The racial justice movement is demanding change in police departments, including Lynn’s, and any meaningful conversation about change must be solidly framed by historical perspective.
Constables commanded by a city marshal, not police officers commanded by a chief, patrolled Lynn in 1850 when it was incorporated as a city.
Marshall Caleb Long wore a tall black hat adorned with a gilded button connoting his authority. He had a dozen constables sporting beards and bountiful moustaches assigned to patrol the city. With a $349 annual budget, Long had his work cut out for him.
According to a Daily Evening Item story marking the Police Department’s centennial, Long arrested Charles Furbush in 1851 for the murder of John J. Purdy. The men lived in a Market Street boarding house and prosecutors during Furbush’s January, 1852 trial, claimed he shot Purdy. Jurors acquitted Furbush for reason of insanity.
Morality fell within the realm of law enforcement in the 1850s and Long and his constables were called out to temper excitement, even outrage, sparked when “bloomer dresses” became a female fashion fad. Summer weather sent bloomer wearers converging on Central Square where constables, according to the Item, “… were at times obliged to protect the wearers from the jeers and insults of crowds.”
By 1918, the Lynn police had women in its ranks with Anna Mangan appointed as special policewoman followed by Harriet S. Pearce in 1920 followed by Anna McDermott and Theresa McDermott (no relation).
In 1975, former policewomen investigators Clara Zamejtis and Helen McSweeney celebrated their predecessors during a ceremony honoring their work.
“The Juvenile Division is a clearing house for all kinds of family troubles and every call received here pretty much represents a crisis,” McSweeney was quoted by the Item as saying.
Policewomen and their male colleagues filled the role of social workers, surrogate parents and law enforcers with weekend nights sending them into neighborhoods to solve domestic problems.
Former Police Chief S. Craft Scribner praised Zamejtis and McSweeney for their ability to “… gain the confidence of women and children” in their police work.
McSweeney can be forgiven if she was thinking of Scribner when she said “… there may be a chauvinistic feeling over women doing police work” even as she praised the department for being among the forerunners in hiring women.
Zamejtis died in 2017 and McSweeney in 2019. Before their deaths, they discussed the dark side of their jobs — children found wandering neighborhoods in their pajamas begging for food; women bruised and battered by abusers.
They helped bring abusers to justice in an era before strong domestic violence prosecution. But sometimes the investigators handed a woman a $10 bill and told them to board a Greyhound bus and put a lot of miles between themselves and death.
