Baltimore City Police Badges

Baltimore Police Badges

The Official Motto of the Department

Established on November 9, 1880
"Semper Paratus, Semper Fideles, Ever on the Watch"
"EVER READY - EVER FAITHFUL"
"EVER ON THE WATCH"

Our Collection
Through Donations and Purchases at Discounted Prices
The Following is Our Personal Collection to be seen here and at our Museum

3rd. ISSUE
June 22, 1862, a newly formed Police force appeared in a completely new uniform with a new series of badges. With the same center section of the first badge, and  returning the designation of "City Police" surrounded by twenty small points encircled by a narrow rim.  NOTE: The 20 pointer was replaced by an order from the Commissioner. he said, "too many were in the hands of the citizens."  (Stated in an article in the paper from 1890.) This badge had meaning, as in Baltimore from 1846 o 1887 we had 20 Wards a point for every Ward, and a thin band around to represent the police that protect and hold it all together.

Below are our Women in police Badges
Three Badges from our Woman Police Officers

19 June, 1912 - The first Women Officer was hired under the title of Policewomen was Mary S. Harvey, EOD of June 19, 1912 her hiring was followed by that of Margaret B. Eagleston July 22, 1912 (interesting side note on March 28, 1925 the Baltimore Sun reports - Two female members of department given first lesson in pistol shooting. They were Miss Margaret B. Eagleston and Mrs. Mary J. Bruff - A few days later Mrs. Mary Harvey, Miss Eva Aldridge and Ms. Mildred Campbell were also trained. So basically the first two woman officers hired by the BPD weren't trained in firearms until they had been on the force for 13 years!)  - 11 June 1973 - The Civil Service Commission authorized the single classification of "Police Officer" to replace the dual designation "Policeman/Patrolman" and "Policewoman/Patrolwoman". This reclassification was a continuation of the department's efforts in the area of equal employment opportunity. (Female "Police Officers" now had the same prerogatives and responsibilities as their male counterparts. Now only one competitive test for promotions is necessary. Thus, a single career ladder was established for all sworn members.) The first female officer came in

 Officer as written above our first female officers came in 1912

17 October, 1914 - The first female officer shot in the line of duty was Policewoman Elizabeth Faber. As she and her partner, Patrolman George W. Popp were attempting to arrest a pick pocket on the Edmondson Avenue Bridge they were both shot. The above Badge was made between 1936 and 1973 (An interesting side note, the first woman police hired by the Baltimore Police department were hired two years earlier in June and July of 1912, and none of the women hired received firearms training until 1925) - In May of 1969, we have our first father/daughter on police department. Officer James F. Stevens and Police woman Patricia A. Loveless.  

4th. ISSUE

These badges were based on the 4th Issue Badge, based on the design and era I would say these were made in the later years closer to 1973 date in which Policemen, and Police Women, was dropped and Police Officer was begun. Still the initial design came about on 7 May, 1890, worn with a new uniform by all members of the force. This is a shield-shaped badge with the word "POLICE" across the top, Maryland seal in the center and a ribbon with the officers number across the bottom. Sergeant's and above had an eagle on top of the shield. Lieutenants and above wore a badge gold in color. The eagle on the badges had a ribbon in its beak denoting the rank of the officer.

 

1937 - For the first time in the history of the Baltimore Police Department, women have been advanced to the rank of Sergeant - Mrs. Bessie C. Cronin, along with Ms. Mae E. Lillie, Ms. Clara Lynch and Ms. Margaret Ryan. were all promoted, The women, four in number, joined the force during, or immediately after the first world war, when there was a shortage of men, and functioned for a time as telephone and signal operators. Under terms of a bill signed Friday (28 may 1937) by Governor Nice, they will hereafter enjoy the rank, and the pay, which is $46.50 a week as against their previous $40 a week. Made between 1936 and 1973

Reference for the question had been raised WWI or WWII
28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918 
1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945

24 October 1978 - Long after the designation of the Policeman and police Women Baltimore Police promotes the first woman Police Major, Lt. Patricia Mullen, elevated two grades as she became Major Patricia Mullen. Promoted from Lieutenant of the Homicide Unit, Major Mullen she skipped the rank of Captain and was put in charge of Youth Section. This badge was made between 1936 and 1973

Badge Made between 1936 and 1976 

 Badge Made between 1936 and 1976

 Badge Made between 1936 and 1976

 Badge Made between 1936 and 1976

 Badge Made between 1936 and 1976

Badge Made between 1936 and 1976 

 Badge Made between 1936 and 1976

Chauffeur Badge Made between 1936 and 1976

Asst. Engineer Badge made between 1890 and 1936 

 Physician Badge Made Between 1890 and 1936

This is an Obsolete Civil Defense Patrolman Badge for the City of Baltimore. The badge is stamped metal with an Eagle over a shield. The center of the shield has an enameled roundel with the Civil Defense emblem on a blue background. Around this is Patrolman and Baltimore. "BASTIAN BROS/CO/ROCHESTER NY". These badges were intended for police personnel acting under Civil Defense authority in an emergency situation and are a neat Cold War memento.  

