A Short Narrative “from the London Edition”?

On 16 July 1770, six days after the Boston town meeting reaffirmed its ban on selling copies of its Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre locally, this advertisement appeared in the Boston Evening-Post:

Next WEDNESDAY will be Published,
[from the London Edition]
And to be Sold at the Printing-Office in Milk Street,
A NARRATIVE of the last horrid MASSACRE, in BOSTON, perpetrated in the Evening of the 5th of March 1770, by Soldiers of the 29th Regiment; which with the 14th Regiment were then Quartered there: some OBSERVATIONS on the STATE OF THINGS prior to that CATASTROPHE.

The printers on Milk Street were John Kneeland and Seth Adams, both trained by the former’s father. Isaiah Thomas wrote of them, “They were three or four years in the business, and printed chiefly for the booksellers.”

That ad seems to promise a completely new printing of the report, getting around the ban as a reprint of a book from London. No copy of that edition survives, however, so the town authorities may have squelched it.

Nevertheless, some Bostonians did obtain unauthorized copies of the Short Narrative, including the hatter Harbottle Dorr, who eventually bound his with his newspapers. We can examine it here, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. And if we look closely, we see some curious details.

The title page of Dorr’s copy says it was printed for William Bingley in London, based on Edes & Gill’s original edition.

However, the type doesn’t exactly match the Bingley edition, which is now on Google Books.

The letter forms and spacing are ever so slightly different, and Dorr’s copy says “Messirs. EDES and GILL” instead of “Messrs. EDES and GILL.”

Then let’s skip ahead to page 25. The last line on Dorr’s copy is “These assailants, who issued from Murray’s” with the addition of a D (to signal the signature) and the first word on the next page, “barracks.”

Bingley’s edition actually had another line on that page: “barracks (so called) after attacking and wound-” And no D.

If we now turn to page 25 of an Edes & Gill copy, we see that it makes a perfect match for Dorr’s page 25.

There are other little differences between the two editions said to be printed by Bingley. For example, the top of page 33 says “His honour’s” in the London copy, “His Honor’s” in Dorr’s copy and in the Edes & Gill original.

Some printer had taken copies of the latest pages printed by Edes & Gill, removed the Boston title page at the front, and substituted a title page designed to look as much as possible like the Bingley edition from London.

The resulting copies could thus be sold to Bostonians as imports. Edes & Gill presumably got some money for the printed pages they were sitting on. People like Dorr could finally buy a copy for themselves. And just a few genuine Bingley editions shipped to America were turned into many more.

This subterfuge was noted by Thomas Randolph Adams in a bibliography published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1966. He cited copies of the ersatz London edition then at the Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, the Huntington Library, the Library of Congress, and Harvard and Yale Universities, so quite a few were made. I first read about this subterfuge in a booklet from the Boston Public Library.

TOMORROW: Where did the Boston printers learn that trick?

“The printed Narratives of the late horred Massacre”

This week I watched an online talk by Robert Darnton about his new book Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment. He described various stratagems printers and booksellers used to get around two stifling forces in ancien régime France: censorship by the government and monopoly by Paris’s licensed printers and booksellers. 

That topic made me think of another event from 1770 Boston in that I didn’t mention on its Sestercentennial anniversary, in part because it was kept low-key to avoid attracting too much attention.

Compared to France, the late-1700s British Empire had very free publishing laws. But in March 1770 the Boston town meeting imposed a specific bookselling ban: it commissioned Benjamin Edes and John Gill and the Fleet brothers to print the Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, but forbade them from selling copies locally.

The town itself dispatched copies of that report to Britain. William Molineux sent a copy to Robert Treat Paine to help him prepare for the trials. Copies were shipped to other colonial ports. But the Boston Whigs wanted to avoid any complaints that the report had prejudiced the Suffolk County jury pool against the Boston Massacre defendants, so they banned local sales.

