USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Municipal history of the town and city of Boston during two centuries : from September 17, 1630, to September 17, 1830 > Part 11
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The tone and policy of this report, made in 1823, have been since sanctioned by the establishment of the cemetery at Mount Auburn by an effective organization of private citizens; and if similar plans are adopted by any future City Council, the main design of the Committee may be in time carried into effect, and burials altogether excluded from the precincts of the city.
'The new organization of the city authorities having rendered a more efficient police requisite than had existed under the town government, an ordinance was passed, in June, 1823, authorizing the election and prescribing the duties of the city marshal, to
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which office Benjamin Pollard was immediately nominated by the Mayor, and appointed by the Board of Aldermen. In con- stituting this department, a strong feeling was manifested in the Common Council to retain in their hands a concurrent vote in the appointment of the City Marshal, as being the head of the police. But the opinion ultimately prevailed, that this officer was in fact the arm of the executive branch, for which it ought to be exclusively made responsible; that a voice in his appointment, vested in the legislative branch, would essentially and injuriously affect that responsibility. An officer, exercising powers and fulfill- ing duties like those required of the City Marshal, ought, as far as possible, to be removed from all temptation of fear, on account of his popularity. This office, when faithfully executed, must often cross the interests, and 'sometimes the passions, of men influ- ential in local spheres. Perhaps no office exposes an individual to greater risks of becoming unpopular. Both from its conspi- cuousness and its salary, the office would be an object of ambi- tion and intrigue; and that the difficulties of a faithful perform- ance of its duties, from their minuteness, and the general and wide sphere of action to which they were applicable, rendered such performance easily susceptible of mistake and misrepresent- ation. These considerations were conclusive in the judgment of the Common Couneil, who passed the bill constituting this de- partment, limiting the responsibility of this officer to the Board of Aldermen, on whom rested the reciprocal responsibility of keeping an unworthy officer in power. The importance of this decision on the character and efficiency of this office cannot be too highly estimated. The qualifications of Mr. Pollard for the office of City Marshal were unquestionable. He was intelligent, well-educated, gentlemanly in manners, acquainted with the laws and with mankind, and of a disposition to fulfil the duties of the office faithfully. It would not have been easy to find an officer combining more requisite qualities, or generally more acceptable.
He performed the duties of City Marshal twelve years, under four successive administrations, until his death, in November, 1835.
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CHAPTER VIII. CITY GOVERNMENT. 1823-1824.
JOSIAH QUINCY, Mayor.
Measures for the Suppression of Idleness, Vice, and Crime - A House of Cor- rection - Its Effects - Building provided for Juvenile Offenders - Its Re- sults - Petition for General Meetings in Wards - Loans proposed for City Improvements - Theatrical Licenses - Ropewalk Lands - Islands in the Harbor - Common Sewers.
PECULIAR and difficult duties, relative to idleness, vice, and crime, devolved upon the second administration of the city, which led to measures, during the six ensuing years, resulting in a complete system of institutions adapted to their restraint and reformation.
That class of vicious population unavoidable in a city was, at that time, in Boston, thickly concentrated in a district at West Boston. 'Twelve or fourteen houses of infamous character were openly kept, without conceahnent and without shame. The chief officer of the former police said to the Mayor, soon after his inauguration : " There are dances there almost every night. The whole street is in a blaze of light from their win- dows. To put. them down, without a military force, seems im- possible. A man's life would not be safe who should attempt it. The company consists of highbinders, jail-birds, known thieves, and miscreants, with women of the worst description. Murders, it is well known, have been committed there, and more have been suspected." He was asked, " If vice and villany were too strong for the police ?" He replied, "I think so; at least, it has long been so in that quarter." He was answered, " There shall be at least a struggle for the supremacy of the laws."
