What Happened to the Boston Massacre Defendants?

After being acquitted of murder at the Boston Massacre on 5 Dec 1770, Cpl. William Wemys and five private soldiers “went their Way thro’ the Streets,” the Boston Gazette reported. They probably boarded a boat to Castle William, where the 14th Regiment of Foot was stationed.

Nine days later, fellow defendants Edward Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy joined them, each with one hand bandaged after branding.

Lt. Col. William Dalrymple of the 14th had already decided how he would send those men back to the 29th Regiment, which had been moved to New Jersey. The commander wrote:

A bad disposition appearing in the Soldiers who were confined I shall send them round by sea, we have but too much reason to suspect their ententions to desert they are not at all to be depended on.

“I do not chuse to trust them any other way,” he added on 17 December. It would be great to know why Dalrymple was suspicious, but we don’t.

Until recently, the story of those eight British enlisted men stopped there. But Don Hagist has been doing thorough research on British troops during the War for Independence, culminating in the new book Noble Volunteers. Don found more information on some of those soldiers in the muster rolls and Chelsea pensioner records, which he generously let me publish here. I’ve added information on others over the years. So here’s what happened to all the defendants.

By May 1771, William Wemys was promoted to sergeant. He was still a sergeant when the company was stationed at Chatham, England, on 29 July 1775. His company’s muster rolls end there, so we lose track of him.

In the grenadier company, John Carroll and William Macauley were both made corporals. William Warren, despite being the tallest of the defendants, transferred out of the grenadiers to another company in the 29th.

As I related in this posting from 2006, Pvt. James Hartigan died on 4 Nov 1771 at the 29th’s next assignment in St. Augustine, Florida.

The regiment was in England when the war began, and army commanders decided to send it back to North America. That could have exposed Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy to being captured by the American rebels, their hands still bearing the brand of the Massacre. On 22 Feb 1776 those two men appeared before a board of examiners for military pensions administered by Chelsea Hospital. Montgomery, age forty-one, was deemed “Worn Out,” and Kilroy, only twenty-eight, was found to have “a Lame Knee.” The board discharged both men from the army with pensions.

The rest of the 29th Regiment sailed to Canada, where different fates awaited different companies. Pvt. Warren and Pvt. Hugh White, the sentry, spent the American war at separate stations in Canada. White was finally discharged from the army on 10 Nov 1789, then aged forty-nine.

John Carroll, promoted to sergeant by February 1777, and Cpl. Macauley were still with the 29th’s grenadier company, which was assigned to Gen. John Burgoyne’s invasion force. Those two men might therefore have become part of the “Convention Army” of prisoners of war marched from Saratoga to Cambridge at the end of that year. But there’s no record of anyone in Massachusetts recognizing those two soldiers from the Massacre trial.

I discussed the evidence about Capt. Thomas Preston’s retirement here. He started to receive an annual £200 royal pension in 1772, and it continued until at least 1790. In the 1780s Preston was living in Dublin.

Of the defendants in the third trial, I profiled Hammond Green in this posting. He evacuated Boston in 1776 as a Customs employee, and his wife and children followed the next year. The royal government gave Green a Customs job at his new home of Halifax, and he was still working there in 1807.

Thomas Greenwood was working for the Customs service in 1770 but wasn’t listed among the employees who evacuated in 1776. I don’t know anything more solid about him.

Edward Manwaring retained the post of chief Customs officer on the Gaspé peninsula until 1785 when he was succeeded by his neighbor Felix O’Hara.

John Munro carried on his business as a notary “at his Office South Side of the Town House.” The 12 Jan 1775 issue of the Massachusetts Spy reported that he had died the previous Tuesday at the age of thirty-nine after a “tedious illness.” He was buried out of Christ Church on 13 January.

Sentenced and Punished for the Boston Massacre

The 17 Dec 1770 Boston Gazette reported on the third trial for the Boston Massacre by naming all the defendants and concluding, “After a few Hours Trial, they were acquitted.”

Unlike that same day’s Boston Evening-Post, the Gazette said nothing about how the jury had declared those men innocent without even leaving their seats.

Instead, the town’s leading Whig newspaper turned to insisting that there wasn’t “a single Instance of Indecency either in or out of Court” even after eleven of the thirteen men charged with multiple murders were acquitted. Edes and Gill gave much more space to making the case that Boston was a peaceful, law-abiding town than to the embarrassing trial.

Now to do that, the newspaper had to explain away a handbill complaining about the verdict, which I’ll discuss soon. After that, the same issue of the Boston Gazette got to the latest development:

Friday last [i.e., 14 December, 250 years ago today] Kilroy and Montgomery, who were convicted of Manslaughter, at the late Superior Court held here, were branded in the Hand in open Court, and discharged.

The published trial record didn’t specify the date of the sentencing and punishment, so this is a valuable source.

We have a description of the sentencing from one of the presiding judges, Peter Oliver. In 1783 he wrote out a memoir/anslysis of the coming of the Revolution in Massachusetts, which was eventually published as Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion.

Oliver had a lot of acidic comments about the Boston radicals, which makes for fun reading. He told this particular story to complain about the lingering Puritan attitude toward the Anglican church. Since Oliver created a privately shared manuscript, there was no chance for Bostonians or others who had witnessed the scene to object that he was fictionalizing. Nonetheless, I think there’s a good chance this anecdote is accurate.

At the Conclusion of the Trial of Capt. [Thomas] Preston’s Soldiers in Boston; one of them, who was brought in guilty of Manslaughter, standing at the Bar, was asked by the chief Justice, what Objection he had to offer why sentence of Death should not be passed upon him? The simple Fellow did not know what to say. A Bystander whispered to him, to pray the Benefit of the Clergy. The Man not understanding the whole of the Direction, bawled out with an audible Voice, “may it please your Honors! I pray the Death of the Clergy”—& many present nodded their Amen.

The defendant who seems most likely to have made this mistake was Pvt. Mathew Kilroy. We know from a previous filing in the case that Kilroy couldn’t sign his own name, so he probably hadn’t been educated in the details of the common law. Ironically, in pleading benefit of clergy, Kilroy would have been making a nominal claim to literacy, as explained here.

