Undisclosed Files of the Police

Jacob Hays was the high constable until 1844, when the Night Watch was disbanded. He is generally considered to be New York City's first detective.

Long before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the fictional mastermind English detective Sherlock Holmes, the citizens of old New York relied on the wiles of High Constable Jacob Hays to solve their crimes. Even though others would go on to eclipse his fame, Hays is considered New York's first real detective.

Jacob Hays was born during the Revolutionary War in Bedford, New York. His father, David Hays, was a merchant who served under General George Washington and allowed the future president to use his shop to hold staff meetings. As a seven-year-old, young Jacob joined the cause by helping sneak a herd of cattle through enemy lines. In 1798, David asked Aaron Burr to help his son get a position as a marshal in New York City. Jacob's early success led to his appointment as high constable by the mayor in 1802. He oversaw a small constabulary of twenty-eight part-time watchmen who after their day jobs worked from dusk to dawn under a system that was first established by the Dutch in 1658 and kept in place by the English when they gained control of New York City in 1674.

Although the high constable was supposed to handle administrative chores such as processing writs and court orders, Hays expanded his duties to include peacekeeping and crime solving. He spent up to eighteen hours a day patrolling the wards of Lower Manhattan using little more than a wooden staff and a swift kick to enforce the law. He was the first New York policeman to shadow a criminal. His reputation was such that whenever there was trouble, the city fathers would cry, "Set old Hays at them."

It was said that his mere presence coupled with a stern warning to go home was usually enough to quell a street brawl and disperse the troublemakers, but more than likely a few well-aimed blows were required to get the message across. The high constable was said to reward a suspected liar with a crack on the shin with his staff, shouting, "Good citizens tell the truth!"

In solving murders of his day, Hays relied on his wits, his powerful recall, and his innate ability to outsmart suspects. Sometime in 1820—the exact date is long forgotten, as is the name of the victim—Hays was called to Coenties Alley in the First Ward, near Coenties Slip and just north of Fraunces Tavern. In those days, dozens of boat slips lined the shore of Manhattan's southern tip. A dead shipmaster had been found with a fatal wound to the head. The victim appeared to have been killed during a robbery. Hays rightly assumed the perpetrator was a fellow sailor, since the neighborhood teemed with them and so many were of questionable character. He zeroed in on the captain's bunkmate, a sailor named Johnson. He was a capable liar who convinced everyone but Hays of his innocence. Fortunately, Hays had one last trick up his sleeve to prove his theory. In one of the first mentioned uses of psychology to gain a confession, Hays had Johnson brought to City Hall, where the shipmaster's corpse was being kept until burial. Hays pulled off the shroud covering the captain's remains and bellowed, "Look at the body; have you ever seen that man before?"

Johnson turned pale at the sight and blurted out, "Yes, Mr. Hays, I murdered him."

The admission sent him to the gallows, but as the hangman's noose was placed around his neck, Johnson recanted. Hays climbed the scaffold and glared at him until he admitted his guilt. "Get on with it. I killed him… I can't lie while that man has his eyes on me."

As time went on Hays's legend grew, as did the size of the force under him, but it was Hays's exploits that garnered the headlines.

The businesses on bustling South Street in Lower Manhattan were favorite targets of sneak thieves and burglars in the early 1800s.

52 Wall Street was the location of the first recorded bank robbery in New York City.

By the mid-1800s Wall Street was already the financial center of New York City and a prime location for crime.

One of the first recorded bank robberies in New York City occurred during the wee hours of March 20, 1831. Two bandits, James Honeyman and William Murray, gained entrance into the City Bank (Citibank today) on Wall Street by surreptitiously making wax impressions of the locks and forging their own set of keys. After rifling through the vault and safe deposit boxes, the pair escaped into the night with $254,000 in bank notes and coins (the equivalent of $54 million today) concealed under their cloaks. When notified of the robbery, Hays immediately suspected Honeyman, a well-known thief of the day, but could find no evidence to act upon until several days had passed.

Honeyman used a portion of the proceeds to take up residence in a boardinghouse in Lower Manhattan. His mysterious comings and goings roused the curiosity of the maid. One night she peeked through the keyhole and observed him in the company of a stranger counting a pile of money on the bed. The excited maid told the landlord, who in turn notified Constable Hays. The rules pertaining to search warrants were not yet codified, so Hays simply waited for Honeyman to leave the house before examining his room in the presence of the landlord. Hays recovered approximately $185,000 of the stolen money secreted in a pair of sturdy wooden chests. That still left some $70,000 unaccounted for. From the maid's description of the stranger, Hays believed him to be Honeyman's good friend and fellow thief William Murray. The two had made acquaintance many years before in Australia at the Botany Bay Penal Colony.

