Charles R. Apted
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"Colonel" Charles R. Apted |
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Apted in 1918
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| Born | June 18, 1873 Boston |
| Died | June 5, 1941 (aged 67) Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Education | Chelsea Public Schools |
| Alma mater | Harvard College (honorary) |
| Occupation | Chief, Harvard Yard police · Supt. of Harvard buildings · Cambridge City Councillor |
| Employer | Harvard University |
| Title | "Harvard Cop No. 1" |
| Spouse(s) | Eva Catherine (Hunt) Apted |
| Parent(s) | Henry Edmund Apted Maria Chesterman |
Charles Robert Apted (1873–1941) was for 39 years a Harvard University official in various capacities, for much of that time chief of the Harvard Yard police ("Harvard Cop No. 1", the Boston Globe called him) and superintendent of Harvard buildings. His Boston Globe obituary called him "both feared and beloved by undergraduates during three university presidential administrations".
He gained national prominence in 1915, when he identified deranged former Harvard German instructor and wife-poisoner Eric Muenter as the dynamite-wielding intruder who had shot J. P. Morgan, Jr. and bombed the US Senate.
Apted was born in Boston of English-immigrant parents, and worked for a time in insurance. He married Eva C. Hunt on June 16, 1898.
He was elected to the Cambridge, Massachusetts "common council" in 1914, and to the city council (under a new city charter) in 1915 or 1916. In his first three years in office he was "chairman of every social event of the city council", and was for many years grand chancellor of the Knights of Pythias.
He began at Harvard in 1902 as a clerk in the office of the Supervisor of Caretaking. "Old Harvard grads remember him for the sympathetic help he gave some of the poorer students [when] he had charge of the Furniture Loan Department", said The New York Times. By 1921 he was Supervisor of Caretaking (later Superintendent of Buildings) himself, and by his retirement in 1941 four hundred Harvard staff were under his supervision, including twenty-two "yard cops".
His duties included oversight of the Harvard Police Patrol. In this capacity he was "both guardian and disciplinarian", keeping student misbehavior under control within Harvard's confines—"His cry of 'Break it up' as he headed for the focal point of any riot or disturbance became famous in the annals of the College"—and extricated Harvard "boys" from trouble with authorities outside the school's gates. "With police forces for miles around 'Charlie's' word was as good as bail", said the The Harvard Crimson. The "mild-mannered, bespectacled" Apted also protected students in trouble—especially those from prominent families—from publicity; in 1932 the City Council criticized him for refusing to reveal the names of participants in a riot, which had grown from the serenading of Radcliffe women to trash fires and an assault on a police station.
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