These representations of the police officer were not exagge- rated; but means of relief were difficult. A house of correction, the legal instrument of control for such offences, had never ex-
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isted in the town of Boston. Within the inclosure surrounding the Almshouse in Leverett Street, there had been, from its first establishment, a small brick building, called " The Bridewell ;" but its accommodations were too limited to restrain or punish even the inmates of the house,1 and were wholly inadequate as a resource to come in aid of the judicial courts of the county. A sentence to the House of Correction was, in effect, a sentence of confinement to the common jail, where this class of offenders received their punishment, without means of labor, and without other special superintendence or moral influence than tenants of prisons were at that time accustomed to receive, which was comparatively none at all. It accordingly appears, by the offi- cial returns of the Municipal Court, in the years 1822 and 1823, that, out of three hundred and fifty-eight sentences to con- finement, two hundred and forty-three were to the common jail, and not one to the House of Correction. It was obvious, there- fore, that all attempts to give efficiency to the moral police of the city, must be preceded by providing a house of correction.
On inspecting the common jails of the city, in Leverett Street, it was found that, of the two stone prisons there situated, one was amply sufficient for all the usual exigencies of the courts of justice. It was determined, therefore, to convert the other into a house of correction, and employ the inmates in the adjoining jail-yard in hammering stone and like materials.
Accordingly, on the fourth of June, 1823, the Mayor and Aldermen passed an order appropriating the North Prison to that use, and appointed the jailer of the prison its keeper.
Both the sheriff and the jailer opposed this measure. Their objections, representing such a location of the House of Correc- tion, in the vicinity of the common jail, to be incompatible with the safety of the one institution and the discipline of the other, had so much weight, that the Mayor pledged himself, on behalf of the City Council, that the arrangement should be temporary ; and, on the recommendation of the Committee, in 1823, the City Council, in December following, authorized a building, destined for a house of correction, to be erected at South Boston.
In October, 1823, the House of Correction was organized in the North Jail, in Leverett Street, under the statutes of the
1 It was two stories high, forty-one feet long, thirty feet wide, and contained twenty-four locked cells and two other cells.
,
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Commonwealth, by appointing three overseers,1 and establishing rules and regulations for its government. A Committee of the Board of Aldermen, consisting of the Mayor and Messrs. Odi- orne and Child, was also appointed for the general superintend- ence of the whole subject.
The immediate result of these measures .on the moral condi- tion of the city were thus stated by the Mayor, in his inaugural address to the City Council, in May, 1824 : -
" There existed at the commencement of last year, in one section of the city, (West Boston,) an audacious obtrusiveness of vice, notorious and lamentable, setting at defiance not only the deeencies of life, but the authority of the laws. 1 . Repeated attempts to subdue this combination had failed. An opinion was entertained by some, that it was invincible. There were those who recom- mended a tampering and palliative, rather than an eradicating, course of mea- snres. Those intrusted with the affairs of the city were of a different temper. The evil was met in the face. In spite of clamor, of threat, of insult; of the certificates of those who were interested to maintain, or willing to countenance, the locating vice in this quarter, a determined course was pursued. The whole section was put under the ban of authority. All licenses in it were denied. A vigorons police was organized, which, aided by the courts of justice and the House of Correction, effected its purpose. For three months past, the daily reports of our city officers have represented that section as peaceable as any other. Those connected with courts of justice, both as ministers and officers, assert that the effect has been plainly discernible in the registers of the jails and of prosecutions.
" These measures did not originate in any theories or visions of ideal purity, attainable in the existing state of human society ; but in a single sense of duty, and respect for the character of the city ; proceeding upon the principle that, if in great cities the existence of vice is inevitable, that its course should be secret, like other filth, in drains and in darkness; not obtrusive ; not powerful ; not prowling publicly in the streets for the innocent and unwary.
" The expense by which this effect has been produced has been somewhat less than one thousand dollars ; an amount already, perhaps, saved to the com- munity in the diminution of the costs of prosecutions, which an unobstructed course of vice would have occasioned."
