“Promised on receiving a bribe, to let a person bring out £240”

Along with the other reports on life inside besieged Boston that I discussed yesterday, on 17 Dec 1775 Capt. Richard Dodge reported this dastardly deed:

Morson Scotch menster took Bribe of A Sertain Genttelmen of 36/ Starling to Gett Out of Boston and 72/ to Let him Bring Out A trunk of £240 Pound in Cash Wich when he Had it in his Power sezd the Holl and Carreed it to Boston A Gain.

In more familiar spelling, the Rev. John Morrison, a Presbyterian minister from Peterborough, New Hampshire, who had come to the siege lines as a chaplain and then defected to the British, charged a man more than £5 to slip out of Boston with cash, but then confiscated the cash.

That story soon got to printer Benjamin Edes, as reported in his next issue of the Boston Gazette on 25 December:

That one Morrison, who officiates as a Presbyterian minister, being appointed searcher of those people who were permitted to leave the town, promised on receiving a bribe, to let a person bring out £240 sterling in cash and plate: but afterwards basely deprived him of the whole of it:—

That article was reprinted in the Pennsylvania Packet on 1 Jan 1776, and here on Boston 1775 in 2008.

One of Capt. Dodge’s informants, a ship captain named Nowell, then went home to Newburyport and told the same story for the 22 December Essex Journal:

That one Morrison a Scotch minister, was appointed to search the inhabitants upon their leaving the town, who received a bribe of two Johanneses to let a small trunk pass unmolested, yet notwithstanding his engagements, he opened the trunk and took out 2400 pounds in cash and a quantity of plate, which was all the trunk contained; what we suppose induced him to this, was, because the informer is intitled to one half of the plunder.

But this time, the numbers got bigger.

(Shown above: Two Portoguese Johannes coins from the mid-1700s, courtesy of BrianRxm.)

Eight Runaway Men in a Boat from Boston

Capt. Richard Dodge was a Continental Army officer stationed in Chelsea during the second half of 1775. Like his regimental commander, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin, he sent periodic reports to Gen. George Washington’s headquarters about what he saw in Boston harbor.

On 16 December, Dodge reported some exciting news: “Last Eveing Eight men Runaway in a bote from Boston to our guard at the farry.”

Following recently enacted protocol, Dodge sent those men to a local health committee who “Clensed them by Smooking them” against the smallpox.

Six (or seven, according to the 25 December Boston Gazette) of those eight men were “masters of Vassels” captured by the Royal Navy and brought into Boston over the preceding months.

One, Capt. James Warden, had sailed for the Philadelphia merchant Thomas Mifflin and was anxious to renew their acquaintance now that Mifflin was the army’s quartermaster general. Naval Documents of the American Revolution reports that Warden was commanding the schooner Tryal on 22 August when it surrendered to H.M.S. Nautilus under Capt. John Collins.

The Essex Journal of Newburyport identified another of those ship’s captains as named Nowell, possibly Silas Nowell (who wouldn’t have been held that long). He came out with a copy of the Boston News-Letter, the only newspaper still being published in the town, and the news that Gen. John Burgoyne had sailed for England.

On 17 December, 250 years ago today, Dodge wrote out a précis of what those men told him about life inside Boston. The prices for food were high. One escapee reported that “he Dined with a man that Dined with Lord parsey a feu Day ago upon horse beaff.”

Firewood was even scarcer with winter coming on. Gen. William Howe had ordered the Old North Meeting-House and empty houses torn down for fuel. We also know Howe told London that he might have to order wharves torn up next.

Citing Capt. Nowell, the newspapers added that “all the drugs and medicines in the town have been seized for the use of the army.”

TOMORROW: Tales of the searcher.