Act Worthy of Yourselves at King’s Chapel, 18–20 June

King’s Chapel has brought back Act Worthy of Yourselves, a sixty-minute drama set around the funeral of Dr. Joseph Warren in April 1776.

The teaser copy says:

The British army has finally left Boston. Now, nearly a year after his death, friends and family can finally hold a funeral for Dr. Joseph Warren.

Inside King’s Chapel, his brother, his fiancée, and his good friend Paul Revere gather to mourn Warren and to make sense of their loss. Outside the Chapel, two Black abolitionists wonder what this revolution will mean for them. A play about memory, legacy, and the potential and pitfalls of the American Revolution.

While anchored in April 1776, the play flashes back to episodes in the life of Dr. Warren earlier in the 1770s. In addition to the doctor’s brother John and his fiancée, Mercy Scollay, the characters include the black businessmen Lancaster Hill and Prince Hall, Paul and Rachel Revere, Abigail Adams, merchant and Freemason John Rowe, medical trainee William Eustis, rising young lawyer Perez Morton, and Christopher Monk, badly wounded at the Boston Massacre.

This play was written by Noah Good and Kaitlin Rose, and directed by Anjie Echemendia. With that large cast and many scenes set at different times and places, it’s a complex undertaking. Last year, as I recall, many of the performers came from the King’s Chapel interpretive staff rather than Boston’s professional theatrical scene.

The remaining performances for this year are on 18–20 June at 7:30 P.M. and on Saturday, 20 June, at 2:00 P.M. Tickets cost from $40 to $15 depending on the view, and are available through this website.

More Talks on the Battle of Bunker Hill and Its Aftermath

Here are more upcoming talks that look ahead to the Sestercentennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Tuesday, 10 June, 6:00 P.M.
Courage and Resolve in Nation and Institution Building
Massachusetts General Hospital and online

Major General Joseph Warren’s death at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, secured his legacy as a Revolutionary War hero. Lesser known is his role as an advocate for organized healthcare for the poor and needy. Both he and his brother John advanced American medicine during the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. In the early 1800s, John’s son Dr. John Collins Warren would build upon those ideals through his own role in co-founding the Massachusetts General Hospital. Biographer Dr. Samuel Forman explores the lives of these three men and their continued influence on current health care.

This free event will take place in the hospital’s Paul S. Russell, M.D., Museum of Medical History and Innovation at 2 North Grove Street. Register for a seat or a link here.

Thursday, 12 June, 5:30 P.M.
General James Reed and the Battle of Bunker Hill
Main Street Studios, 569 Main Street

The Fitchburg Historical Society says, “Join us for fun discussion,” part of a series on “Local Stories from the American Revolution.” It looks like society officials will provide the basic information.

Continental Army general James Reed (1722–1807) lived in Fitchburg when it was part of Lunenburg and again in the last decade of his life. He was born in Woburn, however, and starting in 1765 led a settlement in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. After war broke out, Reed returned to Massachusetts as colonel of a New Hampshire regiment and fought alongside Col. John Stark at the rail fence. In mid-1776 Reed was assigned to the Northern Department, helping the retreat from Canada. He contracted smallpox, lost his sight, and retired from the army.

Friday, 13 June, 10:00 A.M.
Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston

Join Chief Historian Peter Drummey for a gallery talk on the exhibition, “1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution,” which charts major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution. Drummey will discuss the impact of the Battle of Bunker Hill using items on display. Visitors are invited to explore the rest of the exhibition and ask questions.

“Capt Chever who submitted to the Plaster of the Cancer Doctor”

Here’s another glimpse of cancer and its treatment from Massachusetts in 1790.

On 28 April, the Rev. William Bentley of Salem wrote in his diary:

A Mr. Newman has appeared, who is celebrated for his success in Cancers. The Physicians allow that he has wrought strange effects upon a Mrs. [Sarah] Sheheen, & he has undertaken for Capt S. Chever, & others. He allows merit in his own way to Mr. [John] Pope of Boston, is a man of years, & belongs to Rhodeisland. The Physicians encourage his experiments.

This visiting doctor was John Newman of Newport—more about him tomorrow. The patient was probably Samuel Chever. There were a lot of Che(e)vers in Salem at this time, but one appears to have been consistently given the title of captain.

Unfortunately, only two days later Bentley reported:

Capt Chever who submitted to the Plaster of the Cancer Doctor mentioned p. 191. was by the violent pains of a second experiment lasting 20 minutes, so shocked that he has since been speechless, & is supposed, paralytic. As his family have been sufferers in the same way, we can only say, his disorder followed this operation.

On 2 May, the minister recored a request for prayers from “S. Chever & Wife for him dangerously sick.” He also wrote, “Saml. Chever. Paralytic.” (Much of Bentley’s diary in this stretch was taken up with recording deaths, illnesses, and crimes.)

The next day, the situation looked better:

This evening I sat through the night with Capt Chever, who seems upon the recovery. A blister on the throat assists him to articulate better, than he ever has done.

This “blister” doesn’t appear to have been a natural phenomenon. Rather, someone applied a plaster with substances on it to inflame the skin or even used a suction cup to create a blood blister—either way, the idea was to pull blood away from the real trouble spot.