The records of the courts of justice soon proved that the House of Correction diminished the inmates of the prison, and its establishment was hailed by those interested in the moral efficiency of the laws, as an era in our municipal history. 'The Grand Jury of the county, in September, 1824, in their official report, expressed " their gratification to learn that, after a lapse of
1 Thomas Kendall, Jonathan Thaxter, and Edward Dyer.
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thirty-six years, measures have been adopted by the government of the city, to erect a suitable house for the confinement and labor of those numerous lewd, idle, and disorderly persons, who, by the vigilance and faithfulness of the Mayor and Police Court, are arrested in their unlawful career."
'The beneficial results of the House of Correction were also acknowledged by the citizens in general and the City Council; and in November ensuing, a committee of both branches urged the erection of a stockade fence round the sixty acres attached to the House of Industry, on the ground that the enclosure would . soon comprehend the House of Correction, which had already, in its restricted location in the North Jail, by its terrors and dis- cipline, enabled the city authorities so to reduce the number of crimes and offences, as to have their success publicly acknow- ledged by the justices of both the criminal courts and the keeper of the jail.
In this report, the Committee give the first intimation of the intention of the City Council, which had, from the first esta- blishment of the House of Correction, been entertained by the Mayor and influential members of that body, to make that insti- tution applicable to juvenile offenders, as soon as it had been brought into effective operation at South Boston; by its aid to clear the markets, streets, and wharves of those vagabonds, boys, beggars, and drunkards, who, under pretence of gaining a liveli- hood, learned the habits of begging, stealing, or gambling, and whose reformation could not be effected without effectual re- straint.
Although objections had been made by the sheriff and jailer to the use of the North Jail as a house of correction, experience had induced the latter to wish for its continuance in that loca- tion. The Overseers of the House of Correction concurred in this wish, as its superintendence was more easy than at South Boston. Considerable expenses, also, had been incurred for its establishment in the North Prison, which would be lost by a removal. The impending great debt of the city, consequent on the extension of Faneuil Hall Market, was also brought forward to obstruct further appropriations. An opposition was thus raised, which neither influence nor argument could overcome; and after the building for the House of Correction at South Boston had been finished, it was permitted to lay unoccupied
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for more than a year, so satisfactory had the result of the experi- ment of its establishment in the North Jail proved.
All attempts for a removal of the House of Correction to South Boston thus being for a time ineffectual, a design was formed to place in the edifice erected for it an establishment for the reformation of juvenile offenders. Accordingly, on the nine- teenth of January, 1826, a Committee of the City Council, com- posed of the Mayor, Aldermen Oliver and Loring, and Messrs. Stevenson, Boies, and Grosvenor, of the Common Council, was appointed to consider the whole subject; and, on the ninth of February, the Committee made a report, stating the importance of the design ; the inadequacy of a voluntary association, should it be formed for that purpose; that, although such a house, from its nature, onght to be supported from the resources of the whole community, there was no reasonable canse of expectation that it would be established by the State. The evil being chiefly felt in great cities, the remedy, it was deemed, devolved on the municipal authorities; and that, if a house for the reformation of juvenile offenders was thought necessary, it could only be effected by the power or means of the city.
The Committee then stated the causes and various considera- tions which had unavoidably postponed, for a time, the removal of the House of Correction to the edifice erected at South Boston, although the growth of the city would render its future transfer inevitable. In this building, the experiment of a house for the reformation of juvenile offenders might therefore be made, with little comparative expense.
