“To consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast”

Here’s another clergyman’s account of how John Pope, a cancer specialist, treated a patient in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

These extracts come from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, which is all transcribed and analyzed at its own website. These extracts were found and organized by Ross W. Beales, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Holy Cross, and his colleagues.

Parkman knew of John Pope by May 1772, when he wrote of “Mr. Smith being at Boston under the operations of Mr. Pope (a Quaker) for the Cure of his Cancer.”

However, Pope’s skills became personal when Parkman’s oldest daughter Mary (Molly), who had married the Rev. Eli Forbes (1726–1804, show here) of Gloucester in 1752, developed some form of breast cancer.

On 10 Jan 1775, Parkman wrote in his diary:

My Son Forbes and his Wife came from Cape Ann, but last from Mr. Brooks’s at Medford.... My Daughters Trouble in her Breast somewhat mitigated, by Methods used by Friend Pope of Boston. Thanks to the Supreme Healer!

The month of March brought lots of news, not all good.

[13 March:] Mr. Forbes and my Daughter Set out on their Journey to Boston, designing to go to Mr. Pope, to consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast. . . .

[22 March:] A Second Letter from my Son Forbes at Boston, that his Wife has gone through a Second Dressing by the hard Plaister and “by appearance these two have en[crusted?] the Schirrous Tumor about 1/4 of an inch. This dead mass must be separated from the live Flesh by digestive lenient Dressings before another hard Dressing is applyed: which will require a Week or ten Days.” . . .

[24 March:] Received another Letter from Mr. Forbes, dated the 20th…that “moment” whilst She was actually “under the painfull Operation of the 2d hard Plaister, and is as full of pain as She can well bear, though She endures (he writes) with more patience and fortitude than I feared. The Doctor says all Things work very kindly, and he doubts not with the Blessing of God he shall be able to effect a Cure: but will require some time, at least two Months.

[“]At present she is extremely agitated. Last Night she had no sleep, and this Night (Sabbath 2 o’Clock) She has been much worse -- but by the help of an Anodyne she gets a little sleep—hope She will be supported and carryed through—I am encouraged, but verily Sir, it is hard Work—and we hope in God.”

“Six o’Clock in the Morning. We have got through the Night. It has been pritty distressing, though through the great Goodness of God mine and your dear Molly has had several refreshing Naps of Sleep, and is now Comfortable—and does not expect to have any more of these hard Plaisters for a Week or ten Days, and I hope the worst is past. However, Sufficient to the Day is the Evil thereof.” . . .

[28 March:] Put up at [Joshua] Bracketts [tavern]: hastened to Samuels to see Mrs. Forbes. She was under the lenient Plaister—was calm and easy. I saw the sore dressed. . . .

[29 March:] Mrs. Forbes has Comfort, and is cheerfull. We lodged there.

Parkman went home, so the next news came by post on 15 April:

A Letter from Mr. Forbes (by Ripley, who is come to us from Boston and Cambridge) that on the 13th the Remainder of the Cancer in my Daughters Breast came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney—the Breast in an healing way. All Praise and Thanks to the glorious God our Healer!

Four days later, war broke out, cutting off Boston from the countryside.

TOMORROW: Can this patient be saved?

“So much disturbed by a Number of unruly People”

Two hundred fifty years ago today, on 9 Sept 1773, Jacob Bates ran this advertisement in the Boston News-Letter:

Mr. BATES
Is extremely sorry that the Ladies and Gentlemen were so much disturbed by a Number of unruly People on Wednesday last when he performed, and so much Mischief done to the Fence: —
He is determined for the future, to prosecute to the full Extent of the Law, any Person that shall attempt any thing of the Kind.

He performs again on SATURDAY next, the 11th Instant. The Doors open at 3 o’Clock.

*** TICKETS to be had at Col. Ingersoll’s, in King-Street, Mr. Bracket’s, in School-Street, and at the Place of Performance.

As Mr. BATES is willing to do every thing in his Power to oblige the Ladies and Gentlemen, he has lower’d the Price to Three Shillings each.

