USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume III > Part 42
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In recurring to the annals of these days, one cannot but lament the deplorable change which has taken place in respect to the indepen- dence of the city government. To-day the city's charter is amended, or a new charter is enacted, whenever the legislature may desire, but in the olden times a charter amendment without the people's consent was a thing unheard of. The constitutions of 1777 and 1822 expressly recognized and confirmed the ancient Dongan and Montgomerie charters. The expediency of amending the city charter was decided by the voters of the city in 1829. They elected a convention of their own citizens to undertake the task of revision; the work of that con- vention was submitted to the people of the city at the polls, and was ratified by them before it was submitted to the legislature. The city convention, called in 1846, was summoned by the votes of the people of the city, and the act of the legislature providing for the election of delegates to the convention directed that its work should be sub- mitted for approval to the citizens. The charter reported by the con-
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vention was ratified at the polls, and then, by legislative enactment, in 1849, became the new charter of the city. Never before 1857 was an attempt made to provide a charter or government for New-York without the express approbation of its citizens at the polls. So firmly was the city's right to control its own affairs recognized, that no important legislation exclu- sively affecting the municipal- ity was undertaken without its express consent. Twice during this decade was the free-school question submitted to popular vote; the act establishing the municipal police was also voted upon by the people; sanction of citizens at the polls was in like manner obtained to the con- struction of the Croton aque- duct, and the question of the establishment of the Free Acad- emy was submitted to the elec- tors of the city, who, by a large vote, declared themselves un- ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL. 1 qualifiedly in favor of free higher education for the boys of the city schools. The benefits which have already resulted from the establish- ment of this admirable institution have been very great, and with the creation of the Normal College for girls, it is to be hoped that free higher education in New-York has been permanently guaranteed to the youth of the metropolis.
The charter of 1830 provided that the executive business of the corporation should be performed by distinct departments, to be or- ganized and appointed by the common council. One of the amend- ments made in 1849 was the creation of executive departments alto- gether independent of the common council, the heads of which, in accordance with the prevailing spirit of the time, were, with the exception of the Croton aqueduct board, to be elected by the people. Several of these departments had their origin during the decade which ended with 1850. The police department and the Croton aqueduct department were created in this era, which marks also the organization of the first Board of Education.
The Knickerbockers of the early thirties, in matters of police, had
1 St. Patrick's Cathedral was dedicated May 4, 1815. Bishop Plessis of Quebec, who was in New- York in that year, speaks of the new cathedral as
"at the extremity of the city towards the coun- VOL. III .- 25.
try." It was the second Roman Catholic church in New-York, and stands at the corner of Mott and Prince streets. A fire destroyed the spire.
EDITOR.
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. not advanced much, if any, beyond the burgomasters and schepens of New Amsterdam. There was no day police force. Civil processes were executed by the marshals attached to the courts; public order was maintained by the constabulary, except upon occasions of unu- sual public excitement or during riots, actual or apprehended, when, under laws for the time in vogue, a mayor possessed the power of appointing special constables. As in the Dutch times, the city watch began shortly after sunset and continued until dawn. In the early Knickerbocker days the watch was a small force, but before 1840 it had increased to a corps of nearly one thousand men. Watchmen were drawn from all avocations. The stevedore, truckman, or car- B. Cikor penter who was dissatisfied with his wages, or anxious for
a larger income, was eligible to serve as watchman by night. There were divisions of the watch, with hours for relief. Watchmen wore no particular uniform except the old varnished fire- man's hat, from which the front helmet-piece was removed, and the wearing of which gave rise to the sobriquet of "Leatherheads," which long continued to be applied to these public servants. The old round of duties, known for nearly two centuries, was still maintained: watch- men were to call the hours of the night, give alarms of fire, cry out the street in which the fire was raging, ring the watchmen's bell, and hang out a lantern upon a pole to indicate the site of the conflagration.1
Legislation and city ordinances in this period upon the subject of watchmen show that the city was then conscious that it had outgrown this antiquated system. As New-York advanced in wealth and popu- lation her criminal classes increased also, and there developed a baser and more reckless order of wrong-doers, requiring a curbing power more constantly and rationally applied. Crimes were committed both by day and night. Gangs of hardened felons superseded the sportive young bloods whose pranks were the worst evils which the old Knick- erbocker watchmen had to encounter.
At first improvement was attempted by the creation of additional police justices, the mayor and the recorder, then the famous Richard Riker, celebrated by Halleck in the "Petition " commencing,
My dear Recorder, you and I Have floated down life's stream together,
having previously exercised the functions of these officials; then by the enlargement of the watch, and the enactment of more stringent penalties for neglect of duty; afterward by the creation of special marshals or constables by appointment of the mayor, to be sum-
1 The old watchmen were notorious for sleeping on their posts. In " Fanny," Halleck, in describ- ing his heroine's vocal efforts, thus satirizes the watchmen's failing :
"And every song, whose dear, delightful theme Is 'Love still Love,' had oft till midnight tried Her finest, loftiest, 'pigeon wings' of sound. Waking the very watchmen far around."