In late June, Bentley and Cheever rode to Danvers together, so the captain was more clearly on the mend.

Finally, on 4 Feb 1791 Bentley recorded:

Last Wednesday Capt. S. Chever submitted to an amputation on account of a cancerous humour which had resisted every method of cure.

In the summer there came along from Rhode island a Mr. ——, a Quack who pretended cures of Cancers. He applied to an inveterate Cancer on the breast of Mrs. Shehane, wife of him lately deceased [Daniel Shehane, died on 28 January]. Beyond all expectation he succeeded and at present the patient is free from complaint.

Capt. S. Chever being long indisposed, on various accounts applied to this Adventurer, & submitted to his operations. They were caustic, & after 20 minutes extreme pains they occasioned paralytic affections very violent, & of which the patient has not recovered. But as he has been recruiting the Cancer has become more troublesome.

He consented at last with great reluctance, & Dr [John] Warren of Boston performed the amputation.

I can’t tell what was actually amputated.

Assuming I’ve identified the right Samuel Chever, this patient lived for another twenty-three years, until 1814, dying at the age of seventy-six. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

(That webpage assigns Chever two wives whose lifespans overlap each other. I suspect Deborah Osborn married a younger Samuel Chever; the intention gives him the label of “3d.”)

Examining Abigail Adams Smith’s Breast Cancer, 3 Oct.

On Tuesday, 3 October, the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy will host a panel discussion on “Abigail Adams Smith and the Evolution of the Treatment of Breast Cancer from Colonial America to Today.”

Historical background for the event:

Abigail and John Adams’s daughter Abigail (“Nabby”) Adams Smith, born in Braintree (now Quincy) in 1765, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1810, undergoing a radical mastectomy in 1811. Despite the surgery, cancer spread throughout her body, causing her death at age 48 in 1813. Abigail Adams expressed her grief at the loss of her daughter with the words, “The wound which has lacerated my Bosom cannot be healed.”

The surgeon who performed the operation was Dr. John Warren, whose older brother Joseph had been the Adams family’s physician before the war.

Smith’s case and modern treatment of her condition will be discussed by experts in medicine and the history of medicine:

• David Jones, M.D., Ph.D., the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University.
• Suniti Nimbkar, M.D., FACS, medical director of the Breast Care Center at South Shore Hospital.

This event has been organized by the Abigail Adams Historical Society, stewards of the birthplace of the second First Lady, in partnership with South Shore Hospital's Breast Care Center and the Thomas Crane Public Library.

The discussion is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. in the library’s Community Meeting Room, on the ground floor. It is free and open to the public.

EXTRA: Would You Give an Arm and a Leg for These Amputation Kits?

RR Auction is offering the amputation kits that Dr. John Warren used in the Revolutionary War. Bidding ends on 12 July, with the last online bid at 6:00 P.M. and the final bids handled by phone after that.

According to the company’s announcement on Art Daily:

One kit is covered in shark or ray skin (shagreen) and contains: bullet forceps with scissor handles; tissue forceps; a grooved director; a Petit-style tourniquet; bow-framed metacarpal saw; and an extra blade for a large amputation saw. Attached inside the hinged top cover is a 19th-century hand-written card tracing the provenance, reading: “Revolutionary Instruments given by Joseph Warren to John Warren to John C. Warren to Henry J. Bigelow. Copy of letter describing them in possession of J. Collins Warren.” . . .

The second kit is mahogany and contains: a capital amputation saw, with a wooden-handled instrument with hexagonal nut to adjust the blade; a curved amputation knife; surgical scissors; and tissue forceps (possibly non-original). The interior is fitted for the instruments, and one (a scalpel) is absent. Nailed to the front edge is a very faint handwritten 19th-century identification label that is extremely difficult to read, but with enhanced contrast can be deciphered: “Used during the Revolutionary War by Dr. John Warren.”

In addition, in 1850 Dr. John Collins Warren, son of the surgeon who used these instruments, guessed that “The case was probably given to him by his brother General Joseph Warren, when he served as a medical pupil.” He also wrote, “The tourniquet is a French instrument from a model of great antiquity. It is, perhaps, the best instrument of the kind which has been invented.”

Two Swords from the Battle of Bunker Hill

It’s that time of year, when Boston 1775’s thoughts turn to the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June.

Boston Magazine’s website just featured one of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s most striking artifacts of that fight: the crossed swords of Col. William Prescott of the Massachusetts army and Capt. John Linzee of the Royal Navy:

Both men figured prominently in the battle—Linzee’s ship fired upon Prescott’s men—and their weapons were passed down through their respective families. Nearly 50 years after the conflict, the bitterness of war gave way to the power of love when Prescott’s grandson—William H. Prescott—married Susan Amory, a descendant of Linzee.

The merchant John Rowe listed the guests at his niece Susannah Inman’s marriage to Capt. Linzee on 1 Sept 1772. According to The Linzee Family of Great Britain and the United States of America, the Linzees had a daughter they named Hannah Rowe Linzee, who married Thomas Coffin Amory. That couple’s child Susannah married the historian William H. Prescott, who bequeathed the swords to the society in 1859.

Another Linzee granddaughter, born Elizabeth Tilden Linzee, married James Sullivan Warren, a grandson of Dr. John Warren and great-nephew of Dr. Joseph Warren, who died at Bunker Hill. And a Linzee great-granddaughter married a grandson of Paul Revere.

