dealer Randall Hathaway, “a prominent business man of Middleboro”, was sentenced to six months in the county house of correction for public drunkenness. In October of that same year, Michael Monihan, who “got crazy drunk and was smashing up his household effects”, was fined $5 and costs. Undoubtedly, the private nature of Monihan’s indiscretion saved him from a lengthy prison stint.

Throughout the 1880s, operators of local saloons and the bar tenders they employed were the frequent object of police attention, thanks largely to the influence of the Law and Order League. The most notorious and flagrant violator of local liquor laws was Stephen O’ Hara, operator of a bar room on Wareham Street near the Four Corners, who along with his bar tenders “occupied conspicuous places at the last two terms of the Superior Court” in 1887 and 1888.

Convicted in March, 1888, for keeping a “liquor nuisance”, O’Hara “slipped his bail and was supposed to have skipped the state” prior to his October sentencing hearing before the Superior Court. He was later arrested tending bar at Boston and conveyed to Taunton where he was held in a room in the City Hotel. From his hotel room, O’Hara shimmied down a drainpipe and escaped, “taken away in a carriage by friends who conveyed him out of the state” in the summer of 1889. Though one of the witnesses in the O’Hara case alleged that the defendant had offered him a bribe and subsequently threatened bodily harm when the bribe was refused, O’Hara finally agreed to appear in court in December, 1889, and settled all claims against him, acknowledging “that the Law and Order League had beaten him.” Nonetheless, it would not be the last of O’Hara’s encounters with the law.

The local constabulary’s relentless pursuit of liquor law transgressors sometimes brought retaliation from defendants who sought to create legal issues for Middleborough constables. In July, 1890, Stephen B. Young, convicted of the illegal sale of liquor and keeping a liquor nuisance at his barbershop brought legal suit against the Middleborough constables for wrongful arrest in an incident unrelated to his liquor law conviction, seeking damages of $5,000. “Middleboro constables are in warm water and Stephen B. Young is poking up the fire below them,” reported the local press.

Similarly, Stephen O’ Hara was back in the news in September, 1903, when he was arrested with 12 pints of whiskey in his possession. O’Hara was charged with the illegal transportation of liquor in a no-license town, but the charges were ultimately dropped by Judge Nathan Washburn who contended that there was no proof that O’Hara actually intended to sell the alcohol. Like Young before him, O’Hara subsequently brought suit against Officer William A. Green of the Committee for the Suppression of Crime, one of the arresting officers.

For over 35 years, the Middleborough Police remained preoccupied with the enforcement of the community’s liquor laws. Following the crackdown upon local saloons, attention was directed following 1900 to the town’s hotels, primarily the Central Inn and the Linwood House on Center Street, which were constantly (and successfully) raided for liquor-related violations.

Eventually, with the decreasing political influence of the temperance movement, the Middleborough Police’s preoccupation with liquor law enforcement came to be seen as verging on monomania, the butt of not infrequent jokes. During the summer of 1901, after a spate of false fire alarms occurred following the installation of glass-fronted key boxes at and about the Four Corners, the Plymouth Old Colony Memorial quipped that “someone ought to rub a little rum on the alarm pullers, and then perhaps the Middleboro police, so successful at liquor raids, can perhaps catch them.”

Ultimately, the attention given to liquor law enforcement would evaporate for a number of reasons, including the waning strength of the temperance movement, the decision of the community to permit liquor licensing and the rise in other, more serious crimes, which forced attention elsewhere. These developments, as well as the growing reaction with the constabulary’s liquor law obsession would ultimately help contribute to the establishment of a reformed modern police organization in town.

Illustration:
Family Temperance Pledge Certificate, late 1800s
Such decorative temperance pledge certificates for families, individuals and schoolchildren were common in the mid and late 1800s and pledged the subscriber to abstain from the consumption of alcohol as well as tobacco.  The generally widespread support for temperance encouraged the Middleborough constabulary to direct much of its attention to violators of local liquor laws during the post-bellum period.

The Pre-History of the Middleborough Police Department

While the establishment of the Middleborough Police Department is typically dated to 1909 when Harry W. Swift was named the first Chief of Police, the department in fact has a lengthy pre-history dating back decades prior to 1909 and newspaper accounts attest to the department's early characterization as a police force, as well as the existence of earlier chiefs heading the department.

Constables constituted Middleborough's earliest law enforcement force. Answerable to the Board of Selectmen, constables were responsible for upholding the laws passed by the General Court at Plymouth and later Boston, as well as local by-laws adopted by the community. In contrast to the respect with which law enforcement officials are generally held today, the 18th century constable held a thankless position, one which was frequently fraught with frustration and which involved no financial recompense. Not surprisingly, men usually tried to avoid the duty whenever possible.

Over time, however, the role of the constable within the community grew, particularly in the post-Civil War era when new responsibilities were assumed by the constabulary as the conception of public safety broadened and more and more demands were made for a full-time professional organization. By 1879, Leander M. Alden was not only serving as one of Middleborough's constables, but he was engaged as a special police officer and a truant officer who was also responsible for overseeing the town lock up or jail six nights weekly.