We also have John Adams’s comment on the punishment as collected by his colleague Josiah Quincy’s family and published in their Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Junior, of Massachusetts Bay, 1744-1775. That book quoted a conversation with Adams in 1822:

I never pitied any men more than the two soldiers who were sentenced to be branded in the hand for manslaughter. They were noble, fine-looking men; protested they had done nothing contrary to their duty as soldiers; and, when the sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] approached to perform his office, they burst into tears.

Peter Oliver’s manuscript preserves another post-trial development in the story of the Massacre. The judge wrote of the shooting:

…a Stout Fellow, of the Mob [Crispus Attucks], knocked down one of the Soldiers; & endeavoring to wrest his Gun from him, the Soldier cried, “D——n you fire,” pulled Trigger & killed his Man. The other Soldiers, in the midst of the Noise, supposing it was ye. Captain who gave the Order, discharged their Pieces, & five Persons were killed. Let me here observe, that upon the Trial great Stress was laid upon the Captain’s giving the Order to fire, but there was no Proof of it; & the Doubt was not cleared up for many Months after; when the Soldier who gave the Word of Command, as mentioned above, solved the Doubt.

We have a complementary version of that same story from acting governor Thomas Hutchinson. In a handwritten addition to his history of Massachusetts, eventually published in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, Hutchinson said:

[Pvt. Edward] Montgomery afterwards acknowledged to one of his counsel that he was the man who gave the word fire which was supposed by some of the witnesses to come from the Captain; that being knocked down & rising again, in the agony from the blow he said Damn you, fire and immediately he fired himself & the rest followed him.

With two sources (albeit not independent of each other), I’m convinced that Pvt. Montgomery made such an admission. Having been been tried and sentenced, he was safe from further prosecution. His remark clears up one of the mysteries from King Street.

There’s no evidence in the papers of John Adams or Josiah Quincy, Jr., that those men ever heard this story from Montgomery. It certainly wasn’t bruited about by Samuel Adams or other local Whigs writing about the case. Montgomery therefore probably spoken in private to his third attorney, Sampson Salter Blowers, who passed it on to fellow supporters of the Crown.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to the defendants?

The Disadvantage of the Benefit of Clergy

As reported here, jurors convicted Pvt. Mathew Kilroy and Edward Montgomery of manslaughter instead of murder for the Boston Massacre. Manslaughter was still nominally a capital crime—but only nominally.

Under British law, people convicted of manslaughter could plead “benefit of clergy” at their sentencing. That plea was an old protection for actual or potential members of the clergy, who could get out of hanging by demonstrating the valuable skill of being able to read from the Bible.

While avoiding execution, those defendants who weren’t actually in holy orders got branded on the base of their thumbs to mark them as convicted felons, ineligible to make the same plea a second time. Sources from the late Middle Ages say the brand was “M” for murderer or manslayer, “T” for thief and other lesser criminals. (Some histories say there was another brand of “F” for felon. It’s hard to sort out.)

That branding was of course painful. Thus, the benefit of clergy plea was a way to reduce a death sentence to a corporal punishment and public shaming for first-time offenders.

And it wasn’t just for the literate after all. Courts asked defendants to read the same verse—Psalms 51:1, the “neck verse”—so illiterate criminals could memorize that verse and gain the same benefit.

And British society knew all that. When the jury in the Massacre trial found Kilroy and Montgomery guilty of manslaughter, everyone knew they were setting those men up for a remitted death sentence and a branding.

Some people felt that was still too harsh. Acting governor Thomas Hutchinson reported shortly after the trial, “I was applied to to remit the burning.”

People wanted to spare Montgomery in particular. He “had been knocked down with a club, and provoked to fire, as appeared in the course of the evidence,” the governor wrote. Montgomery was also “a fellow of very good character.”

However, Hutchinson found, “[Lt. Col. William] Dalrymple & other Officers wished I would not,” probably to avoid making Bostonians more resentful toward the army. Dalrymple’s 14th Regiment was still stationed on Castle Island (and that had become a political issue in itself). And after all, Montgomery was just a soldier.

In the end, therefore, Hutchinson decided he “did not think it prudent” to commute the soldiers’ branding. The sentencing, and punishment, was set for 14 December.

COMING UP: The smell of burning flesh.

“They would have brought in all Guilty…”

As described yesterday, the trial of the eight enlisted men for the Boston Massacre ended with six acquittals and two convictions.

The acquitted men were Cpl. William Wemys and Pvts. James Hartigan, William Macauley, Hugh White, William Warren, and John Carroll.

The published record of the trial states: “Wemms, Hartegan, McCauley, White, Warren and Carrol were immediately discharged.”

According to a writer in the 17 Dec 1770 Boston Gazette, “The Soldiers were discharged from the Court in high Day-Light; and went their Way thro’ the Streets, with little, if any, Notice.”

In other words, there was no mob of Bostonians disappointed in the verdict waiting to string up or otherwise punish those men. The Boston Whigs wanted to be sure the world knew that, even as Samuel Adams prepared a long series of newspaper essays as “Vindex,” rearguing the case in the court of public opinion.

The jurors had convicted the two soldiers described by witnesses as firing fatal shots:

• Pvt. Edward (called Hugh) Montgomery; multiple people said he was the first soldier to shoot, and some said his shot downed the tall man later identified as Crispus Attucks.
• Pvt. Mathew Kilroy, seen to shoot Samuel Gray. In addition, people testified he was at the ropewalk fight days before, he had muttered about getting revenge, and he stuck his bayonet into Gray’s wounded head. A bloody bayonet was found in the main guard the next morning.

The jury thus identified the two men with the most responsibility for the deaths on King Street.

(I think Pvt. White deserves some blame for starting the violence there by hitting apprentice Edward Garrick, but he wasn’t charged with that. Clonking a sassy adolescent on the head wasn’t really considered a crime in colonial America.)

That’s not to say the jury thought the other soldiers were innocent. In fact, the jurors probably came closer to finding most of those men guilty than their relatively brief deliberation might imply. Acting governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote in a 1770 almanac (eventually published in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings):

The Court [i.e., the judges] doubted whether in any the fact could be M.S. [manslaughter] the violence offered by the people they supposed would make it se defendendo [in self-defense] in every one of the Soldiers, but it seems the Jury thought they ought to have been longer before they fired & if it had been proved that all fired they would have brought in all Guilty of MSr [manslaughter] but the general run of the Evidence was that there was only 7 Guns fired by 8

whoever the eighth was there was nothing which could involve him in the guilt of the other seven. Rather therefore than convict one of the six not proved to have fired who must be innocent the jury acquitted five who were Guilty.

