On January 4, 1926, Bel Marie Gardner (1872-1940) is appointed Police Matron and the head of the Woman’s Division of the Everett Police Department. She had been filling the roles informally since October 1, 1925, and receives unanimous support from the Everett City Council. Gardner had been an educator until moving west from Michigan in 1920 to care of her mother and elder brother in Everett.
Everett Police Matron: Fighting Delinquency
The reason for Bel Gardner's pivot from teaching to law enforcement is not clear. She began her teaching career in Detroit around 1900 and resigned in 1908 amid growing tensions in her school district. She had been recruited to teach in a new 15-room schoolhouse in 1906, but despite the opportunity and her years of experience, she left the job. A year later, Michigan recognized the need for a separate juvenile-justice system to meet growing demands from progressives that the country adopt a more compassionate and humane approach to youth in corrections. At the same time, the pressure placed on teachers to ensure that their students were at their desks and not truant on the streets was immense. "Desperadoes" or habitual truants would travel together in "swarms largely unsupervised ... lacking playgrounds or supervision, they congealed into neighborhood gangs, in which older boys served as fathers to the younger" (Walcott, 112).
In August 1925, just a month before Gardner joined the Everett Police, a former Everett City Patrol Officer named R. E. Tanner had been apprehended with two co-conspirators, "52 bottles of liquid, material for 40 gallons more, two large crocks and hundreds of empty bottles" ("Former Cop Nabbed ..."). A month prior, Tanner had been told to forfeit his badge after failing to report a burglary on his beat. "Crooked cops" and stories of corruption made headlines throughout the era of Prohibition, leading many to arrive at the conclusion that Prohibition was a failure. Popular narratives conveyed that the laws themselves made criminals out of ordinarily law-abiding citizens, especially among youth.
However, there were those, like Gardner, who were not ready to give up on America, its youth, nor its most controversial experiment to save them from themselves. "Young people, they tell you, are getting worse, but that’s not true," Superior Court Judge Guy C. Alston declared in an address to the Everett Rotary Club. "I have dealt with juvenile offenders for the past dozen years and I want to say that they are getting better, and the absence of the saloon has had a marked effect in bringing about this improvement" ("Says Youth of America ...").
Gardner was among those who pursued careers in advancing public welfare and paid a personal price. Her marriage to Herbert Gardner dissolved not long after she arrived in Washington, and while she was passionate about improving conditions for children, she never had any of her own. She put herself at personal risk in law enforcement. She broke up a shady hotel run by a woman by the alias of Mamie Flowers, who was running a disorderly establishment (without a license). She arrested women for possession of liquor and disorderly conduct. Each was dealt a slap on the wrist and returned out the other side of an ever-revolving door. As with her teaching career, Gardner became discouraged and sought to make a more tangible impact on her community.
The site of the "beer resort" where Tanner, the crooked cop, worked on the other side of the law was just a half block south of Garfield Elementary School in the Riverside neighborhood of Everett. Gardner had taught at a similar school in Detroit, a school with children and families struggling to thrive in an environment that threatened to undermine the quality of life of its youngest and most vulnerable. Across the street from Garfield Elementary was Garfield Park, a vacant lot more commonly known as Willow Swamp. Composed of muck and thick shrubs, the park provided ideal cover for barrels and illicit bootleg operations. Ironically, the same field had been designated a park by the Everett chapter of the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union).
In his book Shinny On Your Own Side, author Max Miller describes growing up in Everett during the first decade of the twentieth century. He named his book from the game that was played by the children at Garfield Park, which resembled hockey with a flat stick and a large ball. But the bootleggers and automobiles of the 1920s offered children a different way to pass their time at the park: "The land bisects Chestnut Street, and motorists sometimes drove through the swamp rather than go around to the next street. Neighborhood children kept a supply of wood and rope hidden in nearby bushes. When a car became stuck in the swampy mud, they would help the driver extricate it - for a small fee" (May, 87).
In Social Services: Building Refuge in an Industrial Landscape
Gardner is credited with bringing the "playground movement" to Everett. A national campaign sought to provide children with spaces that were lost to them in commercial development. "Everett has the ugliest group of school grounds [I have] ever witnessed," asserted George Braden, western representative of the National Recreation Association. "During the tour made of the community in the morning, not a child was seen playing on these available play areas." He noted, however, that when they encountered a tree or a wild, green space, they were sure to encounter a child or two, doing what it was in their nature to do ("Everett One of Few Cities with No Playgrounds").
Playgrounds not only provided diversion from the alleys and streets, but physical movement necessary for childhood development. Traffic deaths decreased as well. Lots such as Willow Swamp were earmarked and offered to the city of Everett for consideration by the Snohomish County Social Service Club, which Gardner helped establish, and which was instrumental in establishing playgrounds throughout the city.
The city assumed the Garfield Park project, turning the swamp into a "playfield." Construction was carried out by the city’s unemployed, and in 1932 the WPA (Works Progress Administration) assumed the Garfield Playground project, filling in the swamp and removing the brush. Early development included a small playground and a Hobby House that hosted children’s crafts. Gardner observed a need – first in her own students, who ducked authorities to congregate in the streets. She sought the authority of law enforcement to inform her community and prevent juvenile delinquency by putting an end to society's most harmful influences. Ultimately, she diverted her efforts to where she felt she could do the most good: creating spaces where play and innocence might be preserved. The monuments of those efforts remain to this day.