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moned to aid the usual constabulary force in special emergencies, and by the formation of the first detective squad ever known in the city.
The continued development of the city, the accessions to its crimi- nal classes, the numerous election riots, the Abolition riot in July, 1834, the Bread and Flour riot in February, 1837, and other dis- turbances, the enlargement of the city's commerce and increasing complications in police duties, rendered it evident that the old watch system was an obstacle to the city's progress. In 1844 the legislature enacted the Municipal Police Act, but, with the commendable humility of the legislators of those times, the act was to be left unexecuted until the city, by ap- propriate ordinances, should put it in operation. The common council, not be- ing in political accord with the legis- lature, was unwilling to give the act vitality, and it therefore by ordinance established a municipal police of its own. By the new ordinance, the force was of a treble character: there were the watch, the municipal police, and the police proper, each owing its appointment to a different source. The duties of the sev- eral classes were ill defined. So compli- cated a system, designed evidently to preserve to each appointing interest its share of patronage, could result only in lack of disci- pline and utility on the part of the force and conflicts among the appointive powers. Under the ordinance the mayor, with the consent of the aldermen, appointed men to the municipal police, and pre- scribed their dress. Mayor Harper appointed the first uniformed police corps, a body of two hundred men. This force was indiscrimi- nately called " Harper's Police " and " M. P's." After a year's trial the ordinance was repealed, and the act of 1844 was put into execution, terminating the old watch system. It swept out of existence a variety of sub-officers, such as marshals, street inspectors, health-wardens, fire-wardens, dock-masters, lamplighters, inspectors of pawnbrokers and junk-shops, and officers specially charged to attend election polls; and it provided for a day and night police force not to exceed eight hundred men, under the control of police captains and assistant cap- tains in the several district headquarters. The act established also a chief of police, to be appointed by the mayor and nominated by the common council. In addition to their other functions, policemen were obliged to light lamps, ring alarm-bells, attend fires, report sus- picious persons, disorderly houses, receiving-shops, gaming-houses,
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
and all places where idlers, tipplers, gamblers, and other disorderly or suspicious persons might congregate; and to administer proper caution to unwary strangers, to whom also they were, if necessary, to act as guides. The municipal police continued to be the locally constituted guardians of the city until, in 1857, the legislature, departing from all traditions that had previously governed its action upon city matters, without the consent of the metropolis, created the metropolitan police.
Even the most brief account of the ante-police era seems incomplete with- out allusion to the office of high con- stable and its last incumbent, Jacob Hays. Edward Livingston, while mayor of the city, appointed Hays to this office, which was somewhat anal- ogous to that of chief of police; and so well did Hays discharge his duties that he was reappointed by each suc- ceeding mayor up to the time of his death in his seventy-eighth year. As Jacobkay that event occurred after the repeal of the watch system, the office of high constable terminated with his life. Hays seems to have possessed detective qualities of a high order, and he was certainly able to inspire a wholesome dread of punish- ment in the criminals of the day. Of large and powerful phy- sique, representing admirably the majesty of the law, it frequently needed nothing more than his presence to disperse street brawlers or stop riotous proceedings. "Whenever," says Costello,1 "the high constable was made aware that a street brawl was assuming threaten- ing proportions, he at once repaired to the scene of disturbance, and without a moment's hesitation mingled in the throng of excited wranglers. His great strength was then exerted towards separating the combatants and in driving back the crowd. He did not crack the heads of the brawlers; he usually knocked off their hats with his staff, and while they were in the act of stooping to pick them up he would shove them forward and throw them down; their prostrate bodies generally served as a barrier to keep others back. He would then deal with the principals, and by the time he was reinforced by his men, the greater part of the trouble was generally over." His treatment of a mob, while rough, was not brutal, and he rarely inspired hatred, but was uniformly liked. As a detective he was singularly
1 "Our Police Protectors." by Augustine E. Costello. New-York, 1885.
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successful, and it was the common opinion of the time that no offender could long remain undiscovered if old Hays was set upon him.
In a recent work entitled "The Puritan in Holland, England and America," Douglas Campbell has admirably shown the amplitude of our indebtedness to the people of the Netherlands for the ideas under- lying our system of government. Holland having, in the midst of a struggle for self-preservation, founded the cele- brated University of Leyden, it is not surprising Rol: Benson that in its colonies it should have evinced an interest in popular education. To the Dutch, and not to our English ancestors, are we indebted for the germ of our public-school system. The cause of edu- cation languished after the cession of New-York to the English, and it was not until peace was made with Great Britain that the State actively manifested a sense of the importance of the education of its people.
