Born in Ireland in 1856, William H. Hodgins emigrated to America with his father and nine siblings in 1877 and settled in Kansas.
He was also the precinct captain of the district when Harry K. Thaw shot and killed architect Stanford White at Madison Square Garden in 1906.
[1] In 1907, Hodgins was ordered into retirement by Police Commissioner Theodore A. Bingham on the grounds that he was "too fat".
Hodgins would spend the next two years trying to get reinstated and finally succeeded in doing so when Supreme Court Justice Josiah Taylor Marean overruled the police commissioner's order.
Hodgins and leaders of the Chinese-American community were able to begin negotiations toward a truce which would eventually lead to an agreement to end the war.