When Mr. Molineux Visited Charles Bourgate in Jail

When we left Charles Bourgate, 250 years ago, the young French servant was locked up in the Boston jail for “profane Swearing.”

Charles had told shopkeeper Elizabeth Waldron that he and his master had shot guns out of the Customs House at the crowd on the night of 5 March, thus participating in the Boston Massacre.

But when magistrate Edmund Quincy summoned Charles to tell his story under oath, the French boy denied everything. And vehemently enough, it appears, that Justice Quincy sent him to the jail.

William Molineux, the merchant and Whig organizer, then got involved. As the 18 Mar 1771 Boston Gazette recounted the situation:

Mr. Molineux hearing of this, and like a good citizen, being anxious, if there was any truth in what the boy had related, that it might be brought to light, desired it as a favour, of Mrs. Waldron, that he might see them together; with which she readily comply’d, and they both went up to the prison-house, where they had conversation with the boy…

This conversation became a legal issue later, so Molineux asked multiple people to testify about that encounter before Justices Richard Dana and Samuel Pemberton on 15 Mar 1771. Those sworn witnesses included:

• Joseph Otis, “keeper of the Goal”
• Bathsheba Hyland, who “was present ironing of clothes in the parlour of Mr. Otis”
• Lindsey George Wallis, deputy sheriff, dropping in on business

In addition, Marcy Otis, the jailer’s wife, stated for the newspaper that she was there and offered to leave her front room along with Hyland to do their ironing elsewhere, but “Mr. Molineux desired that I would not go out.”

All those witnesses declared that Molineux had told young Charles “to declare nothing but the truth,” that “there was no offer of bribery or anything like it.” Nonetheless, it was probably easy for the imprisoned boy to discern what Molineux wanted to hear.

During that conversation, with the ironing board standing nearby, Charles Bourgate reversed himself again. Everything he had told Mrs. Waldron was true, he now said; “he had deny’d it before the justice, because his master, [Edward] Manwaring, had whip’d him severely for reporting it, and had threatened to kill him if he repeated it.”

Molineux asked Justice Quincy to come to the jail for another hearing on the “Saturday evening next after the Massacre,” or 10 March. Among the other people present was Thomas Chase, the South End distiller and member of the original Loyall Nine. Everyone told the French boy once again to be truthful. Chase stated, “the Boy then in the most full and explicit manner, declared before said Justice, that both he and his master did fire out of the Custom-House window.”

The Monday issue of Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette, dated 13 March and marked with the black bands of mourning, broke the news to readers in a supplement:

A Servant Boy of one Manwaring the Tide-waiter from Quebec is now in Goal, having deposed that himself, by the Order and Encouragement of his Superiors had discharged a Musket several Times from one of the Windows of the House in King-Street, hired by the Commissioners and Custom House Officers to do their Business in; more than one other Person swore upon Oath, that they apprehended several Discharges came from that Quarter.—

It is not improbable that we may soon be able to account for the Assassination of Mr. [James] Otis some Time past; the Message by [George] Wilmot, who came from the same House to the infamous [Ebenezer] Richardson before his firing the Gun which kill’d young [Christopher] Snider, and to open up such a Scene of Villainy acted by a dirty Banditti, as must astonish the Public.

The Boston Whigs were about to break the murderous Customs House conspiracy wide open!

Gingerbread, Cheese, and Spilling the Beans?

Even as some Bostonians crowded Faneuil Hall on 6 Mar 1770 to report threatening encounters with British soldiers, the young French servant Charles Bourgate was telling his story for the first time.

That morning, according to a sympathetic article in the 8 Apr 1771 Boston Evening-Post, Charles went into Joseph Waldron’s shop on Back Street “to buy bread, &c., as usual.”

Waldron was legally a tailor. In August 1767 the selectmen had licensed him to sell distilled spirits from his shop, but he didn’t handle that business. Instead, Waldron had married Elizabeth Bell at the Old South Meeting-House in 1766, and she maintained the shop selling “ginger bread and drams,” and perhaps other comestibles.

