Protecting and Serving the City

A Worcester constabulary can be traced back to 1684, ten years after the village’s first settlement.

Bathsheba Spooner, daughter of Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles, was the first woman in U.S. history to be executed following the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hers was also the first capital case in the U.S. She was accused of plotting the murder of her husband, affluent Brookfield farmer Joshua Spooner, with two runaway British soldiers and her lover, a Continental Army soldier. Bathsheba was found guilty and pleaded for a postponement because she was pregnant. In spite of confirmation of the pregnancy, she was executed on June 4, 1778 in Washington Square before a reported crowd of 5,000. She was buried on the Green Estate, now the site of Green Hill Park. source: Worcester County Law Library, artist, Sante Graziani, 1996

A Worcester constabulary can be traced back to 1684, ten years after the village’s first settlement. The General Court in Boston that year declared that “William Weeks be constable for ye plantation [Quinsigamond] for one year next ensuing, and that he have all the power of a constable as the law directs…”

One of the first arrests was that of Capt. George Wing, who had assaulted George Danson while Danson was attempting to lay out his parcel of land. The Sunday tithingman, responsible for maintaining order during church services among other duties, was considered a kind of constable.

The village’s revolutionary guards kept order and protected the town during the trial and executions of the 18th century’s most notorious crime, the murder of Brookfield’s Joshua Spooner, incited by his wife and carried out by three British and American soldiers.

Members of the Worcester Police Department assemble in front of the Waldo Street station, 1953. *Digital Commonwealth*

Decades later, Worcester’s finest found themselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to guarantee the safety of Boston slave catcher Asa Butman. Infamous as the U.S. Marshal who had captured escaped slave Anthony Burns, his arrival in Worcester fired up its uncompromising abolitionists, who chased him out of town in a hail of stones and rotten eggs.

As Worcester grew from a farming village to become the largest town between Boston and Springfiled, its police grew from a few nightwatchmen to a department of nearly 120 offices by the turn of the 20th century. Nearly two decades later, a Renaissance Revival station on Waldo Street replaced its overcrowded Victorian predecessor. This building housed the police department until it too was deemed outdated in the late 1970’s; a new structure was built at Lincoln Square.

Now responsible for protecting a city which has grown to become the largest between Boston and Buffalo, the department’s 460 officers face the challenge of maintaining order among an ever-growing, more globally varied population.

In the early 1800s, a movement began to discourage the use of alcoholic beverages in this country. Those who participated in protests believed that alcohol was at the root of many societal problems.
*Worcester Historical Museum*

Take your place in Worcester's history

We invite and encourage you to tell a story, share a photograph or memory…anything that pertains to Worcester. Places in the city that hold special meaning for you, events that shaped your experience, people you will never forget—your stories are welcome.