USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 26
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1 See page 273.
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dumped into the near-by river. The completion of an enlarged metropolitan sewer, from the Wedgemere district to Medford, put an end to the occasional overflows that had discharged themselves into the Aberjona near its mouth; and the trunk sewer now (1936) being built from Reading through Winchester and along the eastern shore of Mystic Lake, will still further help to protect the Aberjona from contamination. The little river, serene and unpolluted, is once more as nature meant it to be, an element of charm in the Win- chester landscape.
CHAPTER XIX
FIRE AND POLICE PROTECTION. TOWN HALL AND PUBLIC LIBRARY. GROWTH AND PROGRESS
IN a community of frame houses of wooden construction, such as New England villages were, universally, in the past and, indeed, still are, fire was a continual and very serious menace. In olden times there were no means of fighting fire save by the householder and his family, assisted by such neighbors as appeared, forming a bucket brigade from the well, or perhaps a near-by brook, to the burning building. The buckets were passed from hand to hand and emptied one at a time on the flames, an obviously ineffectual way of dealing with a conflagration of any size. Once well started, a fire could not be extinguished till it had levelled the burning house to the ground.
There was no other means of fighting fire in Winchester terri- tory, however, until 1835, when the town of Medford benevolently assigned a venerable engine called the Grass Hopper to the pro- tection of citizens at the northwestern end of the town. The Grass Hopper was already seventy-two years old when it was transported to Symmes Corner and housed in Marshall Symmes's chaise house. It might be thought to have earned an honorable retirement, but it did such service as it was capable of for several years after 1835. "It was a primitive affair, little better than an ordinary force-pump mounted on wheels. It was nearly square, and was worked by hand-brakes. It had no hose at all, either for suction or delivery of water. The tank had to be filled laboriously from leathern buckets, a supply of which came with the engine. There was a platform over the tank whence protruded a copper pipe and nozzle."1 A very moderate stream of water could be thrown perhaps fifty feet as long as the attendants kept pouring buckets full of water into the tank. When a fire got so hot that the
1 MSS. notes on the history of the Winchester Fire Department compiled by A. Eugene Ayer and preserved at the Fire House.
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Grass Hopper's crew could not keep their little engine within a few yards of the fire, they had to withdraw and resign the building to the flames; not much of an advance, it will be seen, over the old bucket brigade.
In 1840 South Woburn, beginning to grow into a siz- able village, demanded bet- ter fire protection, and Woburn sent down one of its hand engines, the Water Witch, which was kept in a small house on Main Street near Sullivan Cutter's resi- dence. Five years later the Water Witch was replaced by the Washington. The Water Witch had no fire company; it was drawn and worked by chance comers who had heard the alarm of fire. The Washington, however, was manned by a company of volunteers, THE GRASS HOPPER fifty in number, of which Seth Johnson was foreman.
When Winchester was incorporated in 1850, Woburn withdrew its engine, and the new town had to purchase a machine of its own. It voted on May 25, 1851 to buy a Hunneman engine, then sup- posed to be the best on the market, which it presently did, at a cost of $1,329.75.1 The new engine was what was affectionately called a "hand tub"; it was named the Excelsior No. I. For some years it was kept in the house on Main Street where the Washing- ton had abode before it, and it was manned as the Water Witch had been, by any volunteers who presented themselves.
On March 14, 1854 a fire company was formed at a meeting in the Congregational vestry. As often happened in the early days, the leading citizens of the town enrolled themselves, from a sense of public duty. John R. Cobb was chosen foreman, and on the
1 Town Records, Vol. I, page 300.
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company roster were the names of Josiah Hovey, Sullivan Cutter, Captain Alfred Norton, Oliver R. Clark, Alvan Taylor and other men of mark in the community. This first company existed only two years, when it disbanded and was succeeded by another com- pany of younger men. The company adopted a uniform consisting of "glazed caps and blue shirts and belts," worn, it is to be pre- sumed, with whatever trousers were handy. It also chose a motto, "Our duty is our pleasure," which may be commended to the attention of humanity in general for its adoption.