Everyone must have been talking about the fatal clash the night before. Charles Bourgate spoke to Elizabeth Waldron—“Showing much anxiety,” the Evening-Post stated. Soon the French boy was “confessing that he had fired two guns, and his master [Edward] Manwaring one, from the first chamber of the custom-house.”

Elizabeth Waldron may have rewarded Charles for his confession. Months later, a fellow prisoner in the Boston jail, James Penny, testified to hearing the boy say that at some time Waldron gave him “gingerbread and cheese, and desired him to swear against his master.” It seems more likely that Waldron felt sympathy after hearing Charles’s story than that she induced him to level a false accusation.

According to the 18 Mar 1771 Boston Gazette, “Mrs. Waldron…immediately went to Justice Quincy, and declared what she had heard, upon oath.” Edmund Quincy (1703-1788, shown above) was a staunch supporter of the Whigs. Other people were also talking about seeing flashes of gunshots from the Customs house windows.

Word of the French boy’s claim probably got back to Manwaring. Charles later declared that that night “my master licked me…for telling Mrs. Waldron about his firing out of the Custom house.”

Justice Quincy summoned the servant boy for examination. I can’t tell when that happened, but the clues point to Wednesday, 7 March, or the couple of days that followed. Standing before the magistrate, supposedly fearing another licking from his master, Charles denied all that he’d told Mrs. Waldron.

The boy must have denied his previous story quite vehemently because Quincy sent him to jail for “profane Swearing.” Or perhaps that was just the Whig magistrate’s legal excuse to get Charles Bourgate away from his master.

The Great 1770 Quiz Answers, Part 4

Here are answers to the final questions from the Great 1770 Quiz.

X. Match the following men to their experience of tarring and feathering in 1770.

1) John Adams
2) Robert Auchmuty
3) Henry Barnes
4) Theophilus Lillie
5) Patrick McMaster
6) William Molineux
7) Owen Richards
8) Jesse Savil

A) tarred and feathered by a mob in Gloucester
B) tarred and feathered by a mob led by a Connecticut captain
C) found his horse tarred and feathered
D) threatened in writing with tar and feathers while visiting Salem
E) found the outside of his shop tarred
F) carted around by a mob with tar and feathers but not tarred and feathered
G) filed suit against half a dozen people for tarring and feathering someone
H) defended a man accused of tarring and feathering someone

I discussed George Gailer’s lawsuit against the people who attacked him with tar and feathers in October 1769 back here. Robert Auchmuty was his lawyer (thus G) while John Adams defended David Bradlee (thus H).

Ben Irvin’s 2003 New England Quarterly article “Tar, Feathers, and the Enemies of American Liberties, 1768-1776” lists all the other incidents in its appendix. Other historians mention them as well. Owen Richards and Jesse Savil were low-level Customs officers. Henry Barnes, Theophilus Lillie, and Patrick McMaster were businessmen who defied the non-importation movement.

The threat to tar and feather William Molineux was an anomaly. Instead of enforcing the Customs laws or defying non-importation, he defied Customs laws and enforced non-importation. But that threat is recorded on the front page of the 20 Aug 1770 Boston Gazette, as shown here, right under a mention of tar and feathers being readied for importers in Woodbridge, New Jersey. By the sestercentennial of that news item, I hope to understand it a little better.

The correct answers are thus Adams (H), Auchmuty (G), Barnes (C), Lillie (E), McMaster (F), Molineux (D), Richards (B), and Savil (A). Once again, both Kathy and John got all the answers right.

XI. One of the most famous men in the British Empire visited Massachusetts in August and September 1770 and never left. Who was he?

This question offers so few specifics that I don’t think it’s Googlable. It’s a test of knowledge of the British Empire in 1770 and Massachusetts trivia.