After copies of the Short Narrative reached London, Whiggish printers there produced their own editions to satisfy public interest. William Bingley approximated the Boston publication’s layout. Edward and Charles Dilly, working with John Almon, commissioned a copy of the engraved image of the shooting made by Henry Pelham and Paul Revere and added that as a frontispiece, as shown above.

By July 1770, copies of those British editions had arrived back in Boston, along with evidence of other responses to the Massacre in London, such as Capt. Thomas Preston’s “Case,” the Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance, and Andrew Oliver’s description of the actions of Massachusetts Council. Those got most of the attention from top local Whigs, but the printers had their own interest.

At a 10 July town meeting, the Short Narrative’s original printers noted that, since the London edition was circulating, the jury pool was already tainted with no local getting any benefit. The town considered “A Motion made that the printed Narratives of the late horred Massacre, which had been retained by order of the Town in the hands of the Committee; may now be sold by the Printers.”

Town clerk William Cooper’s notes say it “Passed in the Narrative”—a slip of the pen for “Negative.” In other words, the printers had to keep sitting on their costly investment in paper and labor.

TOMORROW: Getting to market anyway.

A Letter on London Politics

Edward Griffin Porter’s Rambles in Old Boston (1886) quotes this letter sent to the private teacher John Leach in Boston. It offers a glimpse of radical politicians in London and of the Boston Whigs’ attempts to make common cause with them.

The writer was the London printer John Meres (1733-1776). He had inherited the Daily Post newspaper from his namesake father, who had gotten in trouble multiple times for printing news the government didn’t like. The younger Meres followed in the family tradition.

Meres’s letter is datelined “Old Baily, May 21, 1769,” and evidently replies to a political essay Leach had sent to the imperial capital:

Dr. Cozn.,—

I had the Pleasure of receiving your political Creed accompanied with the Presents, the One agreeable to my Sentiments, the Other to my Fancy.

Your Letter I presented to Mr. [John] Wilkes, who read it with much Satisfaction; desired me to leave it with him & begg’d I would present his best Respects to you unknown & hoped there were many of the same Opinion as yourself; it was shown to Mr. Serjt. [John] Glynn [shown above], the only worthy Member [of Parliament] for the County of Middlesex, who thought it rather too dangerous for the Press except the Inflamatory Paper I now publish entitled the Nh. Briton, the Government having after a serious of Insults upon the People deprived me of printing The London Evening Post, & that Paper is now become the tame Vehicle for Ministers and their Ductiles. The Duke of Grafton promised me in private that nothing should be done prejudicial to me or my Interest, but are Jockeys Words to be taken? but alas! our Ministry consist of few others than that class—but to return.

Mr. Wilkes has been three Times elected Member for the County of Middlesex & was refused his seat in any House (except the King’s Bench). He was chosen by the Inhabitants of the Ward, Alderman for Farringdon Without (the largest in the City), in which I reside; the Court of Aldermen would not swear him in; the Inhabitants rechose him, Ditto, so that the Ward being without an Alderman, the Inhabitants will not pay the Taxes, not being properly represented & the Ward Books not signed by Mr. Alderman Wilkes.

I could add much more of the above Gentles. sufferings, but cannot write with propriety being much afflicted with the Gout…

I remain, your Lovg. Cozn.
J. MERES.

The 103rd issue of the North Briton, dated 22 Apr 1769, says it was “Printed for W. BINGLEY, at the King’s-Bench Prison, and sold by J. MERES, in the Old Bailey.” The issue dated one day before this letter indicates that William Bingley was out of jail and back at his shop in the Strand. By then Meres was not only selling the latest issue but all back issues as well.

The magazines didn’t say who did the actual printing, but Bingley spent two years in prison without trial and is usually credited as the publisher of the magazine. However, at least to his cousin in Boston, Meres claimed in May 1769 to “now publish” the North Briton.

John Meres had two sons who became teen-aged Royal Navy officers during the Revolutionary War.