In 1784, Governor Clinton invited the attention of the legislature to this subject, and the legislature, in response, established a board of regents for the University of New-York, and changed the name of King's College to Columbia, which by this act was also erected into a university. The members of the board of regents were patrons of learning, and they, in turn, persistently advocated the organization of a common-school system. In 1789 the State took the first real step toward the establishment of education upon a substantial founda- tion. The legislation of that year was followed, in 1795, by an act appropriating annually for five years, out of the public revenues of the State, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, to encourage and main- tain common schools in the several cities and towns of the State, and requiring supervisors to raise by tax in each town a sum equal to one half of its proportion of the moneys appropriated by the State, and commissioners and trustees were directed to be appointed, and were required to make annual reports to the secretary of state. This legis- lation expiring in 1800, Governor Morgan Lewis again brought up the subject in his message to the legislature of 1805. A law was there- upon enacted by which the proceeds of 500,000 acres of public land were to be erected into a fund to be accumulated until its annual in- come should attain the sum of fifty thousand dollars, when the income was to be applied to the support of the schools. This fund was en- larged by various appropriations, and in 1819 it had reached the sum of $1,200,000. By the constitution of 1822 the common-school fund was rendered inviolable and directed to be devoted in perpetuity to the advancement of common schools. By degrees the productive capital of the fund was augmented, so that by the year 1842 it amounted to $10,000,000.
It was incumbent upon the State superintendent to apportion among the school districts of the State the income of the school fund.
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The moneys so apportioned to each district were to be paid by the State comptroller, upon the superintendent's certificate, to the proper fiscal officer of each county, who, in turn, was charged with the obliga- tion of distributing to the school commissioners of each town the pro- portion of the fund to which the several school districts in the town were entitled. The town commissioners were to receive the fund and, after dividing their towns into districts, to subdivide it among such of the districts as had maintained a school for at least three months of the year. Inspectors were elected to ascertain the quali- fications of teachers. School- district meetings were to be held annually by tax-paying inhabitants in their several districts, for the election of school trustees and the raising of moneys for school sites and district libraries. All funds requisite for the maintenance of the schools not raised by taxation or provided from the district's share of the school fund, were to be defrayed by L'ÉGLISE DU ST. ESPRIT. 1 means of the rate-bill, which was a tuition fee charged to parents or guardians of children in attendance at the schools. Thus three sources were provided for the maintenance of the schools-the school fund of the State, the fund raised by taxation, and the rate-bill.
From the time of the creation of the school fund, a share of it was assigned to the city of New-York. But the public-school system which prevailed in the rest of the State did not extend to the city. The New-York city school system was of private foundation. In 1805, the legislature chartered the Public School Society, a private corporation, organized by a number of sagacious and far-seeing resi- dents of the city, prominent among whom was De Witt Clinton. The society was by law allowed a share of the State fund. The supervi- sors were required to raise an equivalent sum by taxation, but the residue of its moneys the society obtained from voluntary donations and a slight tuition fee, analogous to the rate-bill in the country dis- trict schools. The schools of the society rapidly increased in number
1 L'Église du St. Esprit, the first church in the city where the services were conducted in French, was built by the Huguenots in 1704, in Pine street. In 1834 they sold this building and erected the white marble church, shown above, at the corner
of Church and Franklin streets. In 1804 the con- gregation adopted the ritual of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and their present attractive church building is situated in West Twenty-second street, near Fifth Avenue. EDITOR.
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and in importance. Side by side with them sectarian schools also furnished instruction, but to none of these was allotted any portion of the State fund. Not being under the supervision of the State, as were the district schools outside of the city, the Public School Society had supreme control of its share of the public fund. During the Knickerbocker days its schools imparted practically all the education furnished to city children. With the changes in urban population which came with increased immi- gration between 1830 and 1840, parochial schools were founded under the superintendence of the Roman Catholic clergy, and these demanded a share of the com- mon-school fund. They were met with the response that sectarian schools were not allowed to par- ticipate in it, and that the schools of the Public School Society were open to all the children of the me- tropolis. The reply of the Catho- lics was that these schools were in reality sectarian, that they em- ployed a Protestant Bible, and in- culcated religious tenets not ac- cordant with Catholic teaching, and that the funds of the State were perverted in their hands. MRS. HARRIET BAYARD VAN RENSSELAER.