The man was the Rev. George Whitefield. The popular British evangelist made many preaching tours through America. According to his 1877 biography and the 1903 edition of John Rowe’s diary, Whitefield’s final New England tour saw him preaching at:

• Rhode Island: Newport (4-8 Aug), Providence (9-12 Aug).
• Massachusetts: Attleboro (13 Aug), Wrentham (14 Aug), Boston at various churches (15-18 Aug), Malden (19 Aug), Boston again (20-24 Aug), Medford (26 Aug), Charlestown (27 Aug), Cambridge (28 Aug), Boston again (29-30 Aug), Jamaica Plain in Roxbury (31 Aug), Milton (1 Sept), Roxbury again (2 Sept), Boston again (3 Sept), Salem (5 Sept), Marblehead (6 Sept), Salem again (7 Sept), Cape Ann (8 Sept), Ipswich (9 Sept), Newburyport (10-11 Sept), Rowley (12-13 Sept), [laid low by diarrhea, 14-16 Sept], Boston again (17-19 Sept), Newton (20 Sept), [ill again, 21-22 Sept].
• New Hampshire: Portsmouth (23-25 Sept).
• Maine: Kittery (26 Sept), York (27 Sept).
• New Hampshire: Portsmouth again (28 Sept), Exeter (29 Sept).

Whitefield returned to Newburyport, but he died at 6:00 A.M. on 30 September. Per his wish, the minister was buried in the crypt of the Newburyport meetinghouse, shown above.

Both John and Kathy answered this question correctly.

XII. Young servant Charles Bourgate accused his master Edward Manwaring, a Customs official, of shooting at the crowd during the Boston Massacre. At Manwaring’s trial in December, however, a jailhouse informant testified to hearing Bourgate say that Elizabeth Waldron had induced him to tell that lie. What did Waldron allegedly offer Bourgate for his testimony?

This question helpfully pointed to a specific moment of testimony, but of course the challenge is finding a record of that moment. A report on Edward Manwaring’s trial was printed alongside the transcript of the Rex v. Wemms et al. trial of the soldiers for the Boston Massacre—but not in every copy.

The copy of the trial record that Harbottle Dorr must have bought early and bound with his newspapers ends with an index of witnesses. But later copies like this one on archive.org have an appendix reporting on Manwaring’s acquittal.

I’ll discuss Charles Bourgate’s accusations next month. For now, I’ll just quote what a debtor named James Penny testified that the French boy had told him:

That what he testified to the Grand Jury and before the Justices…was in every particular false, and that he did swear in that manner by the persuasion of William Molineux, who told him he would take him from his master and provide for him, and that Mr. Molineux frightened him by telling him if he refused to swear against his master and Mr. Munro the mob in Boston would kill him: and farther that Mrs. Waldron, the wife of Mr. Waldron a taylor in Back-street, who sells ginger bread and drams, gave him the said Charles gingerbread and cheese, and desired him to swear against his master.

The answer to this question is thus “gingerbread and cheese.”

And it’s further evidence that William Molineux was everywhere in 1770 Boston.

Once again, Kathy and John both knew the putative bribe.

XIII. Three brothers from Massachusetts, two of them prominent in one of 1770’s most famous events, are said to have died at the same place, yet they were thousands of miles apart. Who were they, and how is this possible?

One of 1770’s most famous events was the Boston Massacre trial, and reports of that proceeding often note that Samuel Quincy (1735-1789) was one of the prosecutors while his younger brother Josiah Quincy, Jr. (1744-1775), was one of the defense attorneys.

Did they have a third brother? Yes, Edmund Quincy (1733-1768), who was a merchant rather than a lawyer.

And where did the three men die? They all died “at sea,” but in different corners of the north Atlantic. Edmund was on a voyage to the Caribbean for his health. Josiah was returning to Massachusetts after meeting with British Whigs in the crucial winter of 1774-75. And Samuel, having become a Loyalist and taken a Customs service job in Antigua, was sailing to Britain with his second wife, again in hopes of restoring his health, and died off the African coast.

The Quincy brothers’ deaths was the tricky bit of trivia that got me thinking about making another quiz. I’m pleased that fact wasn’t too obscure for people to find. Or at least not too obscure for both John and Kathy.

By the narrow margin of a single question, John provided the most correct answers. Congratulations to him, to Kathy for an impressive performance, and to everyone else who puzzled over this quiz.

(John, please comment on this posting with your mailing address, which I’ll keep private, and I’ll send you a copy of The Atlas of Boston History provided by the University Press of Chicago.)