1997 Bicentennial Badge

Detective Badge number 38

Courtesy Patricia Driscoll

The city’s Park Commission was first granted the right to preserve peace in parkland by the city charter of 1862 the purpose of the power was to police of the new Druid Hill Park, which at the time was wholly beyond the city limits and thus beyond the authority of Baltimore City's Police. The design in the leaves of the hat device would indicate they are from sometime between 1880 and 1896, after these came a more detailed wreath that went from 1896 until 1915. The Badge with the individual soldered number is also from an older time period. That said the Buttons, and Employee Badges are newer sometime between the 1920s until the 1960's - These were purchased by my wife Patty for this collection, and for the public and police to view. It was purchased at a reduced price from Officer Chris Szakolczai

 

NOTE

Above it the 4th Issue badge if you look at the badge you'll see in badge #1 the fisherman's side you'll see he is leaning cleanly against the escutcheon, where in the #2 badge the fisherman appears to be leaning on some sort of box or added ledge This dates the badge, any badge that falls into the group looking like badge #1 was made between 1890 and 1936. - Badge number falls between 1936 and 1976, when they came out with the 5th Issue badge. The ledge was made in 1936 after the mold cracked, and the ledge was added when they made repairs to the mold

Badges made from  1890-1936 and 1936-1940's. The 1890's have a difference in the die, after 1936, there was die change which is quite minute. On the first die, Badge #1 the figure on the right (The Fisherman) of the coat of arms has his elbow resting cleanly on the top corner point of the escutcheon, whereas on the second die Badge #2, everything is the same with the exception of the fisherman's elbow which appears to be leaning on some sort of box, or added ledge below supporting his arm. That ledge/box was added due to a die or mold break/fracture that occurred in 1936. Also on the upper ranking badges, Sgt on up there was an eagle atop the badge, with a ribbon in his bill that revealed his rank. From 1890-1940's, that eagle was applied separately, after the 1840's the badges have a flatter less detailed eagle.   

*Information provided by Police memorabilia collector Steven Rosenstock

 

Baltimore City Police Commissioners

Sergeant James Robert Moog

 

28 February 1931

Sergeant Moog, City’s Oldest Officers, Dies

On Active Duty Until 10 Days Ago, He Was Policeman Nearly 50 Years

Sergeant James Robert Moog, the senior of all men in the Baltimore Police Department, a Morgan Cavalryman [**] during the Civil War, and founder of Baltimore Police Department's Mounted Police Unit circa 1888 died in Mercy Hospital late last night [27 February 1931] following an operation for appendicitis. In rare cases, a blunt trauma of the abdomen (BTA) can be a direct cause of appendicitis. Seeing as how this happened more than 85 years ago it would be hard to tell if this due to some kind of trauma at the stables, or from illness, all we know is it occurred while working and on a streetcar he began to suffer from what he thought was an attack of bronchial asthma but was later found to be or brought on a case of an acute appendicitis.  

Note: Animals are a common trigger of asthma symptoms. One might be allergic to just one animal or more than one. Often, it's cats, dogs or horses. This means that even if the sergeant had a horse he was younger and did not react to it, he could be allergic to horses now. Sometimes, even if one has been around an animal for their entire life without developing allergies, it's possible to become allergic in their later years. There are also studies that show active asthma could be an unrecognized risk factor for appendicitis, it has been noted with children and the elderly. I don't know if this is a line of duty or not, but given the fact that he served 50 years, he fought in the civil war, and after losing a foot, that they took off while he was awake and watching. After having his foot removed, he got a prosthetic and continued to work. I think it would be great to continue to remember Sgt Moog, I mean what an inspiration to hear of the toughness and dedication of this kind of police.  

If he had lived until April 11th of 1931 he would have completed 50 years in the police department, one of the very few men at the time to have accomplished that.  Detective Lieutenant Thomas F.  Login, died a year earlier, was one such a man.  Sergeant Moog was 86 years old when he died.