The City Council immediately concurred in these views, and authorized an application to the legislature of the State for the requisite powers, which were granted to the City Council, by an act passed in March, 1826. Under this act of the legislature, the cast wing of the building at South Boston, originally in- tended for a house of correction, was authorized to be used for the reception of juvenile offenders, and the Directors of the House of Industry appointed Directors of the new institution. The arrangements for carrying it into effect were made under the disadvantages incident to the circumstances under which it was commenced. There was far from being a universal concur- rence in the design, either in the City Council or among the citizens. The expenditures were immediate and considerable ;
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the advantage distant and problematical. Many were of opi- nion that it ought to be supported by the resources of the State, and not of the city. It was an experiment, and its success necessarily depended upon the qualifications of the superintend- ent, among which zeal and entire devotion to the service are indispensable. Difficulties also occurred from tender-hearted philanthropists, who regarded the length and nature of the re- straint as severe, notwithstanding the boys were committed by a court of justice for serious offences. Parents, also, who had been deprived of the services of their sons, made complaints and attempts for their discharge. During the first eighteen months, the institution had about seventy imnates, from nine to eighteen years of age ; but its friends, not being entirely satisfied with its success, determined to prove the efficacy of the institut- tion by unquestionable results, or recommend its abandonment altogether. Happily, in November, 1827, the Rev. E. M. P. Wells was appointed the chaplain and superintendent; and entered on the duties of his station with the spirit and energy characteristic of a vigorous mind, a resolved purpose, and a heart zealous and devoted to the objects of the institution. By constant supervision, kind treatment, friendly advice, and strict requirement of obedience, he dispensed with the use of the whip and solitary confinement for punishments, except in highly aggravated offences. Hle encouraged each individual, as he rose in the moral scale, by privileges, and subjected him to pri- vations, if he fell in it. Strictness without severity, love with- out indulgence, were the elements of his system of manage- ment; regarding the juvenile delinquents rather as @sinned against than sinning," both by parents and society. To secure perfect purity and order, he submitted to the inconvenience of sleeping in a large hall, with the key under his pillow, in the midst of sixty, and, at times, a hundred boys, each in a single bed; several of them possessing physical strength little, if any, inferior to his own. He held the office five years, and produced results sufficient to prove the value and receive the reward, in consciousness of fulfilled duty, of such efficiency and self-devo- tion. During this period, the annual admission averaged sixty- two; the number in the house usually was one hundred and twenty ; at one time it amounted to one hundred and twenty nine.
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The annual average discharge was fifty-six; and the whole num- ber over which his care was extended was four hundred and four- teen. Four tenths of these juvenile offenders were sent to the institution under the vagrant act; three tenths for larceny, for- gery, and other crimes ; three tenths for stubbornness and disobe- dience. They came, almost without exception, ignorant, lazy, vicious, repulsive and disgusting in external appearance. The work of improvement was general and thorough. After from two to five years' subjection to the discipline of the institution, expe- rience showed that five sixths of those discharged by Mr. Wells might be considered reformed. 'They were readily received as ap- prentices by respectable farmers, mechanics, masters of vessels, and gave evidence, by their general conduct, of becoming use- ful, prosperous, and virtuous members of the community. 'The excellence of the institution, and the high merits of the super- intendent, were universally acknowledged; and a just and well- deserved tribute to both was paid by Messrs. Beaumont and De Tocqueville, Counsellors of the Royal Court of Paris, who came in 1832 to this country, as French commissioners, to inquire into the penitentiary systems of the United States. In their report they state, that the Institution for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders at South Boston is "admirably conducted; but its success seems to us less the effect of the system itself, than of the distinguished man who puts it in practice," who "exhi- bits a zeal and a vigilance altogether extraordinary, which it would be a mistake to expect in general from persons most devoted to their duties."
The system of Mr. Wells, comprising, as it does, all the essen- tial and practical elements requisite for a sound moral, physical, and intellectual education, deserves the attentive consideration of the superintendents of all institutions for the reformation of the ignorant and vicious; but, like all systems of government, will be proportionably successful as the individual who conducts it is qualified, by talents and devotedness, for the task he under- takes. .
In respect of the general effect produced by the House of Industry, the House of Correction, and that for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders, on the relations of poverty, viee, and crime, in the city of Boston, the Mayor, in his address on taking a final
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leave of the office of Mayor, which he had held for nearly six years, made the following statement, in January, 1829 :-
" In respect of what has been done in support of public morals, when this administration first came into power, the police had no comparative effect; the city possessed no house of correction, and the natural inmates of that establish- ment were on our ' hills,' or on our commons, disgusting the delicate, offending the good, and intimidating the fearful. There were parts of the city over which no honest man dared to pass in the night time, so proud and uncontrolled was there the dominion of erine. The executive of the city was seriously advised not to meddle with those haunts, their reformation being a task altogether impracticable.
