Customer Reviews

Good Order and Safety: A History of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, 1861-1906

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I was so excited to see this book; I'd been looking for months to find a text describing police activity in 1880's America. This one even focused on St. Louis, the city I was researching.

Alas, this book is just another retirement-project of some dilettante who thought the world needed a compilation of the minutes of committee meetings. It's a droning list of who was in office, his occupation, his age, his shoe size, who elected him, who opposed him, who indicted him, punctuated with occasional passing mention of poor bastards killed in action. Tedious, tedious descriptions of closed-door meetings with no context or narrative to make them interesting. Piles and piles of statistics, such as how many bawdy houses were operating in 1876, which are never made relevant in any way.

Occasional scraps of actual information, such as the color of the uniforms and the price of handguns, are included, but those are few and far between. Furthermore, the index is awful, so you'll only find such tidbids if you wade through the sea of names.

I'm not sure who the audience for this would be. Genealogy researchers? Family members who want to see great-great-grandad's name in a book?

One example that actually made me screech with frustration, from pages 85-86:

"In June, 1869, the board adopted a revision of the police department's rules and regulations that were printed in 1861. The revision was a bound pocket-sized manual containing over one hundred printed pages and several blank pages for notes and for pasting revisions and supplements. [...] The manual covered such things as the duties and responsibilities of each rank, a description of the uniforms of the various ranks, the laws of arrest, first aid for various injuries, forty-five general rules governing all officers, and even 'Advice to a Young Policeman.' The latter contained such things as responsibilities when walking a beat, how to handle an arrest, police ethics, and how to testify in court."

And then he starts describing the committee meeting for ordering fabric swatches for the new winter coats!

So how DID one testify in court? What were some of those forty-five rules? Don't you think your readers might be more interested in the content of the manual's text than knowing there were blank pages for notes???

There was a great deal of prison and legal reform underway in America during the late 19th century, and I find it incredible that the author had nothing to say about those changes. Instead he focuses on the prostitution laws and shooting dogs. Astonishing number of words for so little content.

what a great book on the history of the st louis police department really enjoyed the book