When darkness fell, the community still needed watching. Before professional police forces, nighttime safety depended on systems very different from those we know today. Colonial communities organized watches to make rounds, look for fire and other dangers, observe disturbances, and summon help when needed. In Volume 5: The Watch, discover how ordinary inhabitants shared responsibility for nighttime vigilance and where the constable fit within this early system of public safety. Before professional policing, keeping watch was a community responsibility.
Night presented colonial Massachusetts communities with a different set of problems. Streets became difficult to observe, suspicious activity was harder to detect, and in settlements built largely of wood and dependent upon open flame, fire posed a constant concern.
Long before professional police departments, communities responded by organizing watches.
Volume 5 of Before the Badge explores this early system of nighttime vigilance. Watchmen could make rounds, watch for fire and other dangers, observe disturbances, report what they encountered, and call upon inhabitants for assistance when necessary.
But the watch should not be mistaken for a modern police patrol, nor should every watchman be mistaken for a constable. The organization of the watch varied by place and period, and constables could hold responsibilities within its organization and supervision. Later colonial Boston, for example, organized watchmen into groups with a head or constable assigned to each division.
The Watch examines a period when public safety relied heavily upon cooperation between local officers and the people who lived within the community. It also demonstrates how different the historical constable's responsibilities could be from those associated with the Massachusetts office today.
Rounds. Fire. Order. Assistance.
Together, they tell the story of communities that continued looking after themselves long after the sun went down.
Before professional policing, nighttime safety depended upon people keeping watch over their community.
Before the Badge is a historical mini-series from The Constable Files, exploring the history and evolution of the Massachusetts constable.