The Rev. Nathaniel Frothingham missed the M.H.S. meeting when those swords arrived, but he was nonetheless inspired to write this poem about them:

The Crossed Swords
Transferred from Mr. Prescott’s Library to that of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Swords crossed,—but not in strife!
The chiefs who drew them, parted by the space
Of two proud countries’ quarrel, face to face
Ne’er stood for death or life.

Swords crossed, that never met
While nerve was in the hands that wielded them;
Hands better destined a fair family stem
On these free shores to set.

Kept crossed by gentlest bands!
Emblems no more of battle, but of peace;
And proofs how loves can grow and wars can cease,
Their once stern symbol stands.

It smiled first on the array
Of marshalled books and friendliest companies;
And here, a history among histories,
It still shall smile for aye.

See that thou memory keep
Of him, the firm commander; and that other,
The stainless judge; and him, our peerless brother,—
All fallen now asleep.

Yet more: a lesson teach,
To cheer the patriot-soldier in his course,
That Right shall triumph o’er insolent Force:
That be your silent speech.

Oh, be prophetic too!
And may those nations twain, as sign and seal
Of endless amity, hang up their steel,
As we these weapons do!

The archives of the Past,
So smeared with blots of hate and bloody wrong,
Pining for peace, and sick to wait so long,
Hail this meek cross at last.

The Mifflins’ Marriage

Yesterday, when we looked in on the Brattle House in Cambridge in August 1775, Continental Army quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin had taken it as his home and office during the siege of Boston.

Three women were already living there: the widow Katherine Wendell, daughter of the house’s Loyalist legal owner; her thirteen-year-old daughter, Martha-Fitch Wendell; and their eighteen-year-old guest, Abigail Collins of Rhode Island.

After a visit to the house in August, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband in Philadelphia with a hint for Mifflin’s wife Sarah:

tell her I do not know whether her Husband is safe here. . . . You hear nothing from the Ladies, but about Major Mifflins easy address, politeness, complasance &c. &c.

Sarah Mifflin set out for Cambridge in the next month.

The Mifflins lived together in the Brattle house over the winter. They hosted Dr. John and Mary Morgan, another Philadelphia couple. They held dinner parties. In fact, it looks like the Mifflins entertained visiting officials in genteel style while dinner at Gen. George Washington’s headquarters down the street was more of a “pot-luck” military affair.

So did that togetherness fend off any rifts in the Mifflins’ marriage? Not for long. By the end of the war, Thomas Mifflin was known for his sexual affairs. After Mifflin was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1790, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote:

This man was known to be of a very immoral character. He had lived in a state of adultery with many women during the life of his wife, and had children by some of them, whom he educated in his own family. It is said his wife died last summer of a broken heart in consequence of this conduct towards her.

Rush had other reasons to dislike the man, but everyone seems to agree that Mifflin led a “dissipated” later life while also serving as his state’s highest official.

However, the Brattle House was a happier rendezvous for other couples. Abigail Collins met her future husband, Dr. John Warren, when he was working down the street at the army hospital. Martha-Fitch Wendell later married a tutor from Harvard College nearby. And her mother, by keeping on the good side of both military and local officials, kept the estate from being confiscated as the property of a Loyalist.

I’ll have stories of other women in other mansions along Brattle Street in my “Women of Tory Row” walking tour on Saturday afternoon, part of this year’s Cambridge Discovery Day.

“Women of Tory Row” Tour, 20 Sept.

Saturday, 20 September, is this year’s Cambridge Discovery Day. The city’s historical commission has organized a series of walking tours, exhibits, and lectures, most of them free.

I’m leading a tour of Brattle Street called “The Women of Tory Row.” We’ll start at 3:00 at the Tory Row historical marker on the corner of Brattle and Mason Streets. That means we won’t see the Brattle House, now part of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, so I’ll talk about the ladies in that house now.

William Brattle was a militia general who triggered the “Powder Alarm” of 1-2 September 1774. As soon as he realized his neighbors knew he’d told Gen. Thomas Gage about gunpowder in the county powderhouse, and that those neighbors saw his action as a betrayal, Brattle fled into Boston.

Brattle’s widowed daughter, Katherine Wendell, remained in Cambridge, and remained determined to keep the family property from being damaged or confiscated. Her method, according to descendants, was to obtain “the favor of men in power civil and military.”

During the siege of Boston, when Cambridge housed thousands of Continental soldiers, Mrs. Wendell hosted two teen-aged girls in that house:

• Her daughter, Martha-Fitch Wendell (1762-1835).
• Abigail Collins (1757-1832), daughter of a Rhode Island Patriot and an Avery from Boston.

Collins’s son later described them as “two young ladies whose personal qualities rendered them the centre of attraction among the officers of the army.” Not least because there probably weren’t any other upper-class young women around.

By August, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania had accepted the post of quartermaster-general of the army and chose the Brattle house to be his home and office. I suspect Mrs. Wendell moved herself and the girls into back rooms, accommodating the quartermaster to curry his favor and make sure people understood that she still claimed the house.

