NCJ Number
147448
Journal
Journal of Social History Dated: (Winter 1992) Pages: 309-330
Date Published
1992
Length
22 pages
Annotation
Based on the daily diary of an urban patrolman who worked in southwestern Boston during the year 1895, this article profiles the work of the patrol officer in that period.
Abstract
During the late 19th Century, the Boston Police Department required each patrolman to keep "a private record of his work, with day and date." From at least 1874, the department supplied its officers with a pocket-size blank diary. The 1895 edition came complete with a calendar and pages for memoranda and addresses. The diary examined reveals that in the late 19th Century, the expansion of police powers was not a simple process of centralization at the expense of the individual. Policing helped to expand the government's role, but it did so in ways that were less bureaucratic than personal, and less centralized than locally oriented. The urban police of that time served citizens as much as they disciplined them. The police patrolman acted not as an instrument of the upper class, downtown bureaucrats, or the local alderman, but as a versatile official of the neighborhood where he patrolled. Despite the beat cop's formal job requirements, the demands of neighborhood citizens largely shaped the patrolman's tasks. Beat residents called upon patrolmen most often to protect private property. Lower-middle and working-class residents were not victims of police and lower trial court neglect or repression. Bostonians used the patrolman as a mediator and low-level magistrate for violent conflicts that arose between neighbors. 69 notes