" It was attempted. The success is known. Who, at this day, sees begging in our streets? I speak generally ; a transient case may occur, but there is none systematic. At this day, I speak it confidently, there is no part of the city through which the most timid may not walk, by day or by night, without fear of personal violence. What streets present more stillness in the night time ? Where, in a city of equal population, are there fewer instances of those crimes, to which all populous places are subject ?
" Doubtless much of this condition of things is owing to the orderly habits of our citizens ; but much, also, is attributable to the vigilance which has made vice tremble in its haunts, and fly to cities where the air is more congenial to it; which, by pursuing the lawless vendor of spirituous liquors, denying licenses to the worst of that class, or revoking them, as soon as found in improper hands, has checked crime in its first stages, and introduced into these establishments a salutary fear. By the effect of this system, notwithstanding, in these six years. the population of the city has been increased at least fifteen thousand, the num- ber of licensed houses have been diminished from six hundred and seventy-nine to five hundred and fifty-four.
" Let it be remembered, that this state of things has been effected without the addition of one man to the ancient arm of the police. The name of the police officer has, indeed, been changed to city marshal. The venerable old charter number, of twenty-four coustables, still continues the entire array of the city police. And eighty watelnen, of whom never more than eighteen are out at a time, constitute the whole nocturnal host of police militant, to maintain the peace and vindicate the wrongs of upwards of sixty thousand citizens.
"The good which has been attained, and no man can deny it is great, has been effected by directing unremittingly the force of the executive power to the haunts of vice, in its first stages, and to the favorite resorts of crime, in its last.
"To diminish the number of licensed dram-shops and tippling-houses; to keep a vigilant eye over those which are licensed; to revoke, without fear or favor, the licenses of those who were found violating the law; to break up public dances in the brothels ; to keep the light and terrors of the law directed upon the resorts of the lawless, thereby preventing any place becoming danger- ous by their congregation, or they and their associates becoming insolent, through sense of strength and numbers. These have been the means; and these means, faithfully applied, are better than armies of constables and watchmen."
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On the third of January, 1825, a petition by fifty qualified voters was presented to the Board of Aldermen for the calling a meeting of the citizens in wards, to consider the expediency of having twelve aldermen chosen in each ward instead of eight. The doubts entertained concerning the authority to call meetings of citizens in wards on subjects of this nature, were freely stated to the leading petitioners. It was found, however, that they dis- regarded those doubts, and placed their claim for such a meeting on the basis of right, and denied the authority of the Mayor and Aldermen to refuse, under the language of the city charter, to call any meeting of citizens petitioned for by fifty individuals. As the proceedings on this application might form a precedent for future times, the subject was deemed important enough to be referred to a special committee, the Mayor being chairman, who, after deliberate consideration, made a report, of which the following were the leading features; - that the question on this petition did not turn on the general authority of the Board to call meetings of citizens, either in wards or in any other way which they may deem most expedient for the general interest or local convenience ; such, for instance, as calling a meeting in wards to choose a vaccinating committee ; but the petition was for a very differ- ent object, namely, -" the taking the sense of the citizens on an application to the Legislature for an amendment of the city charter, on the requisition of more than fifty qualified voters, and it prays that the meeting for this purpose shall be holden in wards ; " that the city charter in its twenty-fifth section, specifically provides for three cases, in which, on the requisition of fifty qualified voters, it is imperative on the Board of Aldermen to call a gene- ral meeting of citizens, and these are, - Ist. Consultation on the common good. 2d. Giving instructions to representatives. 3d. 'Taking measures for redress of grievances. That the petition in . this case was unquestionable, on subjects specifically included in the above enumeration, for which it was the duty of the Mayor and Aldermen to call a general meeting of the citizens, if that would be satisfactory to the petitioners. But the claim being that the meeting should be in wards, the Board decided, that they had " no right, on the requisition of any number of qualified voters, by any authority derived from the charter, to call any meeting other than a general meeting for any of the objects spe- cified in the twenty-fifth section of that charter; " that this sec-
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