Murder in Clamshell Alley

Shortly before 11 AM on April 28, 1875, the fire bell rang and Plymouth’s No. 1 Steamer surged forth. The call was not to a fire, however, but rather to the scene of a murder. Christopher Stoddard, 65, a notorious ne’er-do-well, had just shot police officer, Capt. Josiah D. Baxter, who was attempting to extract him from a small shanty on Emerald Street, commonly known as “Clamshell Alley”. An enraged crowd attacked the house with axes, timbers and stones despite gunfire, allowing the firemen to lay a hose to the Town Pond  The full power of the steamer’s stream was turned on the little house. Forced out of the main room into an attached shed, Stoddard kept up his defense until some men ripped the boards off the walls. Exposed again to the force of the hose, Stoddard was soon flooded out of his refuge. Amid cries of “hang him!, hang him” and a hail of sticks and stones, he was seized by Deputy Atwood and Constable Weston before he could use his revolver. With some difficulty , the police dragged Stoddard away from the mob, threw him into a commandeered market cart and took him, wet and bruised, to the County Jail on Russell Street.

Deputy Sherriff John Atwood had gone to Clamshell Alley dwelling earlier that morning with a warrant to help arrest Stoddard for “riotous and disorderly conduct” following a week-long drunken spree. Recognizing that he would have touble with the suspect who had vowed not to be taken alive, Atwood had asked Baxter to accompany him. They were refused entry at the front door, and while the Deputy argued with Stoddard, Officer Baxter had attempted to get in at the back door. As he opened the outer door and bent down to look in the key hole, Stoddard had fired through the door, hitting Baxter in the left eye. Officer Baxter never made a sound, but throwing up his arms, collapsed dead upon the ground. Horrified witnesses from the neighboring houses testified that he never moved again, but lay there until the fire engine began its seige.

Christopher Stoddard had moved to Plymouth twenty-five or thirty years earlier from Scituate. He was widely suspected in several incidents of arson, and had served several terms of imprisonment for minor offences before his final adventure in Clamshell Alley. Stodard was arraigned for the shooting before Judge Davis in the Plymouth Town House on Saturday, May 3rd, and remanded to prison. He was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison on July 13, 1875.

Capt. Josiah D. Baxter, then about 60 years of age, had been active in local Republican politics, and had served as Deputy State Constable, Wreck Master for the Plymouth District, and as an agent of the Massachusetts Humane Society. He was survived by his wife and his son, who was a teacher in Winchester, Mass.