“The taste of their fish being altered”

Just because the British Empire was sliding toward internal warfare in 1774, that was no reason to stop laughing about the news.

Here are a couple of items that appeared in New England newspapers 250 years ago.

The first must have originated in a London newspaper. The earliest North American reprinting I’ve found is in John Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on 18 Apr 1774. Four days later it appeared in both Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy and Timothy Green’s Connecticut Gazette of New London, followed by other papers.

Jan. 28. Letters from Boston complain much of the taste of their fish being altered: Four or five hundred chests of tea may have so contaminated the water in the harbour, that the fish may have contracted a disorder not unlike the nervous complaints of the human body. Should this complaint extend itself as far as the banks of Newfoundland, our Spanish and Portugal fish trade may be much affected by it.

Needless to say, even 340 chests of tea dumped off Griffin’s Wharf weren’t really enough to affect the New England fisheries.

Earlier this month artist Cortney Skinner shared this clip from the 9 May 1774 Boston Gazette. It appeared on page 3 right after a political essay and right before the many mercantile ads it resembled.

This notice reads:

WANTED immediately,
A long, strong BOOM,
that will reach from Cape-Cod to Cape-Ann.———
Any Person having such an One to dispose of, will meet with a good Price, by applying to

N***H.

N. B. The Distance is only 18 Leagues.

This was a poke at Lord North’s plan to close Boston harbor to shipping. Unofficial hints of the Boston Port Bill had started to arrive, and Edes and Gill wanted readers to laugh at the folly of that policy.

The same satirical ad appeared the next day in Samuel and Ebenezer Hall’s Essex Gazette of Salem.

Then the text was reprinted (though no longer looking like an advertisement) in the 16 May New-York Gazette, the 18 May New-Haven Post-Boy and Pennsylvania Journal, and the 23 May Newport Mercury. For readers without so much maritime experience, the capper became “The Distance only 54 miles.”

When the Royal Navy and Customs service really did shut down the port of Boston in June, though, suddenly the situation didn’t seem so laughable.

London Imprints on Boston Bibles?

In 1756 the Boston Overseers of the Poor indentured Isaiah Thomas as an apprentice to the printer Zechariah Fowle (1724-1776). He was seven years old and didn’t yet know how to read.

Isaiah’s father had died, and his mother apparently felt she couldn’t support him by herself. The Overseers were used to finding masters for children in that situation.

As he grew up, Isaiah listened to stories from Fowle, from other printers, and from a former printer named Gamaliel Rogers (1685-1775) who ran a nearby bookshop. About Rogers he later wrote:

I went frequently to his shop, when a minor. He knew that I lived with a printer, and for this, or some other reason, was very kind to me; he gave me some books of his printing; and, what was of more value to me, good advice.

Isaiah developed less respect for Fowle, whom he came to see as lazy, not “enterprising” like some earlier printers. Thomas himself was quite enterprising—releasing himself early from his apprenticeship, cajoling his former master into co-publishing the Massachusetts Spy, and finally building a lucrative publishing network in the new republic.

Among the stories young Isaiah heard were tales of the surreptitious printing of a New Testament and of a Bible in Boston just a few years before he entered the profession. In his 1810 History of Printing in America, Thomas wrote:

[Samuel] Kneeland [1696-1769] and [Timothy] Green [1703-1763] printed, principally for Daniel Henchman [1689-1761, bookseller], an edition of the Bible in small 4to. This was the first Bible printed, in the English language, in America.

It was carried through the press as privately as possible, and had the London imprint of the copy from which it was reprinted, viz. “London: Printed by Mark Baskett, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” in order to prevent a prosecution from those, in England and Scotland, who published the Bible by a patent from the crown; or, Cum privilegio, as did the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

When I was an apprentice, I often heard those who had assisted at the case and press in printing this Bible, make mention of the fact. The late governor [John] Hancock was related to Henchman, and knew the particulars of the transaction. He possessed a copy of this impression.

As it has a London imprint, at this day it can be distinguished from an English edition, of the same date, only by those who are acquainted with the niceties of typography. This Bible issued from the press about the time that the partnership of Kneeland and Green expired [which was in 1752]. The edition was not large; I have been informed that it did not exceed seven or eight hundred copies.

