"the policeman travels his beat..."

Based on Whitman's several references to the police force in "Leaves of Grass," I thought it might be interesting to research the world of the NYPD in and around 1850. I came across a lot of interesting information, photos, history, etc, in and outside of the Whitman archive.

It's hard to know exactly where Whitman stood in regards to the New York police, which were newly organized only years before the 1855 version of "Leaves of Grass" was published. Horace L. Traubel, a friend of Whitman's, in his interviews with the poet during the last years of his life, quoted Whitman as saying, "The marriage bond and police law forever!" (see the volume in its entirety here). To contrast this, in her chapter on Whitman in From Fact to Fiction, Shelley Fisher Fishkin states that he "deplored" the police's treatment of "prostitutes and the children of the poor" (see whole article here). These quotes and comments representing Whitman's perspective leave much to be desired, but constructing a pseudo reality of what the New York police might have existed as during Whitman's time might help us start to shed light on how Whitman might have regarded the organization. Of course, the information provided below is only attempting to do just that - to "start" piecing together this reality by using resources and artifacts found on the internet.

Interesting facts: In 1845 the official New York Police Department was established. Shortly afterwards, in the 1850s, the first multi-shot pistol, introduced by Samuel Colt, goes into mass production. The weapon is adopted by the Texas Rangers and, thereafter, by police departments nationwide. This would have transformed the notion of power for the police during the time, and Whitman would most certainly have been present to this development (not to mention all of the other history referenced below). It's amazing to think that these numbers, facts and bits of information made up the world of "the police" for Whitman. When he comments on the police in his work this is the frame of reference from which he undoubtedly pulled.

Fascinating arrest statistics from the first organization of the police department between 1845-1850 - This particular page is just a small section, one page of an entire website dedicated to the long and detailed history of the NYPD. The amount of information here is virtually endless and overwhelming. Here we have access to facts/statistics as artifacts.

A letter to Walt Whitman from his brother Thomas Jefferson Whitman which briefly mentions the importance of the New York police in keeping the city safe (there's a note at the bottom of the page describing the incident to which Thomas refers - the 1863 Draft Riots).

In doing the necessary online research for different projects in this class, I've come across the Google "timeline" website several times, which lays down a timeline for your topic by providing links that contain information about the important events and when they occured. Up until now I experienced this Google tool as no more than an interesting trick, but, in the context of building a world around Whitman and his poem, it has emerged as a helpful web-tool to piecing those years together online. Click here to see the timeline for the NYPD from 1840-1858.

Finally, below are some photos of the New York police taken at famous locations in the city, including Central Park and Broadway, between 1850 and 1910.