In the same search of the main guard that revealed the bloody bayonet, local officials found that seven of the eight muskets had been fired. They had no way of knowing which soldier had handled which gun. If the army had a system, they didn’t share that information. (Fingerprint evidence hadn’t been developed yet, of course.)

Prosecutor Robert Treat Paine argued that Cpl. Wemys was the man who refrained from firing but admitted that wasn’t certain. And that measure of doubt was enough to spare not only the corporal but five privates.

The Boston Massacre trial is thus not only an early American example of ensuring that even unpopular defendants receive adequate legal representation but also the belief that it’s wiser to let probably guilty defendants go free than to wrongly convict an innocent person.

TOMORROW: The sentence for manslaughter.

Convicted for the Boston Massacre

After Robert Treat Paine finished his closing argument in the second Boston Massacre trial on 5 Dec 1770, the justices delivered their charges to the jury.

In modern trials, judges usually confine their remarks to clarifying points of law. In the eighteenth century, they also analyzed the facts of the case, often making clear what verdict they thought was appropriate.

The justices spoke in reverse order of seniority, with Edmund Trowbridge going first. Having been the province’s attorney general for over a decade, he had the most courtroom experience of any of the judges. Indeed, one didn’t even have to be a lawyer to become a Massachusetts Superior Court justice.

After reviewing British law on murder, Trowbridge got into how to apply it to the specifics of this case:

Some witnesses have been produced to prove that [Edward] Montgomery killed [Crispus] Attucks; and [Edward G.] Langford swears [Mathew] Killroy killed [Samuel] Gray, but none of the witnesses undertake to say that either of the other prisoners in particular killed either of the other three persons, or that all of them did it. On the contrary it seems that one of the six did not fire, and that another of them fired at a boy as he was running down the street, but missed him (if he had killed him, as the evidence stands, it would have been murder) but the witnesses are not agreed as to the person who fired at the boy, or as to him who did not fire at all.

It is highly probable, from the places where the five persons killed fell and their wounds, that they were killed by the discharge of five several guns only. If you are upon the evidence satisfied of that, and also that Montgomery killed Attucks, and Killroy Gray, it will thence follow that the other three, were killed, not by the other six prisoners, but by three of them only: and therefore they cannot all be found guilty of it. And as the evidence does not shew which three killed the three, nor that either of the six in particular killed either of the three, you cannot find either of the six guilty of killing them or either [of] them.

As to the argument that the soldiers were guilty for firing without orders or authorization from a magistrate, Trowbridge stated, “A man by becoming a soldier, doth not thereby lose the right of self-defence which is founded in the law of nature.”

Next came Justice Peter Oliver (shown above), who left no doubt about what verdict he would consider just:

If upon the whole, by comparing the evidence, ye should find that the prisoners were a lawful assembly at the Custom house, which ye can be in no doubt of if you believe the witnesses, and also that they behaved properly in their own department whilst there, and did not fire till there was a necessity to do it in their own defence, which I think there is a violent presumption of: and if, on the other hand, ye should find that the people who were collected around the soldiers, were an unlawful assembly, and had a design to endanger, if not to take away their lives, as seems to be evident, from blows succeeding threatnings; ye must, in such case acquit the prisoners; or if upon the whole, ye are in any reasonable doubt of their guilt, ye must then, agreeable to the rule of law, declare them innocent.

No one kept a detailed record of Justice John Cushing’s remarks. He apparently said much the same as his colleagues.

Finally came the senior and presiding judge, Benjamin Lynde. Only some of his remarks survive. He acknowledged the evidence against Pvt. Kilroy, both in firing a fatal shot and in having a malicious motive, was the strongest against any of the defendants. Then he added:

But whether he can be charged with murder is the question, when he went there, not by himself, but by command of his officer whom he was bound to obey, and placed there in defense and support of sentry fixed at this post by martial authority. And when you consider the threatening given them all, the things flung, and stroke given, and that the person slain [Attucks] was one of the most active, and had threatened he would knock down some of the soldiers, and, what [witness Joseph Hinkley] swears, was animating and pushing on the people, dissuading them from running away, for “they durst not fire,” these things, together with the real danger they all were in from the numbers surrounding, may lessen his crime, from what he is charged with, to manslaughter.

According to Paine’s notes, the case was turned over to the jury “at 1/2 past one” on 5 December. Those twelve men went away and deliberated “for about two hours and an half,” or until late afternoon. In contrast, the jury in Ebenezer Richardson’s trial back in the spring had met from 11:00 P.M. to about 9:00 A.M. before pronouncing the man guilty of murder. The jury in Capt. Thomas Preston’s trial were out from 5:00 P.M. to 9:00 the next morning and decided on acquittal.

Court officials asked foreman Joseph Mayo to announce this jury’s decision about each defendant in turn. The judgments were:

• Cpl. William Wemys, not guilty.
• Pvt. James Hartigan, not guilty.
• Pvt. William Macauley, not guilty.
• Pvt. Hugh White, not guilty.
• Pvt. Mathew Kilroy, not guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter.
• Pvt. William Warren, not guilty.
• Pvt. John Carroll, not guilty.
• Pvt. Edward (Hugh) Montgomery, not guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter.

TOMORROW: Inside the jury room.

The Prosecution’s Closing Argument

John Adams’s closing argument in the trial of soldiers for the Boston Massacre started on 3 Dec 1770 and lasted until the next day.

Then Robert Treat Paine summed up for the prosecution, concluding on the morning of 5 December, 250 years ago today.

