Word: watchmen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Their summons brought villagers running through the wet darkness, crying: "Chiu ming! Chiu ming!" (Save life! Save life!). Pale lightning flickered and thunderclaps split the sky as men, women & children labored with spade, hoe and hands to pile even higher the earthen ramparts of the river dikes. Downriver, other watchmen, gongs in hand, their silhouettes reflected by torchlight, anxiously measured the rising flood crest. Then they, too, beat their booming summons in the night...
...precise estimates, the amount of time, money, and labor spent on constructing and tearing down the commencement platforms would, spread over a period of years, surely be enough to hollow out a good bit of the Yard. Of course, once the lot is constructed, the expense of hiring watchmen might be prohibitive. Such an area would be shot full of dark corners, and infinitely more dangerous to undergraduate morals than a co-educational library. But if Boston, the citadel of careful manners, can risk it, the College should be able to take a few digs in the interest...
...careful check for possible cribbing seems to be necessary in this imperfect world. Over-zealous watchmen, however, who apparently feel they have not earned their pay unless they prowl the premises like Sam Spades, do more harm than good. They appear to hold the belief that every student has spent the term laying elaborate plans for skulldudgery on the final exam. Such an attitude is contrary to the "innocent until proven guilty" standard of common law,--and it is like the Chinese water torture for exam-writers, who are demonstrably the jumpiest of humans...
...Robert A. Magowan and Norman Smith, partners in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, helped run messages on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Vice President John Haskell headed a detail that cleaned up the exchange at night. Curb President Truslow and Chairman Edward C. Werle padded around as night watchmen. In a, day or so, the exchanges were operating almost normally, though the makeshift staffs sweated to keep up with the heavy trading...
Something Old. People have always needed policing, but they have not always had policemen. Medieval watchmen were supposed to cry out if evil was abroad; the folk tumbled out and did their own law enforcing. The very word police (in its present meaning), like the institution it stands for, is no older than the 18th Century...