This reward notice offers $5,000 for information leading to the recovery of stolen property. Interestingly, it makes no mention of apprehension of the perpetrators.

A sentence of hard labor at Sing Sing prison meant working the rock quarries in upstate New York.

Hays had little trouble apprehending Honeyman, but Murray fled to parts unknown. Unfortunately, because he did not recover all the stolen money, there were whispers that Hays had pocketed the balance for himself. It turned out that Honeyman had paid $37,000 to his brother-in-law, a fellow named Parkinson, who also happened to be the locksmith who forged the keys for the robbery. Parkinson was caught when he foolishly tried to exchange some of the notes at the very same bank where they were stolen. Hays searched Parkinson's shop and found his share of the loot stashed under the floorboards. Hays agreed to let him go in exchange for information on Murray's whereabouts. Parkinson said that Murray was hiding out in the City of Brotherly Love. Hays contacted his counterpart in Philadelphia to be on the lookout for Murray.

It took over a year before an arrest was made. Murray and Honeyman were sentenced to five years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. In exchange for a shorter sentence, Murray confessed that he had buried what was left of the money under a tree in Philadelphia. Hays sent his son to the location to dig it up. The remaining banknotes were recovered and returned to the bank, thus saving Hays's reputation.

An artistic rendering of murder victim Helen Jewett drawn shortly after she was discovered dead in her boudoir. The terrible burns to the lower half of her body were barely depicted in the drawing.

Early Sunday morning, April 10, 1836. Dorcas Doyen, aka Helen Jewett, an attractive, well-read, twenty-three-year-old prostitute from Maine, was found butchered and burned in her boudoir in Lower Manhattan. A New York Herald reporter on the scene wrote of Jewett's beauty, "The body looked as white—as full—as polished as the pure Parisan marble. The perfect figure—the exquisite limbs—the fine face—the full arms—the beautiful bust—all surpassing in every respect the Venus de Medici's."

Several months before her death, Jewett fell hard for a handsome young store clerk, Richard Robinson (who went by the name Frank Rivers), after he rescued her from the clutches of a drunken hooligan. She rewarded him with a private tryst at her elegant quarters at 41 Thomas Street, a brothel that Jewett shared with nine other ladies of the night. (According to Inspector Thomas Byrnes's account many years later, her bedroom "would have done credit to the palace of Cleopatra.") While Jewett was smitten, Robinson was not of the mind-set to limit himself to one mistress, no matter how pretty she was. When Jewett discovered that he was with another woman, she tailed him to a bawdy house several blocks north on Broome Street and violently confronted her rival. She and Robinson soon reconciled, but before long his wandering eye got the best of him. This time she threatened to kill herself and make it appear that he was the culprit. Robinson, whose father was a prominent politician in Connecticut, was so terrified at the prospect of being framed for murder that he agreed to marry her. But it was only a ruse, because he was already courting yet another woman. This time when Jewett found out, she made the mistake of putting her threat in writing.

Despite Jacob Hays's efforts to solve Helen Jewett's murder, a jury of his peers declared Richard Robinson "not guilty." After the verdict, Robinson moved to Texas.

Robinson paid her a visit on the night of April 9. He arrived at approximately ten P.M. It was drizzling, so he wore a black cloak to protect himself from the elements. Jewett was overheard greeting him at the door by the bordello madam, Rosina Townsend. "Oh my dear Frank, how glad I am that you have come," she said.

Robinson gave no reply, however, and as he walked past Townsend he took care to conceal his face with his cape. The two then retired to Jewett's room to share a bottle of champagne and a night of lovemaking. At about two A.M., after most of the clients had gone home, Maria Stevens, whose room was directly across the hallway from Jewett's, heard a thud and a moan from inside Helen's chambers. Stevens cracked the door and observed a tall man, obscured by a black cloak and holding an oil-filled lamp, quietly exit Jewett's room and tiptoe down the stairs. Inexplicably, Stevens went back to bed without investigating the noise.

