One of the most well-known members of the Hamilton Police
force in the 1870s and early 1880s was Detective McPherson.
McPherson
had spent some time in the state of Colorado, when that state was very much a
wild west state. After coming to Hamilton and serving as a detective, the popular
detective, Mac, maintained close relationships with reporters with both the
Hamilton Times and the Hamilton Spectator.
Mac
eventually moved on from Hamilton and perhaps his experience as related in the
Spectator of August 20, 1886 contributed to his desire to leave:
“Ex-Detective McPherson was a good soul and
pretty generally liked. I am one of those in Hamilton who hope he will do well
in the great west from whence he came. He went out of business about as poor as
when he came in, and for all his toil got nothing but a living and some
experience of human nature. Mac was always a good friend to the boys, and was
ever ready to do them a good turn.
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“His one weakness was the
desire to see himself in print. Before coming to Hamilton he had been in
Colorado, where he had a great many wild and terrible adventures with robbers,
Indians, bandits and other society people. Mac’s great wish was to have this
part of his career written up in book form, after the Pinkerton style. Scarcely
a newspaper man in the city but has at one time or another been asked to
undertake the work. At one time there was employed on a Hamilton paper a
singularly gifted young man, whose cleverness was shut out from being put to
practical use through an inordinate passion for drink. This erratic genius
happened to meet Mac one day after he had left the police force, and an arrangement
was entered into between them by which the journalist was to write the book,
Mac to publish it, and the profits to be equally divided.
“ ‘When can you take some
notes?’ Mac asked.
“ ‘Right now. Shall we go
inside?’
“ They went in. Mac got on
the business side of the bar, while the reporter leaned over a produced a
pencil and a roll of paper. Mac told his story while the other man made
enigmatical marks. Every few minutes operations would be stopped for a drink or
a cigar, and the best liquor and the finest cigars Mac had were none too good
for the occasion. Before the reporter left he was feeling sublimely indifferent
to mundane affairs, and didn’t care whether he pinned his happiness to anything
more stable than a feather. Mac pressed a $5 bill in his hand as he was going
out to buy paper and pencils, and thence the first lesson ended.
__________________________________________
“The reporter was on hand
the next afternoon. His eyes were bloodshot, his face and his whole body
trembled. Mac gave further particulars, and the newspaperman shorthanded them
and got gloriously full again. Day after day the same act was repeated until
the best part of a week had passed.
“Then Mac said : ‘Say have
you got any of this stuff written up?’
“ ‘Yes, I’ve got it about
half done.’
“ ‘Well, bring it around to
me tomorrow. I want to look at it before it goes into print.’
“The journalist promised to
do it and went out. Mac never saw him again, and a few days afterwards he
stopped a well-known newspaperman on the street and said : ‘Where’s ---?’
“ ‘Dunno.’
“Can he write shorthand?’
“ ‘No.’
“ ‘Well ---- that man
anyhow.’
“And then Mac told how he
had been victimized. It raised a hearty laugh whenever it was told, but it was
not an experience Mac was fond of dwelling on.”1
1 “Casually Mentioned”
Hamilton Spectator August 20, 1886.
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