A Whitehouse Briefing

Last week I wrote about Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse and his bride Jane Crothers, who each testified to events on the night of the Boston Massacre. (She more reliably than he, I believe.)

Don Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War and The Revolution’s Last Men, wrote with more information about Pvt. Whitehouse and the experiences of wives attached to the 14th Regiment of Foot, so I’m gratefully sharing that information as a “guest blogger” posting.

Joseph Whitehouse was thirty years old when he married Jane Crothers in March 1770. He was born in Birmingham, England, and had pursued a trade fairly typical for that industrial city; he was a smith. By the age of twenty-five he’d tired of that profession, and he enlisted in the army.

This was a common path for a British soldier; most of the men who served in British infantry regiments during the American Revolution enlisted in their early twenties, after having pursued one or more other lines of work. The army offered steady employment, the opportunity to travel, and a pension after long service—perquisites not offered by any other profession of the era.

After their marriage, and their testimonies about the troubles in Boston in 1770, Joseph and Jane Whitehouse probably stayed with the regiment at Castle William in Boston Harbor, but they may have had opportunities to visit the mainland. Some soldiers’ wives did, and the Boston Post-Boy of 25 February 1771 reported that two of them fell into misfortune:

On Friday last as two Women belonging to the 14th Regiment were crossing the Ice at the South End of Town, they both fell through, and altho’ they were soon taken out by the Assistance of the Town’s People, yet one of them, Susannah Mills, was so chil’d with the cold, that she expir’d immediately; the other is like to do well.

Conditions on Castle Island were crowded and brought challenges different that those posed by the hostile townspeople. Late in 1771, engineering officer John Montresor wrote:

There is a deficiency [of water] from the latter end of July unto the latter end of November. . . . the 14th is now 400 men – 70 women & 90 children. Obliged to employ a large Boat every other day – sent to Boston to Peck’s wharf & bought there at one shilling per Hogshead – One hhd serves one Company of the 14th Regt Two days.

The 14th Regiment didn’t have to endure these conditions much longer, but their next station was even more difficult. In 1772 they left Boston harbor for the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies, part of a force sent to quell a rebellion by island natives. There, disease took a toll on the regiment in addition to casualties from fighting. By 1774, the regiment was due to be sent back to Great Britain after eight years in North America, but rising tensions in the colonies forced those plans to be changed. The regiment was divided up among posts in Florida, Virginia, and the Bahamas. Their grenadier company suffered severely in the Battle of Great Bridge in December of 1775.

As the British war effort turned sour in the south, the 14th Regiment was sent to join the British army in New York that was enjoying great success in the waning months of 1776. The regiment was quite worn out by this time, so the decision was made to send them home, but first the able-bodied soldiers were transferred to other regiments campaigning in America. The officers, and the soldiers no longer fit for service, were sent home, the former to recuit and the latter to be discharged.

Among the soldiers of the 14th Regiment of Foot who were discharged in England in early 1777 was Joseph Whitehouse. On 29 April, he went before the out-pension examining board at Chelsea Hospital; their examination book recorded his age, place of birth, trade and length of service, as well as the malady that prevented him from remaining a soldier. During his twelve years in the army, he had contracted a hernia, called a “rupture” in the parlance of the day, and was deemed no longer fit for service. He was granted a pension, paid semi-annually at a rate of five-eighths of a soldier‘s regular pay, a modest sum but enough to subsist on. He was still living in 1808.

What became of his wife, Jane, is not known. She was entitled to follow him with the regiment, and to accompany him to Great Britain when he was discharged from the army, but at this writing we have no information about her fate.

Thanks, Don!

Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse’s Story about Capt. Goldfinch

Yesterday I described how Jane Crothers, an eyewitness to the Boston Massacre, married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment later in March 1770.

Whitehouse also went to Christ Church (Old North) that month for the baptism of a child of another 14th Regiment soldier, George Simpson, on 14 March. Christ Church was one of Boston’s three Anglican churches, preferred by the soldiers from Britain and Ireland.

By the end of that month, the 14th Regiment had moved to Castle Island in Boston harbor, thus no longer inside the town of Boston and in daily contact with its civilians. They were still there in August, and Pvt. Whitehouse was one of the soldiers who lined up to give testimony to justice of the peace James Murray (shown here) about how badly the locals had treated them.

On 25 August, Whitehouse stated:

That about the latter end of February 1769, he was assaulted in the Streets of Boston by a mob of the townsmen, throwing pieces of Ice and snow-balls at him, calling him Scoundrel, Lobster, bloody back’d dog and much more abusive language, to all which he made no reply.

And further deposeth, that on the 5th. March last in the Evening as he was going to the barracks, he saw a number of the inhabitants striking Capt. Goldfinch who was lying on the ground, his sword taken away, and his face very much bruised, on his attempting to assist him, the mob immediately fell on him, and beat him in such a manner, that it was with much difficulty he reached the barracks.