Mr. BATES is allowed by the greatest Judges in the Manly Art he professes, to excell any HORSEMAN that ever attempted any Thing of the Kind.

Apparently there had been some sort of disturbance at Bates’s first performance.

Or had there? Back in Philadelphia in September 1772, Bates had likewise posted how he was “extremely sorry that the Ladies and Gentlemen were disturbed by the MOB.” Such apologies might just have been a way to spread the word that his show was extremely popular, like restaurants taking out ads to apologize for running out of food last night.

As for Bates’s new lower price, three shillings was already his minimum price for tickets. He was discounting only the premium admission, perhaps admitting that he wasn’t selling a lot at the higher price.

(I’d like to provide a solid explanation for Bates’s distinction between “Tickets for the First Place” and “for the Second” beyond the obvious that the first were more expensive and therefore presumably better in some way. However, he was the only person to use that phrase in American newspapers in the quarter-century before the war.)

And speaking of those tickets, in addition to Bates’s enclosure at the bottom of the Mall, Bostonians could buy them at two long established taverns:

• The Bunch of Grapes, run by Joseph Ingersoll.
• The Sign of Cromwell’s Head, run by Joshua Brackett.

Taverns with enclosed courtyards were a common venue for traveling performers like Bates. Obviously he needed more space, but those publicans were probably comfortable with handling ticket sales for entertainers.

When John Piemont Set Up Shop in Danvers

At the website of the Danvers Archival Center, part of the town’s public library, Richard B. Trask shared his essay “Discovering Paul Revere in the Dried Prunes Box,” also published decades ago in Family Heritage.

It involves the engraved billhead shown here.

It was the summer of 1969, and I was working for the local Historical Commission as a summer cataloguer and researcher, trying to put into order the thousands of town records. Most of the loose, individual town papers were enclosed in nailed wooden boxes as a result of a W.P.A. project in the 1930s when the records were roughly sorted into various departmental categories. The boxes had originally been used in food relief during the depression and were clearly, and to my eyes humorously, marked, “Dried Prunes–For Relief–Not to be Sold.” Unfortunately, the boxes were not good for storing manuscripts, and many of them had become nesting areas for all sorts of vermin. . . .

Among these handwritten slips of paper, I noticed a very handsome item containing a fine engraving of the shoulders and head of a turbaned and mustachioed man with banners about him proclaiming, “John Piemont. Turk’s Head, Danvers.” The item was a trade bill of John Piemont’s eighteenth-century Turk’s Head Tavern, which was located on the old post road near what is now the junction of Pine and Sylvan Streets in Danvers.

Subsequent to discovering the identity of the trade bill’s printer, I learned from Dr. Richard P. Zollo, who wrote an interesting study on the life of John Piemont titled, “Patriot in Exile,” that Piemont was a Frenchman who settled in Boston in about 1759 and took up the trade of peruke [wig] maker. While residing in Boston, Piemont apparently became enmeshed in the patriot cause. He was a member of St. Andrew’s Lodge of Masons and was actively involved in the events leading up to the Boston Massacre of 1770. In 1773, partly as a result of losing Tory patronage at his wig shop, Piemont moved to Danvers and took on the management of a tavern.

To be exact, apprentices from the shop Piemont shared with another barber and wigmaker were involved in the first violence on King Street on the evening of 5 Mar 1770. One of those teens, Edward Garrick, criticized a passing army officer, and Pvt. Hugh White called the boy over and clonked him on the head.

There’s also a complaint from Pvt. John Timmins about Piemont and some other barbers clonking him on the head, as I quoted way back here. I still can’t make sense of this unmotivated attack, especially since Piemont’s business catered to royal officials and army officers. He even employed a moonlighting private, Pvt. Patrick Dines. I suspect Timmins came up with the complaint after the Massacre when he knew his superiors were eager for complaints about the locals whose names had come up in that dispute.

As Trask writes, Piemont later left Boston and opened a tavern in Danvers. When the war broke out in 1775, some locals “called him a Tory,” and the local committee of correspondence had to vouch for him. But back to the essay.