Paine’s notes for that presentation survive, though his handwriting is notoriously hard to read. He planned to say:

Witnesses tell you they saw nothing of the violent Abuses offered to the Soldiers nor heard the Threats and loud Hallowings testified of by others. Some of this Collection were Boys and Negros drawn there by the Curiosity peculiar to their disposition, and without doubt might throw some Snow Balls, and its quite natural to believe from the Evidence and the Nature of the thing that there were some there armed with Sticks and Clubbs determin’d if the Soldiers abused them in the manner they had the Inhabitants that Evning and at times before to try the weight of them and had repaired into K[ing].S[treet]. on a Supposition that those Soldiers who had began the disorder of the Evening at a time when they ought to have been in their Barracks were continuing their disorders there, (for it appears about the time of the attack on the Centry [several?] partys of Soldiers were seen in K.S. armed with clubbs Cutlasses &c.;) and that they had not the least design or Idea of Attacking a Party on duty. And many other peaceable people gathered there meerly to see what was going on.

Can any person living from the history of this Affair as it turns up in Evidence Suppose these persons were such dangerous rioters as to bring them within those Rules of Law which have been read to you that it is lawful to kill them; Shall the innocent and peaceable who by meer Casualty are mixt with [some?] of the ruder Sort be liable to be Shot down by a Party of Soldiers meerly because they please to call ’em dangerous Rioters? Tis the Action [Generally?] and not a few [Angry?] tho threatning Expressions that constitutes any Riot and the Agreement of the whole Body that makes ’em Partys. This appears from some of the Authoritys read. . . .

It is proved to you Gentlemen that all the Prisoners at the Bar were present in K.S. at the firing. It appears by the current of the testimony that 7 Guns were fired, and it appears pretty certain that [William] Wemys, the Corporal was the one who did not fire. It is certain that five men were killed by the firing of which [Edward] Montgomery killed [Crispus] Attucks and [Mathew] Kilroy killed [Samuel] Grey.

But which of the other 5 prisoners killed the other 3 of the deceased appears very uncertain. But this operates nothing in their favour if it appears to you that they were an unlawful Assembly for it has been abundantly proved to you by the Numerous Authoritys produced by the Council for the Prisoners, that every individual of an Unlawful Assembly is answerable for the doings of the rest. They are all considered as Principals, and all that are present aiding assisting and abetting to the doing an unlawful act as is charged in the Several Indictments against the Prisoners are also considered as Principals. . . .

When you recollect further, the Account given you by many Witnesses, that on firing the first Gun the people dispersed and were in a Manner withdrawn to a distance at the firing the last Guns[;] that the last Gun was fired at a Boy at a distance running down Street; that they presented their firelocks again at the few people who came with the Chirugeon [Dr. Joseph Gardner] to pick up the Dead it appears to me you must be Satisfy’d they were possessed of that Wicked depraved malignant Spirit which constitutes Malice, that from the whole Evidence taken together no just Cause appears for such outrageous Conduct and therefore that they must be considered as aiding and assisting each other in this unlawful Act which the lawfulness of their Assembling will not excuse. . .

Paine singled outs Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy as killing specific victims. Since the corporal was “pretty certain” not to have fired a shot, Paine argued the other privates just must have shot the rest.

Edward Pierce’s notes as a juror show that that was just the sort of distinction he was keeping track of. But would he and his fellow jurors accept the Crown’s argument that all the privates were part of an illegal attack on the crowd?

TOMORROW: The judges’ charges and the verdict.

Looking for Trouble, Even on the Sabbath

Among the men who brawled at John Gray’s ropewalk on 2 Mar 1770 were a young ropemaker named Samuel Gray (no known relation) and Pvts. William Warren and Mathew Kilroy of the 29th Regiment.

The next day, there were more fights in Boston. Some redcoats from the 29th, including Pvt. John Carroll, went back into Gray’s ropewalk and challenged the men working there, along with sailor James Bailey. Then there was another brawl, with one private reportedly badly injured.

Town watch captain Benjamin Burdick also had a run-in with soldiers on Saturday:

A young man that boarded with me, and was at the Rope-Walks, told me several of them had a spite at him, and that he believed he was in danger. I had seen two soldiers about my house, I saw one of them hearkening at the window, I saw him again near the house, and asked him what he was after;

he said he was pumping ship:

(“Pumping ship” was slang for urinating. This may have been a reference to William Green’s rude joke the day before about cleaning an outhouse. Then again, the soldier might have been urinating.)

Was it not you, says I, that was hearkening at my window last night?

what if it was, he said, I told him to march off, and he damned me, and I beat him till he had enough of it, and he then went off.

That incident made Burdick, and even more so his wife, decide that he should carry a Highland broadsword when he went out on duty.

Sunday was a day of rest in Boston, of course. Yet more military men visited Gray’s ropewalks then, 250 years ago today. But this delegation was at a higher level, as owner John Gray testified:

At Sabbath noon I was surprised at hearing that Col. [Maurice] Carr [of the 29th] and his officers had entered my rope-walk, opened the windows, doors, &c, giving out that they were searching for a dead sergeant of their regiment; this put me upon immediately waiting upon Col. [William] Dalrymple [of the 14th, senior army officer in Boston, pictured above after retirement], to whom I related what I understood had passed at the rope-walk days before.

He replied it was much the same as he had heard from his people; but says he, “your man was the aggressor in affronting one of my people, by asking him if he wanted to work, and then telling him to clean his little-house.”

For this expression I dismissed my journeyman on the Monday morning following; and further said, I would do all in my power to prevent my people’s giving them any affront in future.

He then assured me, he had and should do everything in his power to keep his soldiers in order, and prevent their any more entering my inclosure.

Presently after, Col. Carr came in, and asked Col. Dalrymple what they should do, for they were daily losing their men; that three of his grenadiers passing quietly by the rope-walks were greatly abused, and one of them so much beat that he would die.

He then said he had been searching for a sergeant who had been murdered; upon which, I said, Yes, Colonel, I hear you have been searching for him in my rope-walks; and asked him, whether that sergeant had been in the affray there on the Friday; he replied, no: for he was seen on the Saturday. I then asked him, how he could think of looking for him in my walks; and that had he applied to me, I would have waited on him, and opened every apartment I had for his satisfaction.

These gentlemen in the military and in business were trying to keep the peace, but also sought to protect the interests of their operations.

The 12 March Boston Gazette added detail, perhaps even reliable, to the story of the missing sergeant:

Divers stories were propagated among the soldiery that served to agitate their spirits; particularly on the Sabbath that one Chambers, a sergeant, represented as a sober man, had been missing the preceding day and must therefore have been murdered by the townsmen. An officer of distinction so far credited this report that he entered Mr. Gray’s rope-walk that Sabbath; and when required of by that gentleman as soon as he could meet him, the occasion of his so doing, the officer replied that it was to look if the sergeant said to be murdered had not been hid there.

