Captain William S. Orthman

pace40

pace40

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Captain William S Orthman, a veteran of the Chicago Police Department, was appointed to command the United States Capitol Police in 1933. His tenure saw its share of budget crunches, fruitcakes, and presidential inaugurations.

A few relevant newspaper clippings, of the era…







And the reason for this brief foray back to the 30's ? …

pace40-albums-few-m-p-s-picture9538-layout-w-let-em.jpg



It's really not too much of a stretch to think that this little snub stood at the ready at two of FDR's inaugurations!

It's ones like this poppin' up every now and then that keep me lookin' & letterin'. :D
 
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Wonderful piece of history! Thanks.

The quote in the article about a "particular type of nut" is very telling. I was born in Washington just later in that year (1935) and the comment that: "...once had some money but have lost everything and this has got to preying on their minds. They come to the Capitol to let Congress know what is wrong with the country" gives us some perspective that this was the great depression. My father was working at the Library of Congress and was paid in mills (fractions of a cent) for each piece work that he did.

Bob
 
Bob

Thanks for the story about your Dad. Certainly puts some perspective on the era.

One thing I noticed in reading from the July 1935 article to the Jan 1937 article is increase in size of the department over that year and a half period. 61 to 150...Thats a 146% increase in the size of the force in that short time!
 
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Mike,
Great gun.
My apology- in fumbling around to LIKE your post, I think I deleted the other likes.......
SORRY!
 
Wow, congratulations!

That sort of finding is also why I like to letter all the Smiths I end up keeping. Sadly they almost always turn out to have been shipped to a store or distributor in NYC. Most recently an import-marked Model 15 - also shipped to NYC. Sigh. Sometimes you just can't win.

Sorry to rant

Contratulations again. That is awesome!
 
I had a high school teacher who landed a patronage job as a Capitol police officer around 1960. They handed him a loaded revolver and told him to leave it in the holster. Zero training, no qualification.
 
OK...I let the previous post sit here for a couple days to see if anyone would jump on it, but since no one did, I will.

The USCP was established by an act of congress on April 29, 1828 (HR 158, 20th Congress, RG 233). Do you really think that 132 years later, at an armed federal law enforcement agency, they just handed a guy a gun and said "stand here"?

The 86th US Congress (1959-1961) had some pretty interesting members:

President of the Senate: Richard Nixon
Senate Majority Leader: Lyndon B Johnson

Misc Senators:

John F Kennedy
Jacob Javits
Hubert Humphrey
Strom Thurmond

I'm sure these guys just said, " Yea, he's cool. Go ahead and give him a gun to protect me and my family."
 
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