In 1857 the town voted to build a new engine house, a two story affair so that the fire company might have a meeting hall above stairs. The house was built on Vine Street on the spot now occupied by the cooperative bank, and was dedicated on July 30, 1857 with a parade, in which visiting firemen from near-by towns took part, and a collation.
The fire laddies of Excelsior No. I were fond of "collations" both at home and abroad, sometimes furnished at their own expense, but more often at the expense of the citizens of the town who wished to stand well with the company. Entries in the old record book of the organization1 often read thus:
"July 25th (1857). Engine taken to the fire and played. After the fire repaired to the engine house and partook of refreshments" - both solid and fluid, no doubt.
These "refreshments" on the occasion of a fire were paid for by the town, and were the only compensation the members of the company received until 1863, when the town voted them the munificent sum of $3 a year. In the town records for 1857 we read that $3.10 was spent for "refreshments at Mr. Lindsay's fire," $16.99 for "refreshments at Dr. Bartlett's fire," and $6.67 for "re- freshments at Mr. Skillings' fire." The gravity of the conflagration can perhaps be estimated by the bill for food that followed. Thus the burning of the Congregational church in March 1853 cost the town $95.21 for "refreshments and cigars"; but there were several fire companies from other towns present on that occasion, whose hunger had to be satisfied.
The Excelsior was frequently taken to "firemen's musters" in other towns. These were notable social affairs and among the most
1 Preserved at the fire house.
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popular of public entertainments. The "hand-tubs" from as many as twenty or thirty different towns would attend; their companies paraded in full regalia, drawing their machines through the streets behind them, to the music of a half dozen brass bands and drum corps. The event of the day was "play-out," a contest to see which of the engines could throw a stream of water farther than any of the others. "A collation" of more than ordinary splendor followed, and the day often wound up with a firemen's ball.
On September 21, 1871 the Excelsior went so far afield as Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there distinguished itself by winning the "play-out" from twenty-five other engines. On its triumphant return to Winchester riding "high, wide and handsome" on a railway flatcar, the company was received with enthusiasm. All the whistles in town were blown, all the bells were rung and a cheering crowd assembled at the station to see the victorious tub unloaded. The company drew up in line before the Lyceum Build- ing, and Selectman Joseph F. Stone made a congratulatory address, A parade and a collation naturally followed.1
The fire department for many years was under the direction of three fire engineers, who were appointed by the selectmen and were in charge of the engine at all fires; there was also a steward to see that the engine was kept in good repair and the engine house neat and clean. A list of these engineers would be impossibly long, for they changed frequently with changing boards of selectmen. But it may be noted that C. H. Dupee, who had in earlier years been a fireman of the Excelsior, was so often on the board of engi- neers and so deeply interested in the work of the department that his friends in the company once bestowed on him in a set of reso- lutions the honorary title of "Father of the Winchester Fire Department."
The hand engine remained the sole dependence of the town until 1872; toward the close of this period the town became liberal enough to pay its members $10 a year - which generally worked out to about $2.50 for every alarm answered. But on October 10, 1871 there was a disastrous fire at the center which completely destroyed the Whitney mill. It followed after only a short time a fire which had destroyed a near-by building used as a button fac-
1 Record Book of the Excelsior Co.
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tory. The town began to feel that the hand engine did not afford sufficient protection. It had purchased a small chemical fire extin- guisher, but this was of use only in putting out small fires before they were well started. Moreover the chemical, which was kept in the basement of the Vine Street engine house, was in charge of a man who little understood the constant care that such a contrivance needs if it is to be kept in good condition. The result was that the machine was never ready for efficient service when an alarm was given and was in continual need of repair.1
To add to the feeling of insecurity, dissension arose in the hand engine company, many of whose members smarted under criticism of their efficiency; and on July 3, 1872 the company voted to dis- band. Two days later there was an alarm of fire in a large building at the center used as a boarding house, and the Excelsior in the hands of inexperienced firemen was quite unable to cope with it. The house burned to the ground.