This sober sergeant was found on the Monday unhurt in a house of pleasure.

On the day of rest there were no more brawls, but rumors flew among the townspeople that soldiers were plotting revenge on Monday. Oddly enough, rumors spread among the soldiers that townspeople were plotting revenge on Monday.

COMING UP: Another glimpse of Sergeant Chambers. But first…

Watchman Langford “in King-street that evening the 5th March”

Yesterday we saw rookie town watchman Edward G. Langford dealing with the influx of British soldiers—and, more troublesome, British army officers—into Boston in 1768.

On 5 Mar 1770, Langford saw the conflict between the local population and the army come to a head in front of the Customs house on King Street, a short walk from the watch-house that was the base for his nightly patrols.

Langford was called to testify at the trials of Capt. Thomas Preston and the enlisted men. Here’s the record of his testimony from the latter trial, as taken down by John Hodgson:

Q. Was you in King-street that evening the 5th March?

A. Yes. The bells began to ring, and the people cryed fire: I run with the rest, and went into King-street; I asked where the fire was; I was told there was no fire, but that the soldiers at [James] Murray’s barracks had got out, and had been fighting with the inhabitants, but that they had drove them back again. I went to the barracks, and found the affair was over there.

I came back, and just as I got to the Town pump, I saw twenty or five and twenty boys going into King-street. I went into King-street myself, and saw several boys and young men about the Sentry box at the Custom-house. I asked them what was the matter. They said the Sentry [Pvt. Hugh White] had knocked down a boy [Edward Garrick]. They crowded in over the gutter; I told them to let the Sentry alone. He went up the steps of the Custom-house, and knocked at the door, but could not get in. I told him not to be afraid, they were only boys, and would not hurt him. . . . The boys were swearing and speaking bad words, but they threw nothing.

Q. Were they pressing on him?

A. They were as far as the gutter, and he went up the steps and called out, but what he said I do not remember.

Q. Did he call loud?

A. Yes, pretty loud.

Q. To whom did he call?

A. I do not know; when he went up the steps he levelled his piece with his bayonet fixed. As I was talking with the Sentry, and telling him not to be afraid, the soldiers came down, and when they came, I drew back from the Sentry towards Royal-exchange lane, and there I stood. I did not see them load, but somebody said, are you loaded; and Samuel Gray…came and struck me on the shoulder, and said, Langford, what’s here to pay.

Q. What said you to Gray then?

A. I said I did not know what was to pay, but I believed something would come of it by and bye. He made no reply. Immediately a gun went off. I was within reach of their guns and bayonets; one of them thrust at me with his bayonet, and run it through my jacket and great coat.

Q. Where was you then?

A. Within three or four feet of the gutter, on the outside. . . .

Q. How many people were there before the soldiers at that time?

A. About forty or fifty, but there were numbers in the lane.

Q. Were they nigh the soldiers?

A. They were not in the inside of the gutter.

Q. Had any of the inhabitants sticks or clubs?

A. I do not know. I had one myself, because I was going to the watch, for I belong to the watch.

Q. How many soldiers were there?

A. I did not count the number of them, about seven or eight I think.

Q. Who was it fired the first gun?

A. I do not know.

Q. Where about did he stand that fired?

A. He stood on my right, as I stood facing them: I stood about half way betwixt the box and Royal-exchange lane. I looked this man (pointing to [Pvt. Mathew] Killroy) in the face, and bid him not fire; but he immediately fired, and Samuel Gray fell at my feet. Killroy thrust his bayonet immediately through my coat and jacket; I ran towards the watch-house, and stood there.

Q. Where did Killroy stand?

A. He stood on the right of the party.

Q. Was he the right hand man?

A. I cannot tell: I believe there were two or three on his right, but I do not know. . . .

Q. Did you see any thing hit the soldiers?

A. No, I saw nothing thrown. I heard the rattling of their guns, and took it to be one gun against another. This rattling was at the time Killroy fired, and at my right, I had a fair view of them; I saw nobody strike a blow nor offer a blow.

Q. Have you any doubt in your own mind, that it was that gun of Killroy’s that killed Gray?

A. No manner of doubt; it must have been it, for there was no other gun discharged at that time.

Q. Did you know the Indian that was killed?

A. No.

Q. Did you see any body press on the soldiers with a large cord wood stick?

A. No.

Q. After Gray fell, did he (Killroy) thrust at him with his bayonet?

A. No, it was at me he pushed.

Q. Did Gray say any thing to Killroy, or Killroy to him?

A. No, not to my knowledge, and I stood close by him.

Q. Did you perceive Killroy take aim at Gray?

A. I did not: he was as liable to kill me as him.

Langford’s testimony was important in positively identifying Pvt. Mathew Kilroy as the soldier who had fatally shot ropemaker Samuel Gray. Kilroy was one of the only two defendants convicted of manslaughter and branded as a felon.

Edward G. Langford remained on the town watch payroll until November 1772. The last record I found of him showed that he died on 26 Mar 1777, aged thirty-eight. He was buried out of Trinity Church. Five years later a Mary Langford, perhaps his widow or his sister, was licensed to retail alcohol to support herself.

New Myths of the Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre occurred 244 years ago today. From the start that was a controversial event with different participants seeing it quite differently. It’s been mythologized in many ways, and myths and misconceptions continue to crop up. Here are some that I’ve seen repeated recently.

Did Crispus Attucks work at Gray’s ropewalk?

Boston’s official report on the shooting, titled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre…, gave a lot of attention to a brawl between soldiers and workers at John Gray’s rope-manufacturing facility on 2 March. That fight involved two soldiers, Mathew Kilroy and William Warren, and one ropemaker, Samuel Gray, who faced off on King Street three days later. Another soldier, John Carroll, was part of a follow-up brawl on 3 March. Thus, the town suggested, those soldiers had not shot in self-defense but out of anger at townspeople, and perhaps at Samuel Gray in particular.

