On page six of the Boston Evening Globe of January 26, 1917, there appeared the five-line death notice of A. Porter Pearson of North Wilmington. Mr. Pearson, age 94, had died the day before at his Andover Street home. Relatives and friends were invited to gather there in remembrance on the afternoon on January 28. Albeit brief, so went the public notice of the passing of Wilmington’s first police officer.
Abiel Porter Pearson was born in Wilmington 1822 to Abiel and Jerusha Pearson. More popularly known amongst the townspeople as Porter Pearson (his father was the one that was called Abiel) and in formal circumstances as A. Porter Pearson, he worked variously throughout his life as a shoemaker, farmer and butcher. However, in 1872 at age 50, he added another occupation to his repertoire, that of police officer. It would be a position that he would faithfully hold for more than twenty years.
When Porter Pearson was just seven years old and living an ocean away, a visionary policing pioneer in London, Sir Robert Peel, saw the adoption of his Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. The act sought to establish an effective, professional police force to keep order in an ever-increasing violent society. Some say the act was the inevitable byproduct of the Industrial Revolution as the agrarian society of England quickly urbanized itself. The fledgling United States, at the time, was in no different position than its former mother country either. The sprawl of factories and the growth of industrialization spurred the economy, but it also revealed the sordid underside of a poor, marginalized population. An inevitable outcome was the downward slide of civil society. For Wilmington’s part, they held on to the tried-and-true ways set down by their founders, but that was soon to change.
In 1847, following a brazen, safe cracking robbery, the selectmen of the neighboring Town of Woburn authorized the appointment of six police officers. However, it was not until 1851 that the selectmen acted and actually made those appointments. Two years previous though, Wilmington saw an even more sensational crime in the form of a grisly, triple murder. In that instance, the town had to rely on a selectman to find and entice the resident killer back to town. In 1854 the City of Boston abolished its centuries old Night Watchmen and more recent Day Police and formed a full-time, paid police department modeled closely on Peel’s London Metropolitan Police. Over the course of the next twenty years following the inception of the Woburn Police, many nearby cities and towns acted similarly. In 1872, Wilmington followed suit with the appointment of Mr. A. Porter Pearson of Andover Street, North Wilmington as a Special Police Officer.
However, despite its participation in the growing trend, Wilmington’s law enforcement and peace keeping past actually dated back to its incorporation. An early Sheriff of Middlesex County, Samuel Dummer was a prominent resident and acting as town moderator, he called forth the male citizens to gather at their inaugural town meeting in 1730. Out of that assemblage the first town constable, Giles Roberts was appointed.
The office of constable was and ancient one dating back to England during the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066. Originally a military title, the name originates from the Latin comes stabuli meaning count of the stables. In New England and in Wilmington however, it was something far different. The position instead was that of an everyman for the town’s selectmen. The constable was in fact, expected to pursue and arrest robbers and felons, breakers of the Sabbath Day, takers of liquor and tobacco, vagrants and highwaymen and idle persons and disturbers of the peace. However, the burgeoning population spurred by a flood of immigrants and the transformation to an industrial based economy brought forth concerns of culture clashes and crime. A single town constable or city marshal was no longer sufficient. As witnessed locally, these concerns gave rise to the adoption of Sir Robert Peel’s policing innovations not only in larger cities but in small towns like Wilmington as well.
Eyeing the success of the initial experiment, the year 1873 saw four additional men appointed by the selectmen to assist Officer Pearson. A decade later the townspeople allotted $300.00 for the construction of a jail. In 1893, the first police chief was appointed and in 1904 a telephone was installed in his home which allowed citizens to call directly for assistance. In 1922, on the 100th anniversary of Abiel Porter Pearson’s birth, the town adopted the Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Police Department formally solidifying the groundwork laid by him fifty years earlier. The remainder of the early 20th Century saw Wilmington enjoy a spot on the forefront of policing. The introduction of motorized patrol, the use of radio and teletype communications, the introduction of an ambulance service and the establishment of a roadside Red Cross first aid station where amongst the many innovations put into practice.
In the 1940s a state Civil Service based hiring and promotion concept was adopted. By 1960, police academy training had become mandatory, and the first purpose-built police station had been constructed. By 1972, one hundred years following the appointment of Abiel Porter Pearson, the department consisted of more than twenty-five full-time officers.
In 2001 the department moved into its current facility, the Wilmington Memorial Public Safety Building. In the twenty years since and over the century and a half preceding, the department has grown exponentially, yet it remains dedicated to its original mission of peace keeping and public safety, bolstered by its motto of Commitment, Compassion and Respect.
As we enter upon the coming year, please join with Chief of Police Joseph Desmond and the rank-and-file officers of the Wilmington Police Department as we celebrate and commemorate our past while also looking forward to our future service to the people of Wilmington.
RETURN TO 150 YEARS OF STORIES