“Discovered skulking at the North-end of this city”

According to the Massachusetts Spy, when the Pennsylvania Journal printed its incendiary item about Ebenezer Richardson (quoted yesterday), people were already hunting for the man.

On 4 Nov 1773, Isaiah Thomas’s newspaper ran an “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia, to his correspondent in Boston, dated the 13th of October, 1773.” That was the same day that William and Thomas Bradford’s Pennsylvania paper published its alert.

The first paragraph of that letter was about the new Tea Act, Philadelphia merchants’ plans to respond, and concern about a report that “the duties on Tea have been regularly paid” in Boston.

The next extract said:

Your infamous Richardson, who has been concealed from public view until very lately, was yesterday haunted about, and very narrowly escaped. But a certain A. T———— who was supposed to have been his associate and patron here, was turned out of the Coffee-house in a very ignominious manner.—I pity him:—He always appeared to be decent and very civil; but to be subjected to a Murderer convict, is so injurious and unsafe, that his appointment here by the Commissioners could be only with a view to provoke to a riot: And if T——— made him his friend it could not be expected that the populace could well distinguish between them.

The Pennsylvania Journal had singled out this “A. T————” as “a Tide-Waiter” who’d said he’d work with Richardson if the Customs Commissioners ordered him to. I can’t identify him further, but folks who know the Philadelphia sources might. Clearly people in 1773 knew exactly whom the newspaper was referring to.

As for “the Coffee-house” that refused this man service, that was probably the London Coffee House (shown above, as drawn from William H. Ukers’s All About Coffee). The proprietor of that enterprise was none other than newspaper printer William Bradford.

A week later, the Bradfords’ 20 October Pennsylvania Journal proudly reported:

The description given in our last paper of the phiz of the Villain, EBENEZER RICHARDSON, being very accurate, he was last Monday [18 October] discovered skulking at the North-end of this city: and being closely pursued by many well-wishers to peace and good order, very narrowly escaped (by means of a wood) the TAR AND FEATHERS, which had several days before been prepared for HIM.—

As the city of Philadelphia is now, and forever must be too hot, to hold this Parracide, he will, in all probability, try his fortune in New-York; and if, contrary to expectation, he should not there meet his reward, but should experience another hair-breadth escape, he may probably, as a dernier Resorte, fly to the arms of his dear, dear P———, the surest and safest asylum for complicated Villainy, on this side the Atlantic.

“P———” was most likely Charles Paxton, Richardson’s longtime employer and one of the those Customs Commissioners in Boston.

TOMORROW: Back home in Massachusetts?