In all that attention to the ropewalk fight, however, no witness identified Crispus Attucks as being involved. Testimony does put a big man of African descent in the brawl: Drummer Thomas Walker of the 29th Regiment. But justice of the peace John Hill recalled shouting at Walker, “you black rascal, what have you to do with white people’s quarrels?” That suggests that no man of color like Attucks had been prominent in the fights before. Newspapers described Gray as a ropemaker but Attucks simply as a sailor.

In 2008 I noted a Boston Globe essay that said, “According to lore, Attucks reappeared [in Boston] just before the massacre, likely finding dock work as a rope maker.” But there’s no evidence for that guess and some to suggest it was mistaken. I suspect people trying to find a tight link between the ropewalk fight and the shooting on King Street assumed Attucks was involved in both, but historical events aren’t always so neat.

Did Attucks work on a whaling ship?

In Traits of the Tea-Party, published in 1835, Benjamin Bussey Thatcher cited an old barber named William Pierce as his source that Attucks “was a Nantucket Indian, belonging on board a whale-ship of Mr. Folger’s, then in the harbor…” But Pierce also told Thatcher that he’d never seen Attucks before the night of the Massacre, so he didn’t have inside information.

Boston’s 1770 newspapers directly contradict Pierce. They said Attucks was from Framingham, not Nantucket. They reported Attucks was “lately belonging to New-Providence [in the Bahamas], and was here in order to go for North-Carolina”—meaning he worked on trading voyages to the south rather than hunting whales.

I suspect that Pierce’s memory of Attucks from sixty-five years before had gotten mixed with his memory of the Prince Boston legal case, which did involve a man of African and Native descent, whalers from Nantucket, and a captain named Folger.

TOMORROW: The myth of the tombs.

Don Hagist on Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy

A few years back, Don Hagist, blogger and author of British Soldiers, American War, alerted me that the name of Pvt. Hugh White of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot appeared in army pension records digitized by the British National Archives. White’s pension paperwork showed where he was born, how old he was at discharge, and how long he had been in the army.

From that data we could calculate White’s age and military experience on 5 Mar 1770, when he was the sentry on King Street before the Boston Massacre. Suddenly a man who had been little more than a name and a caricature in the propaganda prints by Henry Pelham and Paul Revere became an individual. He was an Irishman, thirty years old, and he’d served in the British army for eleven years.

Late last year Don told me he’d found similar records for two more soldiers involved in the Massacre—in fact, the two who were convicted of manslaughter. Here is Don’s explanation of this new discovery as a special “guest blogger” posting.

The 29th Regiment’s muster rolls for the second half of 1774 are missing, and Pvts. Edward Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy do not appear on the surviving 1775 rolls. That leaves no indication of whether they were discharged, died, deserted, or were drafted into another regiment—and at that time many men were being drafted into regiments bound for America.

The discharge certificates for many army pensioners survive in the WO 97, WO 119, and WO 121 collections at the British National Archives (all indexed online), and those do not list Montgomery and Kilroy either. But those collections do not include all pensioners, only those for whom discharge certificates survive.

There’s another source on army pensioners in the National Archives: WO 116, Chelsea Out-Pension Admission Books. This collection is a chronological listing of all men who appeared before the board of examiners for out-pensions administered by Chelsea Hospital in London.

Montgomery and Kilroy both appeared before the board on 22 Feb 1776. Here is a screen shot of the PDF file of the digital scan of the microfilm of the manuscript (don’t we live in a wonderful age?).

This admission book states each soldier’s name, age, years of service, infirmity for which he was discharged, place of birth, and trade. Montgomery was born at Antrim in Ireland and was thirty-five years old in 1770, with fourteen years in the army. Kilroy was from a town in County Laois, Ireland. Twenty-two years old around the time of the Massacre, he had joined the army at fifteen, an unusually young age. Both men were listed as “labourers,” meaning they had no skilled trade.

It is also very interesting that Montgomery and Kilroy went before the examination board (which met several times a year) on the same day, suggesting some camaraderie between them, but that’s only speculative. Officially, Montgomery was “Worn out” while Kilroy had “a Lame Knee.”

I speculate that the army was happy to discharge Montgomery and Kilroy before their regiment headed for Canada and the American war. With their thumbs branded, those two men could have been recognized and singled out for punishment if they were captured.

As it happened, the 29th’s grenadier company was part of Gen. John Burgoyne’s army and did become prisoners of war, marched to eastern Massachusetts in the Convention Army. But thanks to this discharge, Montgomery and Kilroy were not among them.

Thanks, Don, for helping us see these soldiers as individuals. Keep up the excellent work!

Pleading the Death of the Clergy

Under the rules of criminal trials at the time of the Boston Massacre, defendants weren’t allowed to testify on their own behalf. That meant that none of the eight soldiers’ voices got into their trial record. (Capt. Thomas Preston helped with his defense, and is thus recorded as having asked questions, not answered them.)

Yet there is an anecdote that might preserve the voice of Pvt. Mathew Kilroy. He was one of the two men convicted of manslaughter. That was a capital crime, but under an old British law defendants convicted of it for the first time could “plead the benefit of clergy” and suffer only being branded with the letter F on the base of one thumb.

One of the three trial judges, Peter Oliver (shown above), included this incident in his delightfully caustic memoir of the run-up to the Revolution:

At the Conclusion of the Trial of Capt. Preston’s Soldiers in Boston; one of them, who was brought in guilty of Manslaughter, standing at the Bar, was asked by the chief Justice, what Objection he had to offer why sentence of Death should not be passed upon him? The simple Fellow did not know what to say. A Bystander whispered to him, to pray the Benefit of the Clergy. The Man not understanding the whole of the Direction, bawled out with an audible Voice, “may it please your Honors! I pray the Death of the Clergy”—& many present nodded their Amen.

It’s possible that the man who cried out was Pvt. Edward Montgomery, the other soldier convicted of manslaughter. But there’s at least a 50% chance it was Kilroy, and since we know Kilroy hadn’t been educated well enough to sign his name I like to think he was the man.

The “benefit of clergy” was originally a benefit for actual or potential members of the clergy, who qualified by showing that they knew how to read from the Bible. The branding was added to prevent such a felon from escaping capital punishment twice.

