City of Bath

City of Bath. In a moment, an ordinary police patrol and state history were changed forever.. These portraits of Bath Officer Lawrence and his killer were published in the November 21, 1885 Bath Independent, the day after Wilkinson's execution. "Billy" Lawrence, a three-year veteran of the police force, had spent years at sea, but then chose to return to home and family in Bath. Wilkinson, a British immigrant, had already been convicted of burglary in the U.S. on at least two occasions. The murderer refused to give details of his family, not wanting them so know of his shameful fate. Courtesy of Sagadahoc History and Genealogy Room, Patten Free Library., Shortly after midnight on September 4, 1883, "Uncle Billy" Lawrence, a well-liked Bath policeman, surprised Daniel Wilkinson on Broad Street, fleeing an attempted burglary at a nearby store. Wilkinson shot Lawrence at pointblank range, killing the officer and escaping to Thorne Head before stealing a rowboat and crossing the river. A private detective hired by the city identified the suspect and arrested him in Bangor a week later. The botched 1885 hanging of the convicted murderer horrified Mainers and within two years, the death penalty had been abolished in the state., Photo on the left reads: , SHOT DEAD! , Officer Wm. Lawrence of the City Watch , By One of a Gang of Burglars , Foiled in an Attempt to Enter Gould's Store , Uncle William's "Last Night On" , The Old Man Found In a Pool of his own Blood. , The Murderer Cries "Oh My God, I've Killed a Man!" , Gould's Prost Doors Found Pried Nearly Opened by a Jimmy., The same photo, adjacent to one of an old Constable's badge, are captioned: , This headline from the Bath Independent of September 8, 1883 titled just one of the many articles trying to both establish the timeline of events and mourn the loss of of Constable Lawrence. The reporter wrote of his personal interaction with the officer, noting "Lawrence was a man universally respected and only liked but loved." This nineteenth-century badge from the collection of Bath Historical Society, was found in the walls of a home on Middle Street., Photo on the right side of the marker reads: , CAUGHT. , THE MYSTERY SOLVED. , The Lawrence Murderer Arrested in Bangor. , He Makes Full Confession. , He shoots Officer Lawrence to Free Himself from the Officer's Grasp. , And Escapes up High Street and Crosses the River at Day's Ferry. , Officer Kingsley's Story Proves True. , And a Faithful Officer Exonerated., This photo includes the following caption: , "Murder will out," was the lead sentence from this Bath Daily Times article of September 17, 1883. More than a dozen articles were written in various papers the first two weeks after the sixty-three-year-old Lawrence's death. Bath residents continued to follow events in multiple stories about Wilkinson's capture, confession, trial, guilty verdict, and execution. , Both headlines courtesy of the Sagadahoc History and Genealogy Room, Patten Free Library., The bottom photo is captioned: , This photograph of the Hyde Block, now Bath Savings Institution, by J.C. Higgins likely dates from the later half of the 1870s, just a few years before Officer William Lawrence's death. Here, in the lower right-hand corner, a buggy waits on Broad Street. It is on Broad Street, near this corner, that the officer's body is found minutes after being shot. Courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.