This determined the town to buy a steam fire engine at once. That meant a new engine house too, for the old house was too small for the steamer, and the hose wagon and hook and ladder truck that were added to the equipment at the same time. The house was built on Winchester Place and was ready for the arrival of the new engine on January 15, 1873. This was the machine which was affectionately known to a later generation as "Mary Ann." It remained in active service for more than forty years.
The steamer required only three men to operate it; in order to supply a larger force of firemen and also to add to the better pro- tection of the four quarters of the town four light hand-drawn hose carriages were bought2 and volunteer companies organized to run with them. One - the Black Horse company - was stationed in a little house near Symmes's Corner; another-the West Side com- pany - had its house on Cambridge Street; a third, the Excelsior Hose, was stationed on Swanton Street, and the fourth, the Rum- ford company, covered the district along upper Main Street. Then, or soon after, the crude beginnings of a fire alarm system were instituted. Instead of the clamor of the church bell which as in all New England villages was the original fire alarm, the whistles
1 Letter in Middlesex Journal, March 2, 1872.
2 Ordered bought December 14, 1874.
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on the Moseley and Waldmyer tanneries were put to use. The town was divided into four or five districts and a corresponding number of blasts on the whistle at least told the call firemen in what part of the town the fire was to be found. The watchman at the tannery would often detect a blaze, before word had got to him, by seeing the light reflected from it upon the midnight sky; and once or twice he conscientiously blew his whistle, only to have the sleepy firemen discover that the suspicious light he had observed was cast upward by the rising moon.
Not even the new steamer contributed so much to the protec- tion of the town against fire as the introduction of a water system in 1875. From the hydrant service a constant and ample water supply was always at hand in almost any part of the town. The firemen no longer had to depend on shallow wells or inadequate cisterns, when a fire was not considerate enough to break out con- venient to a pond or river, and often the local hose company by coupling directly to a hydrant were able to get a fire under fair control before the steam engine could reach the spot.
In the newspapers and records of the seventies and eighties, we often find the horse-drawn hose reel stationed at the center engine house referred to as the "P. Waldmyer Hose" and the hook and ladder truck called the "J. W. Huse Co." Occasionally also there is mention of the "Alexander Moseley" steamer, and the "J. F. Dwinell" chemical engine. This does not signify that any of the gentlemen mentioned sustained any causative relation to the presence of the apparatus in the service of the town. It seems that on the upper floor of the engine house there were meeting rooms for the use of the several companies that were attached to these pieces. Mr. Waldmyer generously furnished the room occupied by the hose company, Mr. Huse bought the furniture for the hook and ladder company, and so on. It was purely in grateful compli- ment that their names were attached to the companies whom they had befriended and the machines which those companies operated.
There is no doubt that the town was better off for fire protec- tion after the steamer was purchased. But for a good many years its efficiency was somewhat impaired because it had no horses regularly attached to it. Fires were so rare that the town felt it a needless expense to buy horses and use them only four or five times
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a year. The horses used by the highway department were supposed to be taken to the fire house when an alarm sounded, and hitched to the engine; and in case of emergency horses might be hired - by agreement-from a livery stable or the local express company. Usually this arrangement worked well enough, but there is on rec- ord one earnest complaint from the fire engineers that at a fire in Baconville the steamer was forty-five minutes late because the town horses were at work near the Stoneham line, and no spare horses could be found at the livery stable, so the engine had to wait idly till the town horses came jogging back with their tip- carts from the distant scene of their labors - and meanwhile the fire burned merrily away, to the complete destruction of the build- ing. The engineers begged the selectmen to keep some horses at least within reasonable distance of the engine house!
The fire-alarm telegraph system was introduced in 1888. Beginning modestly with four boxes at Cross and Washington, Swanton and Washington, Church and Bacon streets, and Symmes's Corner, eight more were presently added, and the system has been expanded as necessity required, until today (1936) there are forty- seven alarm boxes in the town. The telegraph has always been connected with a fire whistle on the tannery now owned by Beggs and Cobb, and with a bell at the engine house in the center.
