The “juvenile sports” of Two Boston Boys in the Late 1750s

In 22 Dec 1788, the Rev. David McClure wrote from Windsor, Connecticut, to one of his childhood friends from Boston:

Dear Sir,—On the footing of that juvenile friendship and acquaintance with you with which I have been honored, and which was kept alive to our riper years, I now do myself the pleasure to address a line to you, to assure you of my respectful and affectionate remembrance of you, and of the satisfaction with which I sometimes call to mind those scenes of innocent amusement and play in which we were mutually engaged when we were boys.

I have often thought of our attempts to imitate the man who flew from the steeple of the North Church, by sliding down an oar from the small buildings in your father’s house-yard at Wheeler’s Point; and by letting fly little wooden men from the garret window on strings. Have you forgotten that diversion?

McClure was recalling how a traveling daredevil named John Childs had “flown” from Christ Church in the North End in September 1757, as discussed way back here. Childs actually slid face-first down a rope, which is why the boys at Wheeler’s Point tried “sliding down an oar” and “letting letting fly little wooden men from the garret window on strings” to replicate his feat.

The minister’s old playmate was Henry Knox (shown above), then in New York as Secretary of War. He replied on 25 Jan 1789:

Our juvenile sports, and the joyful sensations they excited, are fresh in my mind; and what to me renders the remembrance particularly precious is, that I always flattered myself that our hearts and minds were similarly constructed.

This is one of our few authentic glimpses of Henry Knox as a boy in the 1750s. Within a few years, Henry’s father suffered business reversals and left his family, dying in the Caribbean in 1762. Henry became indentured to a bookseller, his first career.

On Monday, 7 November, I’ll speak to the Sudbury Companies of Militia & Minute about the events that allowed the launch of Henry Knox’s second career, as an artillery officer in the Continental Army. How did Gen. George Washington come to view his artillery regiment as in dire need of a shakeup? That talk will take place at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury at 8:00 or so, and I’ll have copies of The Road to Concord for signing.

Mysteries of John Childs

In September 1757, John Childs told Bostonians that he would “fly” from Old North Church. He really meant (and most people probably assumed him to mean) that he would slide head-first down a rope pulled taut on a slant. He did so three times in two days, according to the Boston News-Letter. And then, as far as I can tell, he vanished.

I’ve tried to track John Childs on two continents, and come up with nothing. He was said to be an Englishman, and he claimed to have “flown” off the Monument in London. In London’s Guildhall Library (shown here), I found reports of other men doing the same daredevil feat from that tower, but no John Childs. He dropped the name of the Duke of Cumberland, son of the king, as his patron; that’s led nowhere. So, I’m sorry to say, one may not be able to believe everything that traveling performers say about themselves.

We can sometimes trace itinerants along the North American coast through reports from each major port, as with dentist John Baker. But Childs the rope flyer doesn’t pop up in other newspapers of the time. Perhaps if John Childs were a less common name, it would be possible to spot him as an ordinary citizen, soldier, or sailor—a man who did acrobatics on the side. But there were a lot of men named John Childs in colonial America, and even more in Britain. I’ve chatted with Christopher Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society with an obvious interest in that family name, but we unearthed no leads. So Childs himself remains a mystery.

The other mystery of this episode for me lies in this line from the News-Letter: “As these Performances led many People from their Business, he is forbid flying any more in the Town.” Boston’s selectmen were the officials who usually took such action against disruptive entertainers. They enforced laws against theatricals, including even Punch & Judy shows. There’s no mention of Childs in the selectmen’s official records, but those were often selective.

No, the real mystery is that no one prohibited Childs from doing his act until he was done. Before he flew, he told the town, through the Boston Gazette, exactly what he was going to do “this Day, and two Days following.” He slid down his rope three times over two days. Then, and only then, was he “forbid flying any more in the Town.”

So I sense the town’s politicians doing a little balancing act of their own: not actually interfering with people’s entertainment while it went on, but making a show of putting a stop to it afterwards so as to reassure the more traditional elements in town.

John Childs, Rope Flyer

Yesterday I quoted John Childs’s announcement that he planned to fly from the steeple of Christ Church in Boston’s North End, the church we now call Old North. The 15 Sept 1757 Boston News-Letter duly recorded:

Tuesday in the afternoon, John Childs, who had given public Notice of his Intention to fly from the Steeple of Dr. Cutler’s Church, perform’d it to the Satisfaction of a great Number of Spectators; and yesterday in the Afternoon he again perform’d it twice.