The public's growing concern over law and order matters was motivated by the rapid growth of the community, particularly around Middleborough Four Corners, and a perception of an increasing crime rate and was bolstered by the advocacy of the Middleboro Gazette and the Middleboro News, both of which supported an expanded and strong police force. The attention given local law enforcement concerns was but one aspect of the era's preoccupation with "improvement" which entailed the provision or expansion of municipal services including fire protection, public water and sewerage, gas and electric lighting, telegraphic and telephonic communication and naturally police protection.

The Middleborough constabulary that existed in the nearly half century between the close of the Civil War and 1909 was a force of eight to a dozen men engaged in the maintenance of public safety and order during the day time hours and included men such as James Cole, Samuel S. Lovell, Sylvanus Mendall, Everett T. Lincoln, Benjamin W. Bump, George W. Hammond and John W. Flansburg.

These men, like their colonial predecessors, received little financial remuneration for their efforts though they were reimbursed for out of pocket expenses. Because the men who occupied constabulary positions were not compensated for their duties, they more often than not were employed full-time elsewhere and attention to their law enforcement duties consequently sometimes proved irregular. Additionally, the constabulary's attention was by and large focused upon the downtown district, and rarely extended beyond the outskirts of Midleborough center. Yet despite these criticisms, Middleborough was afforded a level of public safety previously unknown.

More frequently than not, Middleborough's Victorian-era constables were engaged in the prosecution of laws related to the moral purity of the community, being seen especially by temperance leaders within the community as a bulwark against public drunkenness and general moral depravity. Consequently, much of their attention was devoted to the enforcement of local liquor laws. Fortunately, crimes against property such as burglary, larceny and arson (then known as incendiarism) were much less frequent, and violent personal crimes were virtually unknown.

For transgressors of the law, the town provided a lock up which according to one pundit of the era was "one of the most popular places in Middleboro'... It is almost constantly patronized, mostly by hen thieves and fast drivers." Located in the basement of Middleborough Town Hall constructed in 1874, the lock up consisted of brick-walled cells with concrete floors and iron doors. It was cold, damp and unhealthy. The condition of the lock up prompted the editor of the Middleboro News to advocate for its improvement in the summer of 1888, but little change was made and the dank cells remained in use for decades.

An important adjunct to the constabulary was the night watch, a generally lone individual charged with patrolling the community during the overnight hours as a deterrent to criminal activity. Certainly the value of the watch was proven many times over such as in May, 1874, when through the vigilance of the night watchman a potentially devastating fire was discovered and quelled before it could cause much damage. Voters demonstrated their appreciation of the night watch by appropriating the then considerable sum of $50 in 1875 to help fund it. (A decade and a half later, that figure reached several hundred dollars and remained there until formal establishment of the police department in 1909).

So satisfied were downtown residents with the night watch (and wary of nocturnal criminal activity) that they favored its expansion into a nighttime police force, most notably in 1887. These calls however went unheeded. The night watch would continue to operate for decades, in time becoming the most visible aspect of local law enforcement, the image of the sole night watchman on his lonely rounds eclipsing the view of the daytime constabulary in the public's mind. Prominent among Middleborough's night watchmen during this period were George Rich, Herbert L. Leonard and George E. Hatch.

Somewhat naturally, the strong element of protection afforded to the community during the evening hours and the desire for the creation of a night police was reflected in a demand for comparable protection during the day. In 1877 local residents called for the establishment of a permanent police force. Four years later, more specifically, "a day police [was] called for ... by the Middleboro Gazette." While such a police force was not formed, support for the constabulary was maintained and a Committee for the Suppression of Crime was eventually created to provide the local citizenry with a voice in local law enforcement matters. While the committee served a useful purpose in dramatizing the need for a modern police force, it also had the unfortunate result of politicizing public safety issues.

Throughout the last quarter of the 19th century, the Middleborough constabulary continued to evolve, assuming administrative functions and roles that would presage the modern police department. Modernization brought with it, too, a change in the way in which the constabulary was perceived by the public with records indicating that at times prior to 1909, the force of constables was referred to as a "police force" and a "police department". Additionally, the adoption of a modern organizational command structure brought with it the creation of the position of chief of police. As early as 1887 that title was in use, receiving official sanction in 1901 when long-serving constable Herbert L. Leonard was named Chief of Police by the Board of Selectmen.

The most significant step towards modernization, however, came in 1909 when ongoing challenges with the operation of the constabulary system of law enforcement prompted the Board of Selectmen to appoint constable Harry W. Swift to oversee the reorganized force of experienced constables as the modern Middleborough Police Department, thereby inaugurating a new chapter in Middleborough's public safety history.

Illustration:
Middleborough Police Department, Middleborough, MA, photograph, c. 1909
Pictured on the steps of the former Peirce Academy is Middleborough's "first" police department with Chief Harry W. Swift standing front row center.  The nine man force was representative of a long tradition of constabulary-based law enforcement in Middleborough as well as a more modern organization and approach to law enforcement which was adopted in 1909.