Became Ill on a Streetcar

He was on active duty until 10 days prior to his death and was in charge of the stables for the Mounted Division on South Frederick Street.  On the day he was stricken by an attack of bronchial asthma he was on a streetcar, he was taken from the streetcar on Eutaw Street and Druid Hill Avenue by an ambulance from the No. 7 Engine House to the hospital.  There his asthma developed into an acute case of appendicitis.

A widower, Sergeant Moog lived with his daughter, Miss Catherine Moog, head of the department of English of the Eastern High School, at 3807 Bonner road

Funeral on Monday

The funeral services took place from his home that following Monday afternoon.  His son was a member of the faculty of a Boston School of Music.  He also had a second daughter, Mrs. Augustine Patterson, that also lived in Bolton.

Sergeant Moog’s service with the department began in early 1886 where he was assigned to work the Northwest District.  He spent the greater part of half a century on horseback as a member of the Mounted Division patrolling it outlying sections, chiefly in the Northwest District.  A love of horses was a marked characteristic of him throughout his life.

Always Wore Uniform

He always wore his uniform, with a yellow marking of the Cavalry Division. (In early BPD history, uniformed officers wore their uniforms both on and off duty) For years he led the police platoon which rode at the head of processions, from those to honor visiting celebrities to the military processions which marked the participation of this country in the world war and the return of the troops from France.

A real trooper, he knew the nature of the horse, he was at ease in the saddle no matter how great the blaring of the band’s behind him or nervousness of his mount.

Foot Is Amputated

At the battle of Gettysburg, a bullet struck him in the foot.  Two years ago, (1929) after the passing of 60 some odd years, an infection developed in that foot and he was taken to Union Memorial Hospital.  There it was found to be necessary to have the foot amputated.

A survivor of the civil war, when anesthesia was not as common as they were in 1931, the Sergeant told the surgeons that he did not need an anesthetic, and to go ahead and take his foot off; in fact, he wanted to see it, anyway.  He was given a local anesthetic and the operation performed.

Since that time, he had not ridden a horse but remained in charge of the stables.  He had an artificial foot made and his short, strong figure, of the Sergeant walking with a cane, continued to be seen about the police building as he appeared there to make his daily reports, but since he could no longer ride, he was forced to use streetcars to get around the city.

Possibly taken in 1912 during the democratic convention here in Baltimore
The rider second from the left appears to me Sgt James Moog

Morgan Cavalryman Refers to John Hunt Morgan

1 Jun 1825 - 4 Sep 1864

John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. In April 1862, he raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, fought at Shiloh, and then launched a costly raid in Kentucky, which encouraged Braxton Bragg's invasion of that state. He also attacked the supply-lines of General William Rosecrans. In July 1863, he set out on a 1,000-mile raid into Indiana and Ohio, taking hundreds of prisoners. But after most of his men had been intercepted by Union gunboats, Morgan surrendered at Salineville, Ohio, the northernmost point ever reached by uniformed Confederates. The legendary "Morgan's Raid", which had been carried out against orders, gained no tactical advantage for the Confederacy, while the loss of his regiment proved a serious setback. Morgan escaped from his Union prison but his credibility was low, and he was restricted to minor operations. He was killed at Greeneville, Tennessee, in September 1864. Morgan was the brother-in-law of Confederate general A. P. Hill.

Like most Kentuckians, Morgan did not initially support secession. Immediately after Lincoln's election in November 1860, he wrote to his brother, Thomas Hunt Morgan, then a student at Kenyon College in northern Ohio, "Our State will not I hope secede I have no doubt but Lincoln will make a good President, at least we ought to give him a fair trial & then if he commits some overt act all the South will be a unit." By the following spring, Tom Morgan (who also had opposed Kentucky's secession) had transferred home to the Kentucky Military Institute and there began to support the Confederacy. Just before the Fourth of July, by way of a steamer from Louisville, he quietly left for Camp Boone, just across the Tennessee border, to enlist in the Kentucky State Guard. John stayed at home in Lexington to tend to his troubled business and his ailing wife. Becky Morgan finally died on July 21, 1861.

In September, Captain Morgan and his militia company went to Tennessee and joined the Confederate States Army. Morgan soon raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment and became its colonel on April 4, 1862.

Morgan and his cavalrymen fought at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, and he soon became a symbol to secessionists in their hopes for obtaining Kentucky for the Confederacy. A Louisiana writer, Robert D. Patrick, compared Morgan to Francis Marion and wrote that "a few thousands of such men as his would regain us Kentucky and Tennessee."