Not long after the time that this impression of the Bible came from the press, an edition of the New Testament, in duodecimo, was printed by [Gamaliel] Rogers and [Daniel] Fowle [1715-1787], for those at whose expense it was issued. Both the Bible and the Testament were well executed. These were heavy undertakings for that day, but Henchman was a man of property; and, it is said, that several other principal booksellers, in Boston, were concerned with him in this business.

The credit of this edition of the Testament was, for the reason I have mentioned, transferred to the king’s printer, in London, by the insertion of his imprint. . . .

Zechariah Fowle [brother of Daniel], with whom I served my apprenticeship, as well as several others, repeatedly mentioned to me this edition of the Testament. He was, at the time, a journeyman with Rogers and Fowle, and worked at the press. He informed, that on account of the weakness of his constitution, he greatly injured his health by the performance. Privacy in the business was necessary; and as few hands were intrusted with the secret, the press work was, as he thought, very laborious. I mention these minute circumstances in proof that an edition of the Testament did issue from the office of Rogers and Fowle, because I have heard that the fact has been disputed.

Elsewhere in the same edition Thomas said Rogers and Fowle printed “about two thousand copies” of their New Testament before Kneeland and Green printed their Bible. In the 1874 edition of Thomas’s history, incorporating his notes, the passage above was amended to state that chronology.

Among his papers at the American Antiquarian Society, Thomas also left multiple lists of books published in Boston before the Revolutionary War. Under the date 1749 one of those lists include a “Bible containing the Old and New Testament (this had a London imprint about 1749 or 1750).”

When in 1770 some Boston printers wanted to sell copies of the Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre despite the town ordering them not to, they had undoubtedly heard the same stories as Isaiah Thomas. They knew the trick of putting a fake London title page on a book to make it appear aboveboard.

The Bibles that Thomas described being printed in Boston around 1750 went completely undetected. In fact, those books might never have existed.

TOMORROW: The hunt for Boston’s phantom Bibles.

The Further Evolution of “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song”

As I discussed back here, in April 1774 the New-York Journal published a new version of “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song” that was actually less strident about Britain than the original. It may have been revised to reflect Whig talking points.

Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy picked up those New York lyrics for the “Poets Corner” in its 26 May 1774 issue, thus bringing the song back to its town of origin.

The next newspaper to run the verses in its “Poet’s Corner” was Timothy Green’s Connecticut Gazette of New London for 24 Feb 1775. That was another rewrite of the original lines, but in a different way. Instead of talking about “Americans,” for example, this version praised and addressed “America.”

The song now started:

Let’s look to Greece and Athens!
And there’s proud mistress Rome;
Tho’ late in all their Glory,
We now scarce find their Home:…

The verse that began by describing Americans as “Torn from a world of tyrants” now started, “Turn then, ye lordly Tyrants…”

And this original verse

We led fair FREEDOM hither, when lo the Desart smil’d,
A Paradise of Pleasure, was open’d in the Wild;
Your Harvest bold AMERICANS! no Power shall snatch away,
Assert yourselves, yourselves, yourselves, my brave AMERICA.

became

We led fair Freedom hither,
Unto a Desart wild;
A Paradise of Pleasure,
Soon opened and smil’d;
Your Harvest’s rich, AMERICA,
No Power shall snatch away.
Preserve, preserve, preserve your Rights Brave N. America.

Finally, the original’s final line about “their Lords, their Lords of brave AMERICA” had turned into “the Laws, the Laws, of NORTH-AMERICA.”

All told, that New London version feels like it was written down from memory by someone who had sung the song a few times. It doesn’t feel like a revision by the original author.

A couple of months later, war had broken out. On 8 May 1775, Ebenezer Watson’s Connecticut Courant of Hartford published “A Song Compos’d by a Son of Liberty” with the date “February 13, 1770”—Josiah Flagg’s original concert. Appropriately, that version had the same lyrics that Edes and Gill had published in their North-American Almanack five years before.

And then the song apparently went underground again for the war.

COMING UP: Who wrote “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song”?

