When the alarm was raised, the whole community could be called to action. Before professional police forces, pursuing a suspected offender wasn't necessarily the work of a single officer. In early Massachusetts, the hue and cry could summon constables and ordinary residents to search for and apprehend someone who had fled. In Volume 4: The Hue and Cry, discover a system of public order built around alarm, pursuit, and community participation, and a constable's historical authority very different from the office we know today. When someone fled, keeping the peace could become everyone's business.
Long before professional police departments, communities still faced an immediate problem: what happened when serious wrongdoing was discovered and the person suspected of it fled?
One answer was the hue and cry, an old legal tradition carried into colonial New England in which an alarm could set both public officers and members of the community into action.
Volume 4 of Before the Badge explores the constable's place within that system. Constables could participate in searching for suspected offenders, carrying an alarm onward, calling upon members of the community for assistance, and apprehending those who were found.
This was not a modern police response. The people joining the pursuit were not a professional police force or organized squad. They were members of the community participating in a system of public order that depended heavily upon collective responsibility.
The volume also reveals an important difference between the historical and modern office. Early constables possessed apprehension and law-enforcement functions that are very different from the role of Massachusetts constables today.
The Hue and Cry is therefore about more than a chase. It is a glimpse into a period when maintaining public order could require the participation of the community itself.
When the alarm was raised, keeping the peace could become the work of the whole community.
Before the Badge is a historical mini-series from The Constable Files, exploring the history and evolution of the Massachusetts constable.