In his first Kentucky raid, Morgan left Knoxville on July 4, 1862, with almost 900 men and in three weeks swept through Kentucky, deep in the rear of Major General Don Carlos Buell's army. He reported the capture of 1,200 Federal soldiers, whom he paroled, acquired several hundred horses, and destroyed massive quantities of supplies. He unnerved Kentucky's Union military government, and President Abraham Lincoln received so many frantic appeals for help that he complained that "they are having a stampede in Kentucky." Historian Kenneth W. Noe wrote that Morgan's feat "in many ways surpassed J. E. B. Stuart's celebrated 'Ride around McClellan' and the Army of the Potomac the previous spring." The success of Morgan's raid was one of the key reasons that the Confederate Heartland Offensive of Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith was launched later that fall, assuming that tens of thousands of Kentuckians would enlist in the Confederate Army if they invaded the state.

As a colonel, he was presented with a Palmetto Armory pistol by the widow of Brigadier General Barnard Elliott Bee Jr. That pistol is now owned by the Museum of the American Civil War.

Morgan was promoted to brigadier general (his highest rank) on December 11, 1862, though the Promotion Orders were not signed by President Davis until December 14, 1862. He received the thanks of the Confederate Congress on May 1, 1863, for his raids on the supply lines of Union Major General William S. Rosecrans in December and January, most notably his victory at the Battle of Hartsville on December 7.

On December 14, 1862, Morgan married Martha "Mattie" Ready, the daughter of Tennessee United States Representative Charles Ready and a cousin of William T. Haskell, another former U.S. representative from Tennessee.

Morgan's Raid

Hoping to divert Union troops and resources in conjunction with the twin Confederate operations of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Morgan set off on the campaign that would become known as "Morgan's Raid". Morgan crossed the Ohio River and raided across southern Indiana and Ohio. At Corydon, Indiana, the raiders met 450 local Home Guard in a battle that resulted in eleven Confederates killed and five Home Guard killed.

In July, at Versailles, IN, while soldiers raided nearby militia and looted county and city treasuries, the jewels of the local masonic lodge were stolen. When Morgan, a Freemason, learned of the theft he recovered the jewels and returned them to the lodge the following day.

After several more skirmishes, during which he captured and paroled thousands of Union soldiers[citation needed], Morgan's raid almost ended on July 19, 1863, at Buffington Island, Ohio, when approximately 700 of his men were captured while trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. Intercepted by Union gunboats, less than 200 of his men succeeded in crossing. Most of Morgan's men captured that day spent the rest of the war in the infamous Camp Douglas Prisoner of War camp in Chicago, which had a very high death rate. On July 26, near Salineville, Ohio, Morgan and his exhausted, hungry and saddle-sore soldiers were finally forced to surrender. It was the farthest north that any uniformed Confederate troops would penetrate during the war.

On November 27, Morgan and six of his officers, most notably Thomas Hines, escaped from their cells in the Ohio Penitentiary by digging a tunnel from Hines' cell into the inner yard and then ascending a wall with a rope made from bunk coverlets and a bent poker iron. Morgan and three of his officers, shortly after midnight, boarded a train from the nearby Columbus train station and arrived in Cincinnati that morning. Morgan and Hines jumped from the train before reaching the depot and escaped into Kentucky by hiring a skiff to take them across the Ohio River. Through the assistance of sympathizers, they eventually made it to safety in the South. Coincidentally, the same day Morgan escaped, his wife gave birth to a daughter, who died shortly afterward before Morgan returned home.

Though Morgan's Raid was breathlessly followed by the Northern and Southern press and caused the Union leadership considerable concern, it is now regarded as little more than a showy but ultimately futile sidelight to the war. Furthermore, it was done in direct violation of his orders from General Braxton Bragg not to cross the river. Despite the raiders' best efforts, Union forces had amassed nearly 110,000 militia in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; dozens of United States Navy gunboats along the Ohio River ; and strong Federal cavalry forces, which doomed the raid from the beginning. The cost of the raid to the Federals was extensive, with claims for compensation still being filed against the U.S. government well into the early 20th century. However, the Confederacy's loss of Morgan's light cavalry far outweighed the benefits.

Click to Open a Full Size Pic of This File

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Sergeant Jams R. Moog

Click on any of the following articles about Sergeant Moog

Exciting Runaway – 12 July 1895

"Finest" Really Fine? –  16 May 1905  

Policeman’s Pocket Picked – 30 July 1915

Old Mounted Policeman Sees Horse Still Useful – 10 April 1925

Department “Youngsters” Top Service Age Records –  2 Dec 1927

Band Honoring Police Vets – 29 June 1930

James R. Moog – 28 Feb 1931

Police Department’s Oldest Member Dies – 1 May 1931  

Police Horse Live In Shadow of the Block – 30 Aug 1962