Arthur Woods

Colonel Arthur Hale Woods (January 29, 1870 – May 12, 1942) was an American educator, journalist, military and law enforcement officer. One of the most prominent police reformers during the early 20th century, he served as deputy New York City Police Commissioner from 1907 to 1909 and later became New York City Police Commissioner in 1914. During his time with the New York City Police Department, he was largely responsible for initiating the application of criminology and sociology in modern policing.

In his later years, Woods worked with the Division of Military Aeronautics and was involved in government committees on unemployment under the administrations of Presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover. Woods was also an important public servant as trustee for the Board of Education and presided as president and chairman of the board of Rockefeller Center.

Early life Arthur Woods was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 29, 1870, to Joseph Wheeler and Caroline Frances Woods. He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1892, and did his post-graduate work at Harvard and the University of Berlin.

During his time as deputy commissioner, Woods became well educated on gang related violence and was a supporter of Inspector Joseph Petrosino and the "Italian Squad", a special detectives unit which combated organized crime in Italian-American neighborhoods. He was partially responsible for its revival following Petrosino's murder in 1908, although the squad remained more low-profile than its previous incarnation. It was not officially reinstated for another decade. A year later, he left the NYPD and went into the lumber business in Mexico and the cotton converting business in Boston before returning to the police force five years later. He retired from policing in 1918.

Following the end of World War I, he became an assistant to the United States Secretary of War Newton D. Baker in charge of efforts to reestablish returning American servicemen in civil life. From 1921 to 1922, he presided as chairman on Committee on Civic and Emergency Measures as part of President Warren G. Harding's Conference on Unemployment. In 1925, he was considered to succeed Roy A. Haynes as national prohibition commissioner. daughter of Edward Streeter, in 1947. They divorced in 1953, and in 1954, he married Joan Holden, daughter of Hale Holden Jr. of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Leonard Hamilton Woods, who married Anina Paepcke, the daughter of Walter Paepcke and Elizabeth Nitze (the sister of Paul Nitze) of Chicago, in 1948. They divorced and in 1963, she married Ian Morgan Hamilton (1923–2010), Leonard's first cousin through his uncle, Pierpont Morgan Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton Woods Carolie Frances Woods (1927–2008), who married Valentine Hollingsworth Jr., in 1948. She later married Marshall Hays Noble (1923–2002).

Woods died from a cerebral hemorrhage at his North Street home on May 12, 1942. His funeral was held at St. John's Episcopal Church in Georgetown and was later buried in the Woods family cemetery in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

After his death, his widow remarried to the banker and diplomat Warren Randolph Burgess in 1955, who was serving as the Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs in the Eisenhower administration and later was the Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Helen died at the age of 88 on January 25, 1985, in Mystic, Connecticut.