The skinny green lanterns still guarding the entrances to New York City’s oldest precinct houses today have, across centuries, beheld the city police force’s quest for both more authority and a more democratic order. In the 18
th century, these lanterns signified the coming of the “rattle watch,” a drunken, disorganized group of constables that fell asleep more than it fought crime. The
New-York Gazette in 1757 described the officers as “idle, drunken, vigilant Snorers, who never quelled any nocturnal Tumult . . . but would, perhaps, be as ready to join in a Burglary as any Thief in Christendom.”
[1] By the 19
th century, such sentiment exploded, and a new campaign for order spurred public demands for a reformed police core. Yet New York had become a capitalist, political machine, grounded in an individualistic politicking that alienated immigrants, religious minorities, and the poor; conversely, crime and vigilante activity soared. Ongoing city and state-level efforts to heed the populace and centralize the police, including two rival reform efforts in 1845 and 1857, were unsuccessful in the eyes of both the law and the press. Hopelessly fragmented, New Yorkers used ethnic and classist violence—largely in the form of riots—to express discontent as legal outlets failed them. Ultimately, institutional barriers as well as the undefined interplay between the state, city, and populace resulted in a metropolitan police force that knew neither the limits nor the normativity, or the prescriptive force, of its power.
Analyzing historical correspondance, newspapers, and manuscripts from several archives around New York City, this poster will illuminate the development of New York City police authority from 1830 to 1865 in order to contextualize the mid-19th century’s ‘modern’ policeman as a concept inextricable from the city’s unique moral, political, and economic viewpoints. Several documents will be enlarged and displayed on the poster itself, with "flap" information panels provided for journalistic context and detailed archival analysis. Further, I will use historical pictures of city buildings (and even recreated police props, if possible) to enrich my poster's central thesis. Ultimately, my poster will guide and shape the existing historiography by framing recurrent setbacks in police authority through a system of city governance fundamentally unable to establish and enforce a universal legal code.
[1] New-York Gazette, Feb. 21, 1757. New York Public Library, New York, New York.