The last Time he set off with two Pistols loaded, one of which he discharged in his Descent; the other missing fire, he cock’d and snap’d again before he reached the Place prepared to receive him.

It is suppos’d from the Steeple to the Place where the Rope was fix’d was about 700 Feet upon a Slope, and that he was about 16 or 18 Seconds performing it each Time.

As these Performances led many People from their Business, he is forbid flying any more in the Town.

The said Child says he had flown from the highest Steeples in England, and off the Monument, by the Duke of Cumberland’s Desire.

So what did Childs actually do? The important technical information is his “Rope was fix’d about 700 feet upon a Slope.” The steeple of Old North is 190 feet tall. So even if the rope were tied to the tippy-top, it must have formed a fairly gentle slope to the ground, far from the vertical. Furthermore, despite the newspaper’s clear interest in the speed and angle of Childs’s descent, its printers didn’t describe him as flying with any apparatus. Finally, to fire off two pistols during his second descent, Childs had to have both hands free.

All those clues, I’m sure, helped scholar Peter Benes connect Childs’s feat to a form of entertainment that daredevils had been offering in England for centuries: rope-flying. (Benes’s discussion appears in the article “Itinerant Entertainers in New England and New York, 1687-1830,” in the Dublin Seminar volume Itinerancy in New England and New York.)

A rope flyer started by stretching a long, strong rope from a steeple or other tall structure down to the ground on a slant. Then after making as big a deal of the event as he could, he went up the tower and waved to the assembled crowd. And then...

William Hogarth depicted a London rope flyer in his painting and engraving titled Southwark Fair. The painting is now at the Cincinnati Art Museum, but the online image is too small to see this detail clearly. Instead, I direct you to Benjamin N. Ungar’s thorough dissection of the engraved image [click the X to get rid of the ad if need be] and particularly its close-up of the “flying man.”

As you’ll see, a rope flyer slid down his rope head-first, arms and legs on either side of the cord. To protect his torso, he wore a board with a groove cut vertically down its center. His dangling limbs helped him keep his center of mass close to or even below the rope, so he didn’t fall off. And at the bottom? Samuel Breck’s memoir of growing up in Boston adds the detail, recalled by his mother, that Childs landed on a stack of feather mattresses.

So what John Childs did wasn’t really “flying” at all. It was, as Woody the Cowboy says in Toy Story, “falling with style.” But this was a quarter-century before the Montgolfier brothers sent up their first balloon. Sliding head-first down a rope, pistols blazing, was the closest anyone had seen to a man flying. Only after balloonists like Jean Pierre Blanchard really did fly for the public was that verb taken away from the rope-flyers, and their feat disappeared from the collective memory.

TOMORROW: Lingering mysteries about John Childs, the “flying man.”

John Childs Promises to Fly from Old North Church

On 12 Sept 1757, the Boston Gazette carried this unusual announcement:

This is to give Notice to All Gentlemen and Ladies, that John Childs has flown off of most of the highest Steeples in Old-England, and off of the Monument by the Duke of Cumberland’s Desire, and does intend this Day, and two Days following, to fly off of Dr. Cutler’s Church, where he hopes to give full Satisfaction to all Spectators.

The Monument was the 202-foot-tall column built in London to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666.

The Duke of Cumberland was Prince William Augustus, younger son of George II. As a British army commander, he had just been captured by the French at Klosterzeven, but Boston didn’t know that yet.

Dr. Cutler’s church was Christ Church in the North End of Boston, the same church that today we call Old North. And today a plaque on the building reads:

Here on September 13, 1757, John Childs – who had given public notice of his intention to fly from the steeple of Dr. Cutler’s church – performed it to the satisfaction of a great number of spectators.

In 1923, the year of the first continuous flight across the continent, this tablet has been placed here by the Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America to commemorate the two events.

For perhaps two hundred years now people have been puzzled about how exactly John Childs “flew.” And tour guides love to fill any vacuum of knowledge with confident statements of fact, however shaky. iBoston says Childs flew with “an umbrella-like contraption.” Citysearch says he used “a rudimentary glider.” CelebrateBoston says he was “Tethered to a rope, and attached to a feathered glider.” All wrong. Harvard’s First-Year Urban Program, to its credit, says, “no one really knows what this [flying] means.”

TOMORROW: What this “flying” means.