That month, Abigail Adams sent her husband in Philadelphia a word to pass on to Mifflin’s wife Sarah (shown with him above): “tell her I do not know whether her Husband is safe here. Belona and Cupid have a contest about[.] You hear nothing from the Ladies, but about Major Mifflins easy address, politeness, complasance &c. &c.”

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

Dr. Joseph Warren’s Psalm Book?

Tonight I’ll be discussing the Battle of Bunker Hill with author Nathaniel Philbrick at Cambridge Forum, and the name of Dr. Joseph Warren is sure to come up. Relics of Dr. Warren have been one of the recurring themes of Boston 1775, and here’s yet another example.

In the 1852 edition of his book The Hundred Boston Orators (and perhaps in other editions), James S. Loring wrote:

A British soldier, on his return to London, exhibited a Psalm-book to Rev. Dr. Samuel Wilton, of that city, stating that he took the volume from the pocket of Gen. Warren, after the battle of Bunker Hill.

The clergyman, knowing that it would be a treasure to the Warren family, purchased the book of the soldier, and transmitted it to the Rev. Dr. William Gordon, of Roxbury, the historian, with a request that it might be given to the nearest relative of the general. It was, therefore, given to his youngest brother, Dr. John Warren, of Boston, March 15, 1778.

The title of the volume, which the editor has examined, is as follows: “The Boke of Psalmes, wherein are contained praires, meditations and thanksgivings to God, for his benefits toward his Church, translated faithfully according to the Hebrew. With brief and apt annotations in the margin. Printed at Geneva, by Rowland Hall. 1559.” It is less than the 32mo. size. On the inside cover of this book is inscribed,—“Taken at ye Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, out of Dr. Warren’s pocket.” On the inside cover, at the end of the book, is written, “Thomas Knight,”—probably the regular who secured the book.

Warren’s signature was on a blank leaf, but it has been abstracted.

In other words, the page with the signature had been sliced out.

Benjamin Silliman described seeing this book in 1835. The Warren family wrote about it in a biography of Dr. John C. Warren and eventually donated the book to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Dr. Sam Forman’s recent biography of Joseph Warren describes the book and shows a photo of its title page and the notes about its provenance opposite.

The Rev. Samuel Wilton (his D.D. was an honorary one from Princeton) was indeed a friend and correspondent of the Rev. William Gordon of Roxbury. Wilton’s father was a church deacon in the East London parish of Wapping, and he became a dissenting minister in the South London parish of Tooting. He was still in his early thirties when he died in the spring of 1778, soon after sending that psalm book across the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, we have only the Warren family’s memory about the page signed with Joseph Warren’s name. That would be the crucial link in the chain of evidence connecting the book back to the doctor. Without it, we have to consider the possibility that a British army veteran might have taken advantage of a minister with some ties to New England and sold him an old psalm book and a story.

Who Slept on Dr. Warren’s Mattresses?

I’m opening this week and month with two Boston 1775 postings because of the crowd of holiday events. And because of our ongoing low-level obsession with the physical remains and relics of Dr. Joseph Warren (skull, bullet, teeth, &c.). We turn now to the doctor’s mattresses.

Sam Forman, author of Dr. Joseph Warren, has posted the text of a letter from the doctor’s fiancée Mercy Scollay on 17 Aug 1775, soon after she got out of besieged Boston:

I got to Mr Savages before 5 oclock found all friends well and heartily rejoiced to see me – was too much fatigued to go further till Wednesday when I came to Watertown where I’m now pening this –

My first inquiry was for Mr [John] Hancock whom I was lucky eno’ to find – I told him that I had learnt since I came down what was doing with the few effects my poor friend [i.e. Dr. Warren] was possess of out of Boston – that John W——n had sold every feather bed to General Washinton and for ought I know every thing else – that his picture so valuable to those who esteemed the original was somewhere near Roxbury the looking glasses that was brought out of town with it were (through carelessness) broke to pieces and I supposed all that was in their hands would share the same fate –

Mr H——k appeared much affected by my relation. Said his brother had no right to doo those things without proper authority and would certainly be called to account for those proceedings – he advised me not to go to Cambridge as the confusion of the town would distract me – that he was going himself there – would see the young gentleman and without letting him know he had seen me, or heard any thing would enquire what he proposed doing, and on his return would talk further on the subject

Feather-stuffed mattresses were actually valuable property in the eighteenth century. But Scollay’s response seem to be driven mostly by the sadness of losing aspects of her fiancé and the fear of being pushed out of the family. She hadn’t actually married Joseph Warren, after all.

Sam headlined this blog entry, “How Could He Sell the Feather Beds to George Washington?” The answer lies in the records of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which on 22 July had said:

Resolved, That the Committee of Safety be desired to complete the furnishing General Washington’s House, and in particular to provide him four or five more Beds.

George Washington had moved into John Vassall’s empty house in Cambridge a week earlier. Also in that house was adjutant general Horatio Gates, secretary Joseph Reed, aides Thomas Mifflin and (as of 27 July) John Trumbull, perhaps other assistants, and household and personal servants. But clearly not enough beds.

Meanwhile, young Dr. John Warren was working a short distance away at the Continental Army hospital. And he had much of his late brother’s household property, including the bulky feather mattresses and frames. Was he really in a position to keep those under wraps?

