Brooklyn Daily Standard Union 
1906
CONTRASTS POLICE CONDITIONS OF TODAY AND YESTERDAY
FORTY YEARS AGO HE WAS SHERIFF OF THIS COUNTY, AND FOR A QUARTER OF A CENTURY 
WAS CHIEF OF POLICE OF BROOKLYN-HIS UNIQUE RECORD-TELLS OF SOME OF THE 
REMARKABLE CASES WHICH CAUSED A GREAT SENSATION IN THE BOROUGH YEARS AGO.

In a kindly reminiscent mood Patrick CAMPBELL, who forty years ago was 
Sheriff of this county and who for twenty-five years, with few interruptions, 
was Chief of Police of Brooklyn, contrasted yesterday for The Standard Union 
the police conditions of the long ago with those events in which he was an 
official participant. He was born in Charleston, but has lived in Brooklyn 
since his babyhood.
The memory of this genial, courteous old man runs back to generations dead 
and gone, and of which to the people of to-day hardly an echo remains, for 
Mr. Campbell now is in his eightieth year. Think of what that means to this 
stirring, bustling, striving ambitious generation! He was born only five 
years after Napoleon had given up the ghost at St. Helena; six years before 
the great reform bill stirred all England; three years before Catholic 
emancipation had been won; twenty-one years before the death of O'Connell, 
probably the greatest political agitator the world has seen, and had just 
reached manhood when the Mexican War broke out. He has outlived some of the 
greatest of European wars and revolutions, and has seen the rise and fall of 
kingdoms. Italian unity, the creation of the French Republic, the erection of 
the German empire and the war for the preservation of the Union of the United 
States, saw him in the prime of his manhood and seem to him now only as 
events of yesterday as compared to the historic happenings through which he 
had lived before all these epoch-making occurrences had come to pass. Of all 
these things and the interest and excitement they had cause in their 
inception and progress, Mr. Campbell spoke yesterday in a philosophic mood.
"It is singular," said he, "that the great historic events of which we read 
now with such enthralling interest did not seem to be so very wonderful at 
the time of their happening. To use a common illustration I suppose a man 
rarely knows that he has been in a fight till it's all over."
Coming down to his own official relations with the civic life of Brooklyn, 
Mr. Campbell said that one of the prime regrets of a very old man was to 
reflect upon the youth and vigor that are no more and are either a memory of 
the grave or a sad evidence of the inevitable inroads and ravages of Time.
"If I may speak in a personal sense, however," said he, "I should not 
complain. Age treats me gently, and life has not been unkind to me." Mr. 
Campbell was right. His eye is as bright and his brain as clear as when in 
the good old days his headship of the men who protected the lives and 
property of Brooklynites was a source of official pride for him. He is not so 
alert, physically, of course, but all his faculties are sound and he is able 
to enjoy the well earned ease of his retirement from official care and public 
life.
"How do the police of to-day compare with those of your time, Mr. Campbell?"
"I should not like to make any invidious distinctions, and you know that old 
line which tells us that comparisons are odious, provincial and vulgar, but I 
really do believe that advance in police work has not been commensurate with 
the great progress made in other lines. Our police were just as good in those 
days-I do not say any better-as they are to-day. You see, in my time, civil 
service did not govern the force, and I fancy that the men paid rather more 
attention to duty."
"Through fear?"
"Well, partly. You see, if a man wanted to get on the force he had to go to 
the Commissioner Jourdan or Commissioner Briggs, or whatever Commissioner 
happened for the time to be at the head of the Police Department, or send his 
friends to them. Once on the force those responsible for getting him there 
kept their eye upon his conduct, and if he fell he was called sharply to task 
by them, as they wanted the men they had appointed to make a good record, so 
that their future recommendations would receive consideration."
"Are you opposed to Civil Service for the force?"
"No; indeed I have given that subject hardly any consideration, but I do 
think that Civil Service has not done as much for the force as its early 
advocates had fondly anticipated."
"What do you think of the modern system of wholesale transfers by the Police 
Commissioner?"
"That is a grave question. The proper government or rather management of a 
police force in any of our great cities of to-day is a problem of great 
magnitude. Without referring at all to whatever political bearings the 
question may have, it is notorious that the head of the police force in the 
great city to-day is hampered and restricted in his efforts to improve the 
morale of the force where improvement is necessary-that his corrective power 
is inadequate, and that dismissals for the most part end in reinstatement. I 
am not in favor of giving extra legal or arbitrary powers to any man-that is 
against the American spirit-but I do believe that the Commissioner should be 
furnished with some better weapon than that of 'wholesale or retail' 
transfers. But, I fear, I am going in rather heavy."
"Well, then, one of our humorous philosophers says that the patrolman of 
to-day has much greater girth than one of your day. Has he?"
"Undoubtedly. Only yesterday I was downtown-about the Borough hall, my old 
camping ground-and I noticed again as I have many times for years past, that 
the police of to-day are remarkable for their rotundity. If we recall the old 
joke almost every one of them is eligible to be an Alderman. Now the police 
of my time were more lithe and active, I think; certainly they didn't have 
such magnificent-such 'swell fronts.'"
