“Now in his majesty’s Goal in Boston” in January 1775

Yesterday I illustrated a posting that quoted Boston jailer Joseph Otis’s list of prisoners with a small image of such a list.

However, that picture didn’t show the list I quoted from 1777, which is reportedly at the Boston Public Library. I couldn’t find a digital image of that document.

Instead, I ran an image of Otis’s list of prisoners from 3 Jan 1775, in the collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago.

That list includes Samuel Dyer, whom I wrote about in these articles, so I was eager to see if this source said anything more about him. It says he was being held for assault and battery, though he had clearly tried to murder two British army officers. 

But before I got to Dyer my eye fell on the top of the list.

The first prisoner was “John Bell,” held for “Breach of Peace.” I’m taking that personally.