Looking at this record and the headquarters accounts, I don’t think the young doctor sold the mattresses to Gen. Washington, as Scollay wrote. Rather, he sold them to the provincial government for the general’s use.

At the end of the siege, the headquarters steward, Timothy Austin, asked the Massachusetts legislature if he should pack up the household furniture to be moved to New York. The legislature replied no, those things were only on loan. Of all the furniture in Washington’s headquarters, only a set of chairs from the family of Suffolk County sheriff William Greenleaf can be identified today with a reasonably solid provenance. But it is interesting to know that Washington’s household slept on the late Dr. Warren’s beds.

Sam Forman will be speaking at the Old State House in Boston on Tuesday, 3 July, at 1:00 P.M. His gallery talk is titled “Dr. Joseph Warren and the Boston Massacre: Defining American Liberty on the Eve of Revolution,” and I’m sure he’ll sign books there. This event is free with museum admission.

Examined by the Medical Committee

In 1775, James Thacher of Barnstable was a twenty-one-year-old medical trainee eager to work for the provincial army (just as it was officially becoming the Continental Army). Years later, he adapted his journal into a memoir and left this recollection of how he applied for the position of regimental surgeon’s mate:

I proceeded, July the 3d, with alacrity to the seat of [the Massachusetts Provincial] Congress [in Watertown]. I was not disappointed in my interview with Mr. [James] Warren; my letter procured for me a favorable and polite reception. He honored me with his friendship and kind assistance, and introduced me to his lady, whose father’s family and my own have for many years been on terms of friendly intercourse.

The office which I solicit is one in the medical department, in the provincial hospital at Cambridge. A medical board, consisting of Drs. [Samuel] Holton [of Danvers, 1738-1816] and [John] Taylor [of Lunenberg and Fitchburg, born about 1734], are appointed to examine the candidates; and they added my name to the list for examination, on the 10th instant [i.e., of this month]. This state of suspense continuing several days, excites in my mind much anxiety and solicitude, apprehending that my stock of medical knowledge, when scanned by a learned committee, may be deemed inadequate, and all my hopes be blasted. . . .

On the day appointed, the medical candidates, sixteen in number, were summoned before the board for examination. This business occupied about four hours; the subjects were anatomy, physiology, surgery and medicine. It was not long after, that I was happily relieved from suspense, by receiving the sanction and acceptance of the board, with some acceptable instructions relative to the faithful discharge of duty, and the humane treatment of those soldiers who may have the misfortune to require my assistance.

Six of our number were privately rejected as being found unqualified. The examination was in a considerable degree close and severe, which occasioned not a little agitation in our ranks. But it was on another occasion, as I am told, that a candidate under examination was agitated into a state of perspiration, and being required to describe the mode of treatment in rheumatism, among other remedies he would promote a sweat, and being asked how he would effect this with his patient, after some hesitation he replied, “I would have him examined by a medical committee.”

On 15 July Thacher started work under Dr. John Warren, brother of the late Dr. Joseph Warren, at the main army hospital. That building is shown above in photo by Roger Wollstadt, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license. It was still legally owned by Penelope Vassall, a Loyalist widow. (The cars are from a more recent century.) For more on that house, see Historic Buildings of Massachusetts.

Dr. Warren As You’ve Never Seen Him Before

Way, way back, Boston 1775 stumbled into the seemingly bottomless topic of Dr. Joseph Warren’s body. After the doctor was killed at Bunker Hill, the British forces put his body in a shared grave, and then after the siege of Boston—on 4 Apr 1776, in fact—the Americans dug him up again. At other times people claimed, apparently without foundation, that his corpse had been mutilated and that they were bringing the fatal bullet back to Boston.

Derek W. Beck was seeking information about Warren for his manuscript 1775. Another reader alerted me to a report of the Warren family taking photographs of their collateral ancestor’s skull, and eventually Derek found reproductions of those photos. Go to Derek’s blog today for a third image and more analysis.

Physicians, including Warren’s brother John, examined this skull in some detail in 1776 to be sure the body was actually his; eventually Paul Revere identified his dental work. William H. Sumner later described seeing the remains:

the skull was perforated by a musket ball in the upper part of the head, in such a place, as I am informed by professional gentlemen, would probably have produced sudden, though it might not instant death.

“The upper part of the head” suggests the larger hole in the back, rather than the smaller one below the left eye. Sumner, not being a “professional gentleman,” or doctor, might have mistaken that larger hole for an entry wound rather than an exit wound, and thus become the source of mid-1800s statements that the British had shot Warren from behind.

The Difficulties of Medical Training in 1796

I’ve already quoted Dr. Edward Warren (1804-1878) on what his father and professor, Dr. John Warren, thought about digging up bodies to for anatomy study: socially awkward but medically necessary.

Here’s a recollection from Edward’s older brother, Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856, shown here courtesy of Countway Medical Library), about studying medicine at Harvard under his father at the end of the eighteenth century:

No occurrences in the course of my life have given me more trouble and anxiety than the procuring of subjects for dissection. My father began to dissect early in the Revolutionary War. He obtained the office of army surgeon when the Revolution broke out, and was able to procure a multitude of subjects from having access to the bodies of soldiers who had died without relations. In consequence of these opportunities he began to lecture on anatomy in 1781.