"How do you like the new headgear of the police?"
Mr. Campbell laughed heartily.
"Changing times, changing fashions, I have read a great deal about those 
military caps. Their originators may think them smarter and more 
military-looking, but I believe that the man on post hankers after the good 
old helmet. You see it really was a protection to an officer's head-a 
protection from a falling or a flying brick, from the thug's blackjack, from 
stones hurled in a riot. The present cap is no protection at all, and while 
some say it is spick-and-span and ornamental, I think you will find the 
average policeman will tell you that the helmet was far more 
comfortable-better at a fire, too, and in the dead heat of summer, but the 
police must obey-what then is the use of talking."
Mr. Campbell was Sheriff of Kings in 1867. In 1870 he was made chief of 
police.
"On and off," said he, "I was chief for twenty-five years. Once a law was 
passed substituting the office of superintendent for that of chief. I was out 
for two years and a half, and was then put back.
My most important cases? Ah!" continued Mr. Campbell with an expression of 
that official relish characteristic of his palmy police days. "I recall the 
Kate STODDARD case, the RUBENSTEIN case, the FUCH case-all murder cases. Ah, 
so many! They made quite as much of a stir and filled as much space in the 
papers as does the THAW case or the GILLETTE trial of to-day. That GOODRICH 
case was a great one. Only the other day his brother, W. W. GOODRICH, died. 
The former was murdered in his apartments in Sterling Place, I think, by a 
woman named Kate STODDARD. She was a remarkable woman. She was attractive in 
face, manner and figure, and was a fine musician. GOODRICH and she had been 
intimate. Finally she realized that he was tiring of her. She went to his 
apartments. While he was kneeling at an open grate she said:
"So you want to discard me, eh?"
"'Oh, that will do that,' said he.
"The woman repeated her words. GOODRICH did not reply. Nor did he ever again 
say a word in this world. She shot him in the back of the head. As she made 
no effort to escape we got her easily enough, but only to find our troubles 
beginning. Nobody seemed to know her. Her past life seemed to me wrapped in 
secrecy-enveloped in mystery so far as we were concerned. For three days I 
kept her locked up without the papers knowing that I had her. I questioned 
her time and again. At last one night she laughed in my face and confessed.
"'I did it; I killed him-shot him down as I would a dog. He was untrue, 
false; yes, I killed him and I am glad of it." Naturally I was delighted at 
this avowal, but she at once confounded me by saying: 'Foolish man, I told 
you that to relieve my mind and to stop your questioning. It's true, but if 
you swear to it before the coroner or any jury I shall swear that you lie.'"
"And then?"
"Well, I tried to get her to tell me where she had lived. In a cool, sneering 
way, she persistently refused. Finally I subdivided each precinct into a 
block or two and had a patrolman visit every house in the city. Immediately 
there was a great hubbub. All Brooklyn protested, and did not approve until 
my object had become publicly known. One of my men finally discovered that 
the woman had boarded in a house in High street. In her trunks were found 
incriminating evidence. When she was brought before Judge MOORE, she threw up 
her hands and tragically exclaimed:
"'I don't want any of this; I want no lawyer, no trial.'
"A commission adjudged her insane and she was sent to an asylum. She may be 
living yet, for all I know."
Mr. Campbell told how RUBENSTEIN, who lived in New York, had lured a girl to 
a cornfield in New Lots, murdering her there. When the body was discovered it 
was difficult to tell whether it was that of a white person or a negro. The 
murderer was sentenced to death, but died in a cell."
"A peculiarly atrocious murder was that of FUCHS in Williamsburg," said Mr. 
Campbell. "A friend, who had been living with him murdered him and cut up the 
body. When we arrived at the house the murderer was eating his dinner and 
boiling in a washboiler on the stove were pieces of his victim's body. The 
details of that horrified Brooklyn." (Gross!)
"Probably my most singular case," concluded Mr. Campbell, "related to the 
murder of a youth in South Brooklyn. We had been on the case a night and a 
day. I was sitting in headquarters directing things and awaiting developments 
when I happened to see a slip that had just come in, telling about the 
rescuing from drowning of a man in the Gowanus, who had been taken to the 
Long Island College Hospital.
"'That's the man! That's the man! That's the man,' I seemed to hear as 
distinctly as if somebody and spoken. No; I didn't understand it then; I 
don't understand it now. I had read, of course, about mental telepathy and 
kindred subjects, or speculations, but whatever it was I am sure it was not 
any ordinary mental process, any flash of insight or intuition, no phase of 
associated ideas or anything of that sort that suggested any idea of 
connecting the rescued man with the murder of the boy or of establishing the 
identity of the one with that of the other. I need only say now that that was 
the man, and that he suffered for his crime."
Such are some of the notorious cases which engaged the attention and 
exercised the ingenuity of Chief of Police Campbell. Chief of Police no more, 
this venerable old Southerner lives not only in memories, but in the interest 
and so far as he may be reading and talking with friends in the activities of 
the world to-day.


Transcribed by Mary Davis
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