So how did Kilroy avoid hanging this way? While it’s possible he could read without being able to sign his name, the most likely explanation is that by the eighteenth century “benefit of clergy” was merely a ritual. People understood that the branding had become the actual punishment for manslaughter, as well as a permanent “one strike” for the felon. Convicts were even known to memorize the Bible verse they traditionally had to read—Psalms 51:1, the “neck verse”—but courts still went through the motions of the plea. (For more on “benefit of clergy,” here’s an article from Colonial Williamsburg, and a podcast transcript.)

The muster rolls of the 29th Regiment show that several of the soldiers put on trial were promoted to corporal or sergeant soon after they rejoined their company. Kilroy didn’t rise in those ranks, probably because being a non-commissioned officer required some literacy.

(A quick reminder: Pvt. Mathew Kilroy’s fatal confrontation with the Boston crowd is being reenacted three times today, the 241st anniversary of that event.)

“We poor men that is Obliged to Obay his command”

Pvt. Mathew Kilroy was one of the soldiers of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot put on trial after the Boston Massacre of 5 Mar 1770. Finding sources that preserve the voices or stories of individual British enlisted men in this period is very hard—all the more reason to marvel at the work behind Don Hagist’s British Soldiers, American Revolution site.

In the case of Pvt. Kilroy, one legal document speaks for him—in a way. It’s a filing from the Massacre trial, on behalf of Kilroy and two fellow defendants:

To the Honourable Judges of the Superior Court,

My it please Yr. Honours we poor Distressed Prisoners Beg that ye Would be so good as to lett us have our Trial at the same time with our Captain for we did our Captains Orders & if we dont Obay is Commands should have been Confine’d & shott for not doing of it—

We Humbly pray Yr. Honours that your would take it into yr serious consideration & grant us that favour for we only desire to Open the truth before our Captains face for it is very hard he being a Gentleman should have more chance for to save his life then we poor men that is Obliged to Obay his command—

We hope that Yr. Honours will grant this our petition, & we shall all be in duty Bound over to pray for Your honours

Dated Boston Goal
October ye. 24th. 1770

Hugh White
James Hartegan
Mathew Killroy
+
his mark

Capt. Thomas Preston was due to be tried first. It appears that White, Hartegan, and Kilroy were concerned that he would throw the blame for the shootings on them. The judges didn’t grant their petition, Preston did indeed build his defense on never having ordered the soldiers to fire, and in fact the evidence still looks mighty favorable to him.

Two of Preston’s attorneys—John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr.—then defended the soldiers in their separate trial. These days, that would be a conflict of interest, but in 1770 there weren’t that many lawyers to go around.

That legal team argued mainly that the soldiers had fired in self-defense, and for the most part they were successful. The jury convicted only two of the eight men, and only of manslaughter. Those two were Pvt. Edward Montgomery, who privately admitted to having yelled “Fire!” to his comrades, and Kilroy. Probably the bayonet evidence sunk him.

It’s not clear why of the eight soldiers only Kilroy, White (the sentry), and Hartigan signed this petition. But that detail is a reminder that each “redcoat” was an individual, making his own decision for his own reasons, which in most cases never got written down.

TOMORROW: Mathew Kilroy’s voice at the trial?

Mr. Hewes and Pvt. Kilroy

Yesterday I quoted a story from George R. T. Hewes that was published in Traits of the Tea Party in 1835.

It described how he saw a British soldier he called “Kelroy” mug a woman on Queen Street in Boston and steal some clothing from her. Hewes said he followed the soldier, got the clothes back by threatening to expose his crime, and then returned those goods to the woman.

I tried various ways to test Hewes’s story:

• Was the action he described reasonable? Hewes said he followed the soldier from Queen Street (now Court Street) to the Common, south along Tremont, then east across town to Wheeler’s Point near Fort Hill. That’s a plausible route, especially for someone who wanted to avoid crowds on the main streets.
• Was there a “barracks on Wheeler’s Point,” also known as Windmill Point? The 29th Regiment was housed in several buildings around Boston in 1768-70, including some in the South End. But I haven’t found a specific reference to a barracks in that neighborhood.
• Was there “a notice of the assault in the papers,” as Hewes recalled? I couldn’t find one, though I may not have searched for the right terms. The Boston Whigs described army misbehavior through late 1769 in a series of dispatches to newspapers in other towns called “The Journal of the Times.” Boston newspapers published those reports weeks after the events they described, and that timing doesn’t fit Hewes’s story.
• Did a “Capt. Cobb” live in West Boston? I’ve found references to a sea captain named Cobb going in and out of Boston harbor, but I haven’t found him as a homeowner. It’s not clear from the story whether the woman was a relative, boarder, or house servant; either way, her presence was probably not recorded.
  

In sum, I couldn’t find any little confirmation of Hewes’s tale. However, the woman’s lack of gratitude is a curious detail which doesn’t fit into a neat story that the little shoemaker might have made up about his heroism. (Had he gotten in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel or breakup? Another possible wrinkle: Mount Whoredom was in West Boston.)

Hewes’s story gains a clear moral only in its second act. On the evening of 5 Mar 1770, he was in the crowd around sentry Pvt. Hugh White at the Customs house. Cpl. William Wemys led out a squad of grenadiers as reinforcements. According to Hewes:

His old acquaintance, Kelroy,…was one of the guard. “Get out of the way!— get out of the way!”—he cried, as he pushed roughly by, and dealt his old friend Hewes a pretty severe recognition with his gun, in the shoulder, as he left him.

The violence escalated until the soldiers shot into the crowd, the event dubbed the Boston Massacre. Hewes and other witnesses claimed to see Pvt. Mathew Kilroy “running his bayonet into the brains of one of the dead or wounded”—most likely ropemaker Samuel Gray. In the morning, people saw dried blood on Kilroy’s bayonet. Other witnesses said that both Kilroy and Gray had both been part of the ropewalk brawl three days before.

That accumulation of evidence led jurors to conclude that Kilroy was more guilty than most of his fellow soldiers. He was one of the two men convicted of manslaughter, potentially a capital crime. And the lesson of the story Hewes told in 1835, if we can believe it, is that Kilroy had been a bad ’un all along.

TOMORROW: Seeking Mathew Kilroy’s voice.

“Hewes, who wanted nothing but justice”

With the Boston Massacre anniversary and reenactments coming up, I’m giving the writs of assistance a short rest in favor of more violent events.

