“He has by him a large Quantity of Patent Medicines”

Yesterday’s posting introduced the character of John Newman, a doctor from Rhode Island who came to Salem in 1790 to treat cancer patients.

The earliest glimpse of this man that I’ve found is from 1777, when he bought land in Newport. In the following years, Newman built a house on that land, which in 1782 he sold to the William Terrett, a British-born maker of leather breeches and gloves.

As of 2003, the Magazine Antiques stated that that house still stood, albeit at a different location in Newport. But Google Street View is showing me a vacant spot at that address.

It’s significant that when Newman bought and built his house, the British military held Newport.

Our next sighting of the man is an ad in the 13 July 1782 Newport Mercury:

Dr. JOHN NEWMAN,
Living in Ferry Wharf Lane, informs the Public, that he has by him a large Quantity of Patent Medicines, such as

GENUINE Turlington’s Balsam of Life, Elixir Salutis, Hill’s Balsam of Honey, Hooper’s Pills, Anderson’s Scots ditto, the Essence of Pepper Mint, best of Rose’s Teeth Powder, with Brushes, and Essence of Pearl for cleaning the Teeth