“A special Court for the Trial of a certain Criminal”

Yesterday I quoted two reports of anti-Stamp Act protests from the 30 Aug 1765 New-London Gazette. Here’s yet another, from the town of Lebanon, Connecticut, datelined 27 August:

Yesterday was held in this Town, a special Court for the Trial of a certain Criminal, late A[gen]t for this Colony: He made his Appearance at the Bar of said Court, in the Person of his VIRTUAL Representative, and was denied none of the just RIGHTS of Englishmen, being allowed the sacred Privilege of Trial by his Peers, &c.—

After a full Hearing, he was sentenced to be taken from the tribunal of Justice, placed in a Cart, with a Halter about his Neck, carried in Procession thro’ the Streets of the Town, to expose him to just Ignominy and Contempt, and then to be drawn to the place of Execution, and hanged by the Neck ’till dead, and afterwards to be committed to the Flames, that if possible he might be purified by Fire; which Sentence was immediately Executed amidst a vast concourse of Spectators exulting in the Prospect of Liberty.

On the right Hand of the Prisoner stood the grand Seducer of Mankind [i.e., you know who], offering him a Purse and hissing this Proposal, Accept this Offer and Inslave your Country and 400l. per Annum, shall be your Reward. His injured Country, represented by a Lady dressed in Sable, with Chains rattling at her Feet, was placed on the other Side, thus pleading with her base, unnatural Child.—My Son! remember that I have treated you with the utmost Tenderness, and bestow’d on you my highest Honours, pity your Country, and put not on me those Chains: to which he ungrateful, degenerate Son replied, in a Label proceeding from his Mouth, Perish my Country, so that I get that Reward: upon the utterance of which, such indignant Wrath swell’d in the Bosom of this venerable Matron, that her Power of Speech fail’d; yet the Sentiments of her Heart appeared glowing in Capital Characters upon her Breast, in the following Words:

“———Heaven crush those Vipers,
Who, singled out by a Community,
To guard her Rights, shall for a grasp of Ore,
Or Paltry Office, sell them to the Foe.”

Which awful prophetic and parental Curse presently took Place: for as soon as this Representative was exhibited sufficiently to excite mass Abhorrence and Detestation of his Crimes, being protected by a strong Guard, from the rage of the Populace thro’ the whole Procession; and after hanging till he was dead, was cut down and delivered into the Power of his false Friend and Seducer, who according to his usual Practice, chang’d from a Tempter to a Tormentor; plunging his Prisoner headlong into a huge pyramid of Fire, and followed him immediately himself, with his mighty Paws barring fast the Gates of this suitable Habitation: Mean while the Heavens resounded with Acclamations and loud Huzzas: Nor did a weeping Eye or relenting Heart hinder or allay any Demonstration of Joy, which an ardent Love of Liberty could inspire in the Breasts of her most virtuous Sons.

The lines of verse ascribed to mother England came from the play Mahomet, the Impostor, written by Voltaire and adapted by the Rev. James Miller for British audiences. Voltaire wrote that play as an attack on religious zealots; its original title is Le Fanatisme. Ironically, rural New Englanders were rather fond of religious zealotry.

It’s striking how within a short time all these rural towns shared the same understanding of how to protest the Stamp Act, based on the Boston August 14 model:

• hang the colony’s stamp agent in effigy with a small devil tempting him and some poetic labels.
• parade that pageantry around town.
• throw it in a bonfire after dark. 

Though there was an old British tradition of effigies and bonfires, especially on the Fifth of November, this particular political ritual seems to have gone from novelty to norm in less than two weeks.

Connecticut town leaders appear to have tried to distinguish their towns not by inventing new forms of protest but by how cleverly they could compose labels and describe the usual event for the newspapers. The printer of the New-London Gazette, Timothy Green, evidently thought his own town’s (expanded) report didn’t include enough poetry to match up to others, so he added: “As we would not chuse to be tho’t wholly out of Fashion, we affix the following from Addison’s Cato.” It reminds me of the competition among rural New England towns to erect the tallest Liberty Pole in 1774-75.

Meanwhile, Jared Ingersoll, the colony’s royally appointed stamp-tax collector, was taking steps to calm the populace.

COMING UP: Ingersoll’s public letter to the good people of Connecticut.