The Public School Society refuted these charges, and remonstrated against any participation in the fund on the part of the Catholic schools. The press, the public, and particularly the Protestant clergy of the city were aroused by the demands of the Romanists. The agita- tion was contemporaneous with the Native American movement, which doubtless intensified the general opposition to the Catholic claims. The controversy was carried into the city council, where able advo- cates, both lay and professional, appeared for both causes, and from the city chamber to the State capital. Here, much to the surprise and chagrin of the Whig and Native American element, Governor Seward was discovered to be an advocate of the justice of the Ro- manists' view. In his message to the legislature at the opening of the session of 1840, the governor recommended the establishment of separate schools for the children of foreigners, in which they might "be instructed by teachers speaking the same language as themselves, and professing the same faith." He renewed his arguments at the opening of the ensuing session. "There are," he said, "thirty thou-
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sand children in this State growing up in ignorance. By their reli- gious training they are practically excluded from the excellent schools of the Public School Society." The legislature still remaining inac- tive, he renewed the subject in his message in January, 1842. "It will," he said, " be shown to you, in the proper report, that twenty thousand children in the city of New-York of suitable age are not in- structed in the public schools, while the whole amount in the residue of the State not taught in the common schools does not exceed nine thousand." While conceding the great importance of the work per- formed by the Public School Society, the governor nevertheless ar- gued that it had failed to command the confi- dence "reposed in the general system of the State, and indispensable to every scheme of uni- versal education." He therefore suggested "the expediency of restoring to the people of the city of New-York - what I am sure the people of ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, FORDHAM. 1 no other part of the State would, upon any consideration, relinquish - the education of their children. For this purpose it is only necessary to vest the control of the common schools in a board to be composed of commissioners elected by the people, which board shall apportion the school moneys among all the schools, including those now existing, which shall be organized and conducted in conformity to its general regulations and the laws of the State, in the proportion of the number of pupils instructed."
Under the influence of this message, the legislature passed the law of 1842, and it met with the governor's approval. This act, for the first time, extended the common-school system of the State to the city of New-York. Treating each ward of the city as analogous to a town, the act gave each ward two school commissioners, two inspec- tors, and five trustees, to be elected by ballot at a special election to be held on the first Monday in June of each year. The commission- ers were to constitute a Board of Education with the powers and duties of commissioners of common schools throughout the State. Schools of the Public School Society were permitted to continue side by side with the new ward schools, and to share with the latter in the
1 St. John's College was opened for the reception of students June 24, 1841, with Rev. John McCloskey as president and professor of rhetoric. The building shown was the first erected. EDITOR.
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common-school fund, but participation in this fund was denied to any and every school in which any religious or sectarian doctrine was in- culcated or taught. This legislation was a compromise and a disap- pointment to both of the contending parties. Neither had sought for it, and neither expected it. But its wisdom is palpable. The gover- nor's action for a time alienated many of his earnest supporters.
Great as was this innovation, the act accomplished an even greater boon. It rendered the schools of the city absolutely free. For the future no rates were to be exacted from any pa- rent or guardian. The act authorized the commis- Arch Pracu sioners to raise by tax from the inhabitants of the county a sum equal to its share of the State school fund, and also a further sum equal to one twentieth of the value of the real and personal property within the city subject to assessment. In terms it expressly forbade the imposition of any tax upon parents or guar- dians for school privileges. Subsequent amendments reduced the number of commissioners, inspectors, and trustees, and changed their term of office, but no substantial departure from the principle of this legislation has since been made. The schools of the Public School Society and the new ward schools existed together for more than ten years. Gradually the Romanist opposition to the ward schools sub- sided, and the trustees of the Public School Society soon learned to appreciate the advantages of the new system. In 1853 the society was dissolved by act of the legislature, some of its trustees taking places in the Board of Education, and its schools and their furniture and apparatus were conveyed to the city. During the existence of this admirable institution it had educated six hundred thousand chil- dren, and at the time of its dissolution and consolidation with the ward schools, the property which it transferred to the city was worth upward of $600,000.
"There is not perhaps in the Union," says a book published in 1837, "a city more destitute of the blessing of good water than New- York." The chief sources of water supply at this time were the old "Tea-water Pump";1 the town pumps, which then garnished nearly every block; the Manhattan Company; and Knapp's Spring, which furnished the supply to the upper part of the city. The mains of the Manhattan Company were distributed through the lower part of the island, and its fluid, like the gas of more recent days, was dispensed for a price. The water from Knapp's Spring was carted about in hogsheads and sold at a penny a gallon. The town pumps were free.
1 "The famous 'Tea-water Pump.'" says De- voe, in his History of the Markets of New-York, "was a fine flowing spring in a well, which, no doubt, originally assisted in forming the 'Fresh- water' or . Kolch Pond.'" It was " near the north- east corner of Orange and Chatham streets."
"I found the once celebrated 'Tea-water Pump' again in use, but unknown, in the liquor store of a Mr. Fagan, 126 Chatham street. I drank of it to revive recollection." Watson's " Annale uf New-York " (1846).
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