Months later, while browsing in a local book store I was looking through a book titled Paul Revere’s Engravings by Clarence S. Brigham. A plate in the chapter on trade cards caught my eye. A bill from Joshua Brackett’s “O. Cromwell’s Head” tavern on School Street in Boston, was reproduced. The design, format and size of this Revere engraving was almost identical to the Piemont bill that I had found.

I quickly looked in the index for “Piemont” and was referred to page 175, which stated that Paul Revere’s day book included many charges for engraving advertising cards and bill heads, but that no specimen remains of many of them. In June 1774 Revere made two hundred prints for a charge of 8 shillings to Mr. John Piemont.

Check out Trask’s essay to see the clue that confirmed his suspicion that Paul Revere had engraved this image for the former barber from Boston.

Three People Detained at the Castle

On 1 Mar 1775, a group of middling-class Boston activists sent a letter to the Sons of Liberty in New York, asking to set up a regular correspondence so as to share news and “contradict the many infamous lies which are propagated by the Enemies of our Country.”

Three of those Bostonians are well known to the authorities at Boston 1775: silversmith Paul Revere, printer Benjamin Edes, and decorative painter Thomas Crafts, Jr.

The other three were also active in the Patriot movement:

• Joshua Brackett, proprietor of the Cromwell’s Head tavern on School Street.
• schoolmaster Joseph Ward (in Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, Esther Forbes misidentified him as a distiller).
• Thomas Chase, whose South End distillery stood next to Liberty Tree.

Of those six men, three (Edes, Crafts, and Chase) had been part of the “Loyall Nine,” the political club that helped organize Boston’s Stamp Act protests in 1765. Three (Revere, Ward, and Crafts) would gain the title “colonel” in the coming war.

The Bostonians asked to set up a correspondence with their counterparts in New York so as to share news and “contradict the many infamous lies which are propagated by the Enemies of our Country.” They added a postscript about Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie’s recent unsuccessful raid on Salem:

Enclosed you have an account of the late Expedition which terminated to the honour of Americans. In addition to the secrecy with which the maneuvre to Salem was conducted, we inform you that three persons were occasionally at the castle on Saturday afternoon and were detained there till 10 o’clock on Monday lest we should send an Express to our brethren at Marblehead and Salem.

When that letter, now in the John Lamb Papers at the New-York Historical Society, was printed in Elbridge Goss’s 1891 biography of Revere, there was one small error. Instead of saying “three persons,” Goss’s transcription said “these persons.”

While writing her biography of Revere, Forbes interpreted “these persons” to refer to the men who had signed the letter, including the silversmith. At the time Revere was leading an effort to gather information about the army, so she concluded that he and his colleagues had gone to Castle William to spy on the troops. Later she fictionalized the same scene by adding her young hero Johnny Tremain, but then removed those pages from her final manuscript.

The letter to the New Yorkers is correctly transcribed in David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride, where I first read about this mixup years ago. What’s more, the word “occasionally” in eighteenth-century usage implies that the three people detained at the fort just happened to be there on business rather than to be spying on the army. Since the letter offers no first-hand details about being held at the Castle, we can feel certain that none of those three men were Revere or his colleagues (or Johnny Tremain).

John Baker, "Surgeon Dentist," Moves South

Yesterday I posted John Baker’s announcement in June 1766 that he had arrived in America to care for the inhabitants’ teeth in the most modern way. That December, Baker traveled to Rhode Island, advertising in the Newport Mercury that he had treated “some Hundreds in the Town of Boston.”

Then the 29 Jan 1767 Boston News-Letter announced:

JOHN BAKER,
Surgeon Dentis,
Begs Leave to take this Method of informing the Public, That he shall leave this Place in twenty Days at farthest.—That those who are disposed to apply to him may not be disappointed.

He also begs Leave to express his Gratitude for the Favours he has received while in Boston; and hopes that those who doubted of the Safety of his Art, from its Novelty in this Country, are now convinced of its Safety and Usefulness.

