Policeman's Diary Reveals a Slice of Late 19th-Century Life in St. Louis

Charles Henry Richter was a police officer in the Sixth District of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in the mid-1890s. We know this about him because he kept a diary from September 1893 until August 1896 that was preserved and cared for by the residents of Breeze Park Lutheran Senior Services in St. Charles, Missouri. The story of the diary and how it came to St. Louis Genealogical Society is the subject of an article in the fall 2021 St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly, recently published by the society. The contents of Officer Richter's diary have been digitized, indexed, and posted on our website. Read on to learn more. . . .

In April 2021, Tamara Price, Lifestyle Enrichment Coordinator at Breeze Park, contacted StLGS to discuss a notebook Breeze Park residents had been interested in. The notebook had been discovered in a filing cabinet by a previous health services director, placed there years before so it didn't get discarded in the trash when a resident vacated a room. When that director retired, she passed the notebook on to Tamara, who had been using it during activities with residents during the first year of the pandemic.

Their curiosity piqued, the residents wondered if they could discover more about the diary's author, and that's where StLGS stepped in. Tamara contacted StLGS Publications Director, Ilene Murray, who shared the inquiry with StLGS president, Karen Goode. All agreed this might be an interesting project, and Tamara was invited to bring the notebook to the society office with several of the Breeze Park residents. With a firm promise that the notebook would be donated to the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center after we were done working with it, the notebook was passed on to StLGS volunteers, Viki Fagyal and Diane Broniec, experienced researchers who took on the task of learning more about Officer Richter and his duties as a police officer in the 1890s. The little diary, just seventy-three pages long, was scanned and indexed by other volunteers, while Viki and Diane began their investigation into Charles Richter's life.

Their search started in the St. Louis city directory for 1894, where there was only one Charles H. Richter. He was a policeman living on Benton Street, which is in what today is called the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood, north of Cass Avenue and west of Jefferson in north St. Louis City. Viki and Diane next searched the 1900 federal census, finding Charles with a wife and five daughters still living on Benton Street. The census showed that Charles had been born in 1860 in Germany, had come to the U.S. in 1870, and had naturalized. He was working as a stonemason, and he and wife Annie, had been married eighteen years. It looked like Charles worked as a police officer during the 1890s but after 1900, he had changed careers. By 1908, Annie Richter was widowed. Much more information about the family was available by searching a variety of records, and the story Viki and Diane wrote for the Quarterly outlines how they were able to place meat on the bones of the Richter family narrative.

The little diary kept by Officer Richter is a fascinating glimpse of misdemeanors from potholes to dead animals to actual crimes, such as assault and battery. The indexed and scanned images are on our website under the Research tab: Research in St. Louis/Government/Fire and Police.  Included on the page are the name of each person Officer Richter interacted with (if known), date, address, and comments. Even if you don't think you had an ancestor who might have met with Officer Richter, it is a fun read to scan the index to see how what life on the streets was like in the 1890s. (The image on the right is a scanned page of the diary.)

As a final chapter to the Richter story, Karen, Diane, and Viki presented their findings to the Breeze Park residents this fall, who were delighted to learn more about their treasure. The diary is now safe, its tale has been told, and family historians can continue to learn from the generosity of the Breeze Park community.