After the peace there was great difficulty in getting subjects. Bodies of executed criminals were occasionally procured, and sometimes a pauper subject was obtained, averaging not more than two a year. While in college I began the business of getting subjects in 1796.

Having understood that a man without relations was to be buried in the North Burying-Ground, I formed a party, of which Dr. William Ingalls was one. He was a physician of Boston at that time. We reached the spot at ten o’clock at night. The night was rather light. We soon found the grave; but, after proceeding a while, were led to suspect a mistake, and went to another place. Here we found our selves wrong, and returned to the first; and, having set watches, we proceeded rapidly, uncovering the coffin by breaking it open.

We took out the body of a stout young man, put it in a bag, and carried it to the burying-ground wall. As we were going to lift it over and put it in the chaise, we saw a man walking along the edge of the wall outside, smoking. A part of us disappeared.

One of the company met him, stopped him from coming on, and entered into conversation with him. This individual of our party affected to be intoxicated, while he contrived to get into a quarrel with the stranger. After he had succeeded in doing this, another of the party, approaching, pretended to side with the stranger, and ordered the other to go about his business. Taking the stranger by the arm, he led him off in a different direction to some distance; then left him, and returned to the burying-ground.

The body was then quickly taken up, and packed in the chaise between two of the parties, who drove off to Cambridge with their booty. Two of us staid to fill the grave: but my companion, being alarmed, soon left the burying-ground; and I, knowing the importance of covering up the grave and effacing the vestiges of our labor, remained, with no very agreeable sensations, to finish the work.

I love the image of Warren, age eighteen, hurrying to refill this anonymous man’s grave while fuming at his so-called friends who’d left him to do all that work himself. But he’d no doubt heard his father speak of the necessity of filling in the hole so no one can tell you’ve taken the body.

However, I got off without further interruption; drove, with the tools, to Cambridge; and arrived there just before daylight.

When my father came up in the morning to lecture, and found that I had been engaged in this scrape, he was very much alarmed, but when the body was uncovered, and he saw what a fine, healthy subject it was, he seemed to be as much pleased as I ever saw him. This body lasted the course through.

Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program is the legal and worthy replacement for the Warrens’ early efforts.

TOMORROW: CSI: Colonial Boston takes an excursion to New Jersey.

The Warren Family and Other People’s Bodies

Dr. John Warren (shown here, courtesy of the Countway Medical Library) was the younger brother of the much-disinterred Dr. Joseph Warren. He became a Continental Army surgeon after his brother’s death.

Dr. John Warren didn’t hold with sentimental ideas about preserving the human body. At Harvard he was part of the club of Spunkers, introduced here, who sought corpses for research and practice. And apparently he had a strong opinion about the incident, described yesterday, when soldiers from Woodbridge’s regiment noticed that one of their recently deceased comrades had been dug up.

This is from Dr. Edward Warren’s biography of his father John (which probably dated the event based on Dr. James Thacher’s published journal):

In November, 1775, the body of a soldier was taken from a grave, as was supposed for the purposes of dissection. Much general indignation was excited, and the practice was forbidden for the future, with stern reprobation by the Commander-in-chief. It was done with so little decency and caution, that the empty coffin was left exposed.

It need scarcely be said that it could not have been the work of any of our friends of the Sp——r Club. It must have been the act of a reckless agent or a novice. In cases of this kind, where the necessities of society are in conflict with the law, and with public opinion, the crime consists, like theft among the Spartan boys, not in the deed, but in permitting its discovery.

In other words, Dr. John Warren felt that the real problem was how the grave-robbers had let people see they’d taken the body!

Dr. John Warren himself wrote of the challenges of anatomical training before the war:

In some of the more populous towns students were sometimes indulged with the privilege of examining the bodies of those who had died from any extraordinary diseases, and in a few instances associations were formed for pursuing the business of dissection, where opportunities offered from casualties, or from public executions, for doing it in decency and safety.

But the Revolution was the era to which the first medical school east of Philadelphia owes its birth. The military hospitals of the United States furnished a large field for observation and experiment in the various branches of the healing art, as well as an opportunity for anatomical investigations.

Like many other wars, the Revolutionary War was a boon to medical training. It inured people to death, provided a larger than usual number of anonymous corpses to work on, and gave regimental surgeons and their assistants lots of practice.

Dr. John Warren went on to be a leader in educating and training American doctors. In 1783, he offered a series of anatomical lectures at the house that had belonged to radical leader William Molineux; the tickets for those lectures were engraved by Paul Revere. Later this Warren helped to found the Harvard Medical School.

TOMORROW: Peacetime brings a shortage of corpses. What could Dr. Warren’s son find to practice on?

“I am going upon the hill to-morrow”

Boston 1775’s last version (this week) of Dr. Joseph Warren going to his death in the Battle of Bunker Hill comes from deep in the realm of mythmaking. It was reportedly “taken down from the lips of [Elizabeth Palmer] by a friend, a few years before her death, which occurred in 1838.” Palmer’s descendants being of a literary and publishing bent (they married with Tylers, Peabodys, and Putnams), her account was printed first in a profile of her father-in-law in The New Englander in 1845, and then fully in Grandmother Tyler’s Book in 1925.

When it begins, Palmer and her family have moved into a house in Newton.