Capt.-Lt. John Goldfinch of the 14th also played a major role in the events that led up to the Massacre. According to George R. T. Hewes, an apprentice at John Piemont’s shop dressed the officer’s hair in December, and the barber promised that apprentice that he could have the payment for that job. But then Goldfinch didn’t pay immediately, nor, it seems, as soon as the bill came due in three months.

So as Capt. Goldfinch passed by the Customs house on King Street on the evening of 5 March, apprentice Edward Garrick heckled him about the bill. He “owed my fellow Prentice,” Edward called. In fact, by that evening Goldfinch had paid the bill—so recently he still had the receipt in his pocket. But he disdained haggling on the street with an apprentice, leaving Pvt. Hugh White to put an end to the topic by clonking Edward on the head.

Goldfinch was one of the many people who testified about what happened that night. He gave a deposition for A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston, published in London. He testified at the soldiers’ trial. He had every reason to describe the Boston crowd as violent.

Yet Goldfinch never described being personally assaulted, knocked to the ground, “his face very much bruised.” He never described his sword being taken away. Instead, his story was about finding a brawl going on outside the barracks rented from Justice Murray, reestablishing order there, and then hearing the shots from King Street.

Was Pvt. Whitehouse mistaken about which British officer he saw “lying on the ground” and tried to help? That seems unlikely. And if that were so, we would expect to see Goldfinch or another officer complain about that assault on a colleague. The whole point of the Fair Account pamphlet and the depositions collected at Castle William was to paint the townspeople as violent. But there’s no complaint about such an incident on 5 March.

I suspect Pvt. Whitehouse correctly suspected what his superiors wanted to hear about the locals, and knew that Goldfinch was somehow involved in the King Street incident. So he came up with this story of the captain under attack. Whitehouse’s tale is one reason I’m as skeptical about the soldiers’ depositions as I am about the Bostonians’ testimony to their own friendly magistrates.

COMING UP: Don Hagist traces Pvt. Whitehouse’s military career.

Jane Crothers, Witness to a Massacre

In early 1770, Jane Crothers lived near the head of Royal Exchange Lane, thus near the Boston Customs House. On the night of 5 March she heard noise outside. She went out to ask the army sentry guarding that building, Pvt. Hugh White, what was the matter.

White said he didn’t know—not mentioning that earlier in the evening he’d clubbed a teen-aged barber’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, on the head.

Then Crothers saw people coming from the direction of the Town House (now the Old State House). She heard them say, “There’s the Centinel, the bloody back Rascall, let’s go kill him!” Those people had been riled up by Garrick and his friends, hoping for justice.

Crothers would later testify in court about what happened next. There are two sets of notes about what she said, mostly in agreement. An anonymous notetaker recorded:

They kept gathering throwing Snow balls, Oyster Shells and chunks of Wood at the Centinel. Beat him from out of his Box to the steps.

A space after saw a party coming from the Main Guard, an Officer which proved to be Capt. [Thomas] Preston with them. He desired his Men to halt and the Centinel to recover his Arm, fall into his Rank and march up to the Main Guard. The Centinel fell in and the men wanted to move forward to the Guard house but could not for the Riot.

The people called out fire, damn you why dont you fire, you cant kill us [all]. I steppd to the Party. Heard a Gentleman ask the Capt. if he was going to order his men to fire. He said no Sir by no means, by no means. A Man—the Centinel—then pushed me back. I step’d back to the corner. He bid me go away for I should be killed.

A Man came behind the Soldiers walkd backwards and forwards, encouraging them to fire. The Captain stood on the left about three yards. The man touched one of the Soldiers upon the back and said fire, by God I’ll stand by you. He was dressed in dark coloured Cloaths. I don’t remember he had a Surtout or any lace about him. He did not look like an Officer. The man fired directly on the word and clap on the Shoulder.

This testimony, from one of the very few women on the scene that night, helped to exonerate Capt. Preston of having ordered the soldiers to fire.

By the time of Preston’s trial, Jane Crothers was no longer Jane Crothers. On 27 March, three weeks and a day after the Massacre, she married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment at Christ Church (Old North). She was thus attached to the army, though not identified as such in the trial records.

Instead, those notes record another unusual aspect of Jane Whitehouse’s testimony. Under Massachusetts law, witnesses could swear to tell the truth simply by holding up their hand and reciting or assenting to an oath. But someone “said that Jane Whitehouse thought there was no obligation from Oaths administred by holding up the hand.” She was therefore “Sworn upon the Bible.” I’ve tried to find a discussion of that distinction from the period in hopes that it would say something about the woman’s religion, and I haven’t.

TOMORROW: What Pvt. Whitehouse had to say.