At three A.M. Madam Townsend made a final check of the premise and saw Jewett's oil lamp glowing on a table in the parlor. She also noticed the back door was open and called Jewett's name, thinking perhaps she had ventured outside to use the privy. When there was no answer she went upstairs to return the lamp. As she opened the door to Jewett's room, the rush of air stirred smoldering flames from within and sent dark smoke billowing into the hallway. Her screams of "Fire!" stirred the other female residents. Their shouts in turn alerted three night watchmen in the area. As the watchmen rushed into the dwelling, the remaining patrons beat a hasty retreat into the night.

Fortunately, the watchmen were able to extinguish the fire before it spread to other rooms. When the smoke cleared, they found Jewett's half-burned corpse sprawled out on the mahogany bed clad in the charred remains of a lacy nightgown. There was a deep gash in her right temple. The coroner, an assistant police captain, and a full-time constable who served under Hays were called on to investigate.

That morning the authorities recovered a bloody hatchet in the back alley, presumed to be the murder weapon, along with a long black cloak, which appeared to have been discarded near a high fence that the killer had scaled to escape, as evidenced by scuff marks in the thin whitewash. After questioning Madam Townsend, the officers determined that Robinson was the prime suspect and rushed to his boardinghouse a half mile away to arrest him. They found him asleep with his roommate, James Tew. When asked why his trousers were stained with whitewash, he would only say, "This is a bad business."

After a coroner's inquest, Robinson's trial took place on June 2, 1836. The prosecutor proved that the hatchet came from a store where Robinson clerked. The cloak was positively identified as belonging to him. Even his whitewash-stained trousers were put into evidence. But the witness who saw him leave Jewett's room, Maria Stevens, died under mysterious circumstances before the trial. Another woman who said that she observed Robinson fleeing from the scene vanished before she could offer testimony against him. These were two very fortunate coincidences for the accused.

In his own defense, Robinson's lawyer offered an alibi of sorts. A fellow grocer, whose store was several blocks away from Thomas Street, had sworn to the constable that he was with Robinson at the exact time that Mrs. Townsend said she heard Jewett greet him, and therefore could not have been the killer. Although the grocer committed suicide before the trial, the judge allowed his statements put into evidence but gave little credence to any of the testimony provided by the women of the brothel.

After a short deliberation, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict. Many people thought a juror had been paid off. In either case, Robinson realized he had gotten the break of a lifetime and set off for the Texas frontier, where it was reported that he died several years later.

Chief Matsell wanted his patrolmen to wear uniforms to identify them to the public, but it took several years to get them to comply with his order.

Hays retired from active duty during 1844, but retained the honorary title of high constable until his death in 1850. The constabulary, which had grown to 1,000 watchmen (with 500 working and 500 off each night), by then was disbanded in favor of a new Municipal Police Department created specifically to meet the needs of the growing metropolis. The force was staffed by 889 men assigned to wards (precincts today) who now worked day and night shifts and were directly supervised by captains.

George W. Matsell, a thirty-eight-year-old Englishman who came to America as a boy, spearheaded the reform effort when he was a police magistrate. For his efforts he was named the first chief of police for New York City by Mayor William Havemeyer in 1845.

Upon taking charge he declared that the force would be an efficient organization for the prevention and detection of crime. With that in mind, he set about making changes that many of the watchmen who stayed on did not like. He issued the department's first rule book, a ninety-page tome. According to one officer, "A policeman would not live one year if he acted up to these regulations."

When Matsell decreed each officer wear an eight-pointed brass star over his left breast as a means of identification, most officers ignored his directive because they regarded the badge more as a symbol of servitude than as a symbol of authority. He ordered his men to wear a rudimentary uniform consisting of a blue frock with black buttons starting in 1853. This was contentious, because patrolmen tended to wear their shabbiest clothes to work rather than chance having whatever good clothes they owned ruined in the performance of duty. Detectives and the men who aspired to become detectives had their own reasons for resisting a uniform. They were referred to as shadows, and they believed that they needed to remain anonymous in order to sneak up on thieves. Matsell insisted, wanting the public to be able to distinguish his patrolmen from the bums that roamed the streets of Manhattan.

One of the young officers aspiring to become a shadow one day was George W. Walling. He was born in New Jersey in 1823 and moved to New York City in 1845 after spending several years at sea working on a freighter. He never gave much thought about becoming a policeman until a friend who was leaving the municipal force offered him an opportunity to take his place. At the time, the recommendation of an alderman and the consent of the mayor was all that was needed. His friend made the arrangements, and in 1847 Walling became a patrolman at an annual salary of $600.