I used to go to Watertown every day, and on the 15th of June following, I met Gen. Warren for the last time. He had been our family physician, and I am sure that I liked him better than any body except my husband. He was a handsome man and wore a tie wig. He had a fine color and bright blue eyes.

He dined with us, and while at dinner said to me, “Come my little girl, drink a glass of wine with me for the last time, for I am going upon the hill to-morrow, and I shall never come off.”

The next day I rose very early, and could hear the cannon from Bunker’s Hill and see the smoke of burning Charlestown. I hastened to Watertown to hear the news. Gen. Warren’s servant [i.e., slave] met me in front of our house and seizing my horse’s head, exclaimed, “Oh missee, missee! the devils hab killed my master.” The tears ran down his cheeks. I saw Dr. John Warren, the brother of the general. He was much affected, and gave me all the papers he could collect, which belonged to his brother.

So much drama! The handsome hero predicting his own death (and flirting with our memoirist while he was at it). That loyal slave, so useful for showing a person overcome with emotions while maintaining white stoicism. The mournful brother turning over papers to a passing housewife. But so much wrong.

Warren couldn’t know at dinnertime on 15 June that there would be a battle on a hill two days later. Had Palmer indeed left from Newton early in the morning on 17 June, she would have reached Watertown by midday; the battle didn’t start until the middle of the afternoon. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress records show that the Patriots didn’t know for sure that Warren was dead for at least two days. And Warren’s eyes, according to John Singleton Copley’s portrait, weren’t blue.

(The image above comes from Teach US History. It was published in the Columbian Magazine in 1846, soon after Elizabeth Palmer’s story appeared in The New Englander. It is, however, titled “General Warren taking leave of his wife and child on the eve of the Battle of Bunker Hill,” so this woman is not supposed to be Palmer. That said, Warren’s wife had been dead for about two years, and the legend that accompanied the engraving is even “bunker” than Palmer’s.)

The Difficulties of Medical Training in 1773

Popular demand indicates that it’s time for another series of CSI: Colonial Boston postings! Which is to say, Revolutionary people mucking about with dead bodies. (The last series started here.)

This image appeared on a broadside printed in 1773 with the title: “An Address to the Inhabitants of Boston (Particularly to the thoughtless Youth) Occasioned by the Execution of Levi Ames, Who so early in Life, as not 22 Years of Age, must quit the Stage of action in this awful Manner.” This was only one of the publications that Ames’s execution inspired. This online exhibit from the Library Company of Philadelphia says:

Levi Ames was perhaps the most written-about criminal in colonial America. His execution called forth two editions of [his] “Last Words,” four sermons in a total of seven editions, and no fewer than ten broadside poems.

So will this posting be about the horrible murders Ames committed, and how the authorities used forensic medicine to track him down? No, Ames was simply a burglar. He was executed for a series of property crimes.

Under the law of the time, the disposal of Ames’s body was up to the governor: Thomas Hutchinson could order the corpse to be buried, hung in chains, or given to a doctor for dissection. According to a letter from William Eustis to John Warren, written shortly after the execution:

You must know that [Dr. John] Jeffries (as we heard) had applied to the Governor for a warrant to have this body. The Governor told him if he had come a quarter of an hour sooner, he would have given it, but he had just given one to Ames’ friends, alias Stillman’s gang.

Stillman was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Stillman, minister at one of Boston’s two Baptist churches. Among the clergymen who preached about the execution, Stillman was the one Ames actually trusted. The condemned man asked the minister to arrange for his body to be buried so no aspiring surgeons could dissect it.

Which is exactly what Eustis and Warren wanted to do. They were recent Harvard graduates who trained in medicine under Warren’s older brother, Dr. Joseph Warren. At college they had been members of a group called the Anatomical Society or Spunkers Club. The other recent graduates Eustis mentioned in this letter to Warren were Jonathan Norwood; David Townsend; Samuel Adams, only son of the politician; and “One Allen,” perhaps Ebenezer Allen. All but one became physicians; Allen became a minister. Apparently these young men were hoping for a surgical demonstration or lecture by Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

Meanwhile, Jeffries had the same hopes for using Ames’s body, along with his medical mentor, Dr. James Lloyd, and Lloyd’s current trainee, John Clarke. All those men were friends of the royal government. The Spunkers knew in advance about Jeffries’s group, but not about Stillman’s.

Eustis described what happened to the body:

as soon as the body of Levi Ames was pronounced dead by Dr. Jeffries, it was delivered by the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] to a person who carried it in a cart to the water side, where it was received into a boat filled with about twelve of Stillman’s crew, who rowed it over to Dorchester Point. . . .

We had heard it surmised that he was to be taken from the gallows in a boat, and when we saw him carried to the water, we concluded it was a deep laid scheme in Jeffries. . . .

However, when we saw the Stillmanites, we were satisfied Jeffries had no hand in it. When we saw the boat land at Dorchester Point, we had a consultation, and Norwood, David, One Allen and myself, took chaise and rode round to the Point, Spunker’s like, but the many obstacles we had to encounter made it eleven o’clock before we reached the Point, where we searched and searched, and rid, hunted, and waded; but alas, in vain! There was no corpse to be found.

