“The Disease was rapid and poignant”?

Last month I faced a Boston 1775 emergency.

Which was, of course, not really an emergency. No one was in the least danger. I just felt an urgent need to confirm a statement I’d been repeating for years and suddenly had reason to question.

This dire situation arose because I asked myself how the coroners of Suffolk County responded to the death of William Molineux on Saturday, 22 Oct 1774.

John Rowe wrote in his diary that Molineux died “suddenly,” though Dr. Joseph Warren had visited the man the day before. Thomas Newell recorded death came “after three days’ illness,” Molineux’s political work having “produced an inflammation of the bowels.” John Andrews said Molineux died “After surviving a fit of apoplexy two days.”

By the time the Monday newspapers appeared, the Patriots had their story down. Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette declared:

His Watchfulness, Labours, Distresses and Exertions to promote the general Interest, produced an Inflammation in his Bowels: The Disease was rapid and poignant; but in the severest Pangs, he rose superior to Complaint; he felt no Distresses but for the Public.

As for the Boston Post-Boy and Boston News-Letter, friendly to the royal government, they didn’t report Molineux’s death at all.

Some diarists and the Boston Gazette said that Molineux’s last words were “O SAVE MY COUNTRY HEAVEN!” That may even have been true, but I must note that “Oh, save my country, heav’n!” is a line from Alexander Pope’s Moral Essays. And that Molineux was notorious in his time for being a deist.

By March, Loyalists were publicly hinting that Molineux had committed suicide: through “the Laudanum of Doctor Warren, he quitted this Planet.” But there were also rumors, recalled by George Robert Twelves Hewes, that British army officers had poisoned the man.

That muddled situation led me to wonder if there was any official verdict on Molineux’s death. Massachusetts had inherited the English system of county coroners convening juries and holding inquests on suspicious deaths.

Unfortunately, not much paperwork seems to survive from inquests in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts. There’s a small cache of documents relating to the Boston Massacre, probably saved those for their historic significance. Otherwise, collectors preserved a few determinations of coroners’ juries because they contained notable signatures.

Furthermore, in late 1774 the Massachusetts judicial system was being brought to a standstill by Patriot protests over judicial salaries and the Massachusetts Government Act. Some men, most prominently Molineux, refused to serve on juries. Outside Boston, crowds were blockading courthouses. Did that shutdown extend to coroners’ inquests as well?

Those questions led me to look more deeply into the coroners. How many were there? How long did they serve? How did they operate?

TOMORROW: Reading the law.