In 1892 the department was pretty thoroughly reorganized. The fire engineers got their own horses at last, and having them, felt that the neighborhood hose reels in the four quarters of the town were no longer needed. They were accordingly discontinued, and the apparatus was concentrated at the center, except for the horse-drawn hose carriage which was stationed in a house built for it on Swanton Street. The fire engineers were able under this arrangement to reduce the number of men under pay from fifty or sixty to only three permanent and twenty-five call men.
This reorganization was not accomplished without a good deal of heart-burning. The men who had run with the old hand reels felt injured, and showed it by an unwillingness to join the new force of call men even when requested to do so. The voters at town meetings sympathized with them, and feared there were no longer enough men on duty to attend efficiently to the business of fire fighting. They were especially nervous because there were at this
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time a number of fires in the town which seemed to be incendiary in origin. Only a few days before town meeting a part of Mr. Emerson's coal and lumber yard was burned - evidently the work of a firebug. So they voted that the personnel of the department ought to be increased,1 and several men were accordingly added to it. But the hose companies did not come back, and it was soon admitted that they were not needed.
It would serve no purpose to record all the purchases of appa- ratus that have been made during the years in which the Win- chester fire department has expanded and improved into one of the most efficient fire forces in the state. It remained under the direction of its three fire engineers (one of whom came to have the title of chief engineer) until 1913, when another reorganization took place. A permanent chief engineer was appointed, a well-paid officer who should give his entire time and energy to his duty, and the force of permanent firemen was considerably increased. It was a needed improvement, for the modern fire apparatus can neither be properly cared for or competently worked except by men who are in no small degree specialists. David H. DeCourcey was the first chief appointed. He still remains in active duty.
In 1912 the motorizing of the department's apparatus had begun with the purchase of a combination hose and chemical wagon. Two years later a powerful automobile pump was bought; "Mary Ann" was relegated to the reserve and soon disposed of altogether. Nothing but motor-driven apparatus has been used for nearly twenty years.
In 1913 too, steps were taken to provide a new and commodi- ous engine house to take the place of the dilapidated structure on Winchester Place which had long been inadequate, and was not large enough to hold the kind of motor apparatus that was coming into use. The house stands on Mt. Vernon Street, not far from the center; it was designed by Edward R. Wait, and is both attractive architecturally and intelligently planned. The building of the police department is connected with it, at right angles, its entrance on Winchester Place.
At the present time the department possesses six pieces of apparatus in active service - three pumps, a hook and ladder
1 Winchester Star, April 8, 1893.
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truck, and two hose trucks, besides a car for the chief, and a tractor no longer used. There are sixteen permanent firemen in addition to the chief, and twenty call men.
Winchester has had its share of serious fires in the past, but it is to be noticed that it has had none that could be so described since the burning of the Blank Brothers tannery on Lake Street in 1910. This good fortune is largely due no doubt to the fact that there are few large industrial establishments in the town, and that Winchester is a town of detached residences. It is only fair, how- ever, to give some of the credit to a well-equipped and efficient fire department.
There is less of color in the chronicles of Winchester's police department than in those of the fire fighters. For a number of Years after the incorporation of the town, the two constables duly elected at the March town meeting were also commissioned as police officers, and were the only police force of the town. They wore badges no doubt, but no uniforms, and they had no regular stations or hours of duty. Their pay (first recorded in 1853) was modest: $10 a year at first, and gradually increased to $15, $20 and even $25. As police officers they owed their appointment to the selectmen. By 1870 the number of police officers had risen to four, and in 1874 to seven, one of whom - F. H. Johnson - is designated as chief. As such he was elected by the policemen them- selves.1 The town had become more generous, as the duties of the policemen had also become more onerous, and those who served for a complete twelve-month were paid $100.