Until he leaves his Town he continues at Mr. Joshua Brackett’s in School-Street; where he will be ready to contribute to the utmost of his Power to serve the Publick in his Profession.

Brackett was proprietor of an upscale tavern and inn known as the Cromwell’s Head because its sign featured a portrait of the late Protector (as did its billhead, shown above). Most of the British Empire then saw Cromwell as a dictator, a warning against both popular power and religious enthusiasm, but Boston, with its Puritan heritage, still admired him.

Baker originally called himself an “Operator for the Teeth,” an older name for his profession. His next three newspaper ads all use the label “Surgeon Dentis,” so I don’t think the second word was a typo. In fact, before Baker’s arrival, the word “dentist” seems to have appeared in Boston newspapers only once, in a reprint of a 1766 essay from New York. Other practitioners arriving in America from Europe used “Surgeon Dentist,” however, and later in 1767 Baker adopted that label permanently. So the vocation seems still to have been defining itself.

On 5 May 1768, “John Baker, Surgeon Dentist,” announced his arrival in New York, “at Mr. John Watson’s, in the house wherein Capt. Randall lately lived, at the corner of Pearl-street.” By this time, he claimed to have “given sufficient proof of his superior judgment in this art...to upwards of two thousand persons in the town of Boston.” Then in July, Baker announced he was leaving after one more month. Travel seems to have been a professional necessity in those centuries before the six-month check-up.

Baker next surfaces in Williamsburg, Virginia, in early 1772. And there his clientele included... Well, which colonial Virginian is most famous for his dental difficulties?

Yes, in April 1772 Dr. Baker removed several troublesome teeth from the mouth of planter George Washington. On 13 Oct 1773, Washington noted in his diary that “Mr. Baker Surgeon Dentist” had arrived at Mount Vernon that afternoon. The dentist stayed several days and charged £5, according to the planter’s accounts.

TOMORROW: Who took over John Baker’s practice in Boston?

John Baker: "Operator for the Teeth"

I had some minor oral surgery this afternoon, so I’m wondering when I’ll eat solid foods again and if I can survive entirely on soft ice cream until then.

To take my mind off my own teeth, I did some poking around among other people’s teeth. This advertisement appeared in the Boston Post-Boy on 30 June 1766:

John Baker,
Operator for the Teeth, &c.
Begs Leaves to acquaint the Gentry, that he is now in Boston, at Mr. Joshua Brackett’s in S[c]hool Street, and will wait on them, on receiving their Commands.

In other words, this dentist made house calls.

He cures the Scurvey in the Gums, first cleanes and scales the Teeth, from that Corrosive, Tartarous, Gritty Substance which hinders the Gums from Growing, infects the Breath, and is one of the principal Causes of the Scurvey, and by degrees (if not timely prevented) eats away the Gums, so that many Peoples Teeth fall out Fresh.

He fills up with Lead or Gold those that are hollow (so as to render them useful) and prevents the Air getting into them, which aggravates the Pain.

He makes and fixes Artificial Teeth, with the greatest Exactness and Nicety, so that they may eat, drink, and sleep with them in their Mouths as natural ones, from which it cannot be discovered by the sharpest Eye.

He having given sufficient Proof of his Superior Judgment in this Art, to the principal Nobility, Gentry and others, of Great-Britain, France & Ireland, and other principal Places in Europe.

Of course we must ask: if Dr. Baker had such a busy and wealthy clientele in Europe, why was he trying his fortunes in a distant colony?

Baker also had a toothpaste or tooth-powder to sell, and it seems to do all that modern toothpastes promise and more:

His Dentifrice, which is free from any corrosive Preparation will restore the Gums to their pristine State, will preserve the Teeth, and render them perfectly white, will fasten those that are loose, and prevent them from further decay.

N.B. His Dentifrice may be had at his Lodgings at ONE DOLLAR each Pot, with proper Directions.

Baker then went on to list many items of jewelry that he had brought from London to sell.

TOMORROW: Baker tries out some other colonies.