Discontented, we sat us down on the beach and groaned, etc., etc. Then rode to [Thomas] Brackett’s [King’s Arms tavern], on the Neck, and endeavored to ’nock ’em up, to give us a dish of coffee; but failing, we backed about to the Punch Bowl, where, after long labors, we raised the house and got our desires gratified, and got home about four o’clock in the morning. Hadn’t much sleep, of course, so we are very lame and cross today. . . .

We have a ——— from another place, so Church shan’t be disappointed.

In a postscript Eustis added: “By the way, we have since heard that Stillman’s gang rowed him back from the Point up to the town, and after laying him out in mode and figure, buried him—God knows where! Clark & Co. went to the Point to look for him, but were disappointed as well as we.”

There’s more about Levi Ames at Bill West’s West in New England.

ADDENDUM: A message from Charlie Bahne convinces me that the medical trainees visited the Punch Bowl tavern in what is now Brookline Village.

Educating Dr. Warren’s Orphaned Children

When Dr. Joseph Warren died at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, his estate was burdened with debts. Those finances were also tangled up in the estate of the spectacular bankrupt Nathaniel Wheelwright, which the doctor had agreed to administer.

As I described yesterday, Warren left behind four children and a fiancée named Mercy Scollay. (Ironically, Mercy’s father, selectman John Scollay, had been forced into bankruptcy after Wheelwright’s collapse, and had had to dig himself out of that financial hole.)

Mercy Scollay took on the task of raising the Warren children and arranging for their education. The eldest boy was of particular concern, according to the values of the time: as the son of a gentleman and a martyr, Joseph simply had to go to Harvard—but who would pay the fees for schooling (the Boston schools were closed during the siege), tutoring, and the college itself? Scollay asked lots of people for support. The local Freemasons seem to have been the first to respond to her.

In January 1777, Samuel Adams proposed at the Continental Congress that “the eldest son...might be adopted by the continent, and educated at the public expense.” On 18 May, he sent Scollay this letter, shared online by the Massachusetts Historical Society:

With respect [the M.H.S. transcription has “request”] to the youngest Son and Daughter, I mentiond my strong Desire that they might be continued under your care; and that means might be continued to have the eldest son sent to Dummers School [now the Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts]. . . .

While I was in Baltimore, an opportunity presented of making a Proposal, which, if agreed to, would be honorary to my friend and beneficial to his Son. General [Hugh] Mercer having been slain in Battle [at Princeton], or rather Barbarously murdered [not really], a Motion was made in Congress for a Monument to be erected to his Memory, and that his youngest Son should be educated at the Expense of the Continent.

I did not think my self partial in judging that the services and Merit of General Warren considered as a Patriot or as a Soldier were not inferior to those of General Mercer, and therefore added to the Motion that the same Honor should paid to his memory and that one of this Sons should be educated—I proposed the eldest. It was agreed that my Motion should be first entered on the Journal, and a Committee was appointed to consider of both.

Congress soon after adjorned to this Place [back to Philadelphia]. The gentlemen of the Committee are not all of them arrived. I am persuaded it will be agreed to in the Committee, but as the Determination in the House may be uncertain, I think it best that it should not be made known abroad [i.e., publicly], till we see the event.

That sort of regional horse-trading in legislation is not unfamiliar today.

What about the three other children: Elizabeth, Mary, and Richard? Gen. Benedict Arnold wrote to Scollay offering $500 in July 1778 and again in late 1779 in case the Congress didn’t offer additional funds. Mercy Warren of Plymouth (her husband no close relation to the Warrens) was apparently interested in bringing up Elizabeth, but the girl chose not to leave her school in Boston.

A 20 Dec 1779 letter from Samuel Adams relays this news from Dr. John Warren, the children’s uncle:

the eldest son was, as early as it could be done, put under the care and tuition of the Rev. Mr. [Phillips] Payson, of Chelsea; a gentleman whose qualifications for the instructing of youth, I need not mention to you. The lad still remains with him.

The eldest daughter...is with the doctor; and he assures me, that no gentleman’s daughter in this town has more of the advantage of schools than she has at his expense. She learns music, dancing, writing and arithmetic, and the best needle-work that is taught here. The doctor, I dare say, takes good care of her morals.

The two younger children, a boy of about seven years, and a girl somewhat older, are in the family of John Scollay, Esq., under the particular care of his daughter

In 1780, Congress took up the issue of the other three children, noting that “it appears no adequate provision can be made out of his [the late father’s] private fortune.” The national government decided that Massachusetts should step up with its own money, but agreed to provide half of a major-general’s pay until the youngest child came of age. The back pay came to $7,000, historian Jared Sparks later calculated. Of course, inflation was eating away the value of that money.

What return did the nation get on its payments for the boys’ education? Not much, alas. The young Joseph Warren graduated from Harvard in the class of 1786, served as a militia officer at the Castle, and died at age 22. His little brother Richard went into business and died at 21. Elizabeth married Gen. Arnold Welles and died without having children. Mary married twice, and is the only child of Dr. Joseph Warren to have left heirs.

The major local legacy of Dr. Joseph Warren came through his younger brother, also a physician. Dr. John Warren helped to found Harvard Medical School. His son Dr. John Collins Warren helped to establish the New England Journal of Medicine and the Massachusetts General Hospital, and performed the first surgery under ether anesthesia.