The first tale comes from long-lived shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes (shown here, courtesy of C.U.N.Y.), in his second memoir of life in pre-Revolutionary Boston. In 1835 he told amanuensis Benjamin Bussey Thatcher about an encounter with a British soldier sometime between late 1768 and early 1770:

One moonshiny night, (as he describes it) Hewes was passing the Town House, (now City Hall [now the Old State House Museum]) when he noticed a woman turning up Prison Lane, or Queen Street—both names then given to what is now Court Street.

A soldier followed her; and Hewes’s curiosity was excited to watch the movements of the “red coat.” He walked behind him softly in the shade, and presently saw him overtake the woman, and deal her a blow with his fist, that felled her. He then, with a violent haste, stripped her of her bonnet, ‘cardinal,’ muff and tippet, and, having completed this achievement, started off on a run.

Hewes followed him up Prison Lane, and down Tremont Street, past the whole length of the Common, to the barracks on Wheeler’s Point (out of Sea Street.) There the soldier went in.

Hewes called there the next morning, and called for Mr. “Kelroy;” having made up his mind that he knew the fellow. He came out, and Hewes charged him with the outrage boldly. Kelroy persisted in denying it, till Hewes, threatening to complain of him to the General, turned to leave him; and then he called him back, and gave up all the things.

Hewes, who wanted nothing but justice, concluded not to report him. He afterwards looked up the woman, by the aid of a notice of the assault in the papers, and found her at Capt. Cobb’s, in New (now West) Boston. She did not so much as thank him for the property which he returned to her.

Was Hewes’s memory accurate? He told this story sixty-five or more years after the event, when there was no one around to contradict him. Some details in his other stories are surprisingly accurate, but a few (especially reflecting on his role) are contradicted by contemporaneous sources.

TOMORROW: The rest of the story.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 2

Yesterday I quoted the start of blockmaker James Brewer’s testimony about what he had seen on King Street on the night of Monday, 5 Mar 1770. Here’s more from his time in the witness-box as the prosecutors led him to fill in his account—particularly a detail he’d left out earlier, but which was probably crucial to the case they were trying to make.

Q: Was it the first gun that you thought wounded [Christopher] Monk?

B: No.

Q: Did you see any of these prisoners there?

B: I think I saw [Pvt. Mathew] Kilroy, and that he was the man who struck me with his bayonet, when they came down, before they formed.

Q: Did any body near you do any violence to him?

B: No, I saw none.

Q: Had you seen Monk that evening before?

B: No, nor the day before.

Q: How near were you to the soldiers when they fired?

B: I was about ten or fifteen feet from them, I stood in the street just above Royal-exchange-lane, about six or seven feet from the gutter.

Q: Could you see the whole party?

B: Yes, they stood in a circle, or half moon.

Q: Did you take notice of the distance betwixt the first and second gun?

B: No.

Q: Was your back to them, when that first gun was fired?

B: No, my face was to them.

Q: Where did the firing begin?

B: Towards the corner of Royal-exchange-lane. I think it was the man quite to the right.

Q: Did you know him?

B: No.

Q: Did the man that struck you do it on purpose, or accidentally, do you think?

B: I think he did it on purpose, I apprehended it so; I was standing by the gutter, and he was before me.

Q: Said he anything to you?

B: No, nor I to him: he came to form, and I was closer than I wished I was, and he struck me.

Pvt. Kilroy was key to the prosecutors’ hopes of convincing the jury that the British soldiers were out for blood when they arrived on King Street. He had been at the brawl between soldiers and ropemakers the previous Friday. He had a bad reputation in Boston, shoemaker George R. T. Hewes would recall. And according to Brewer, he had struck out at the crowd with his bayonet “on purpose” and been the first to fire his gun.

(Image of musket and bayonet above from the Black Watch Regimental Museum.)

COMING UP: James Brewer’s cross-examination.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 1

On Wednesday, 28 Nov 1770, the Crown called James Brewer, blockmaker, to the witness stand at the trial of soldiers for the shootings on King Street the previous March. The prosecutors were Solicitor General Samuel Quincy and an attorney specially hired by the town of Boston, Robert Treat Paine. Their questioning started like this:

Q: Please to look upon the prisoners, do you know any of them?

Brewer: I think I remember this man. [He pointed to Pvt. Mathew Kilroy.]

Q: Was you in King-street the fifth of March last?

B: Yes, in the evening.

Q: Please to inform the Court and Jury what you saw there?

B: I came up Royal-exchange-lane, and as I got to the head of it, I saw the Sentry [Pvt. Hugh White] on the steps of the Custom-house, with his bayonet breast high, with a number of boys round him: I called to him, and said, I did not think any body was going to do him harm. I saw Capt. [Thomas] Preston and some soldiers come down.

Q: Which of the prisoners was the Sentry?

B: I cannot tell, I was not so nigh him to know his face.

Q: How many boys were there round him?

B: I think about twenty.

Q: How old were those boys?

B: About fourteen or fifteen years old, perhaps some of them older, I saw no men there except one, who came up Royal-exchange-lane with me, thinking it [the alarm bell] was fire. He went back again.

Q: What did you take to be the reason that the Sentry charged his bayonet?

B: I could not tell what the reason was; there was no body troubling him. I was at the corner of Royal-exchange-lane, and a young man went up to the Sentry and spoke to him; what he said I do not know.

Q: Was you there at the time of the firing?

B: Yes, I went toward the Sentry-box, where I saw Capt. Preston. I said to him, Sir, I hope you are not going to fire, for everybody is going to their own homes. He said I hope they are. I saw no more of him. He immediately went in amongst the soldiers.

Q: What number of soldiers were there?

B: I think seven or eight, I did not count them. [There were eight enlisted men, including White.]

Q: Did Capt. Preston lead or follow them down?

B: I think he was upon the right of them. [Preston arrived a short time after his men, who were led by a corporal.] As they came down they had their guns charged breast high. I saw Christopher Monk [a sixteen-year-old shipwright’s apprentice], who was wounded that night, I turned to speak to him, and directly they fired, and he seemed to faulter. I said are you wounded, he said yes. I replied, I do not think it, for I then apprehended they fired only powder [i.e., the soldiers had fired blanks].

NEXT: Brewer’s testimony continues.