In 1878 the selectmen began the appointment of a chief of police; Zanoni A. Richardson was the first. But how sketchy the organization was may be seen by the plaintive report of Chief C. H. Dupee, who succeeded Mr. Richardson. "There being dis- satisfaction in the organization of the force, some of the officers concluded to work by themselves, thereby causing a continual dis- cord and making it impossible for us to keep a full record of the work done"(!) The officers, it appears, were accustomed to take any prisoners they arrested directly to the Woburn Court, without even bothering to tell their chief what they had done.
1 Town Reports for 1874 (Police Report).
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A great part of the police work at this time consisted in deal- ing with illicit sales of liquor, which seem to have been very preva- lent. "Some of their places we have succeeded in closing," says Chief Richardson with some conscious pride, "while others have been confined to sales 'behind the curtain' to young men who are there taught to take the first steps in iniquity ; and when we gently endeavor to apply the law to these tippling shops, the cry comes 'Oh persecution ! persecution!' "1 Evidently Winchester's chief was making discovery simultaneously with Mr. W. S. Gilbert's sergeant of police in the "Pirates of Penzance" that "a policeman's lot is not a happy one!"
In 1880 the town was so far stirred up about the selling of liquor that it appropriated $500 for "suppression" of the nuisance, and the selectmen had to take some harsh criticism because they hesitated to spend it. "We did not deem it advisable," they said in their defence, "to make use of so questionable a mode of obtain- ing evidence, as to employ spies. ... We believe more drunkards can be reclaimed by kindness than by force, and so also with the sale of liquor." To this humanitarian doctrine Selectmen Albert Ayer, Warren Johnson and C. H. Dunham subscribed their names.2
They had good reason to explain and defend their action, for at this period the feeling on the question of temperance was very strong throughout New England, and Winchester was no exception. The Reform Club had been formed in 1876, and during the twelve years of its existence four hundred men of the town became mem- bers. The club was exceedingly active from the first in the effort to reclaim drunkards, inculcate total abstinence and promote tem- perance legislation. Some of the leading men of the town were its presidents - S. C. Small, John R. Cobb, Sumner Richardson, Edwin Robinson, A. E. Rowe and others. Robert Cowdery was its treasurer. The Reform Club had rooms in the Richardson Block, and every Sunday it had devotional services in Lyceum Hall with addresses by well-known temperance advocates. Among its most enthusiastic members was John R. Hemingway, himself a fluent lecturer on temperance, and a police officer who was especially active in running down the illicit barrooms.
1 Town Reports for 1879.
2 Selectmen's Report for 1881, page 9.
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The Reform Club was one of a chain of "Red Ribbon Clubs" which were formed originally as temperance organizations composed entirely of reformed drinkers, but the Winchester club was more inclusive; anyone above the age of fifteen might join.1
At the same time the local Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed, with Mrs. J. D. Sharon as president, and a very large number of the women of the town were enrolled. The fiery enthusiasm of the women long survived that of the men. The Reform Club lived only twelve years; the Union, after fifty years of existence, still retains its vitality and battles tirelessly in the cause of temperance reform. More will be said of it in a later chapter. With the town so deeply stirred over the liquor question it behooved the police to give a satisfactory account of themselves or show the reason why.
By 1882 we find a policeman for night duty mentioned for the first time. A few years later there were two, while the chief, now paid $500, was alone on day duty. It became the practice to appoint a number of special policemen who had badges, could make arrests, and might be called on for emergency duty, but who served without pay. Uniforms for the regular men - at least to the extent of a gold-braided cap - appeared.
In 1897 William R. McIntosh succeeded J. Winslow Richard- son as chief, and began a service of thirty-four years, during which the police department was modernized, enlarged and conducted with unfailing discipline and efficiency. When he took office the force consisted of only three patrolmen; it was not until 1898 that there was any day policeman except the chief himself. From that day the department has continuously increased in size, until at present (1936) it consists of a lieutenant and two sergeants, besides the chief, twenty patrolmen, and some twenty-five special officers, who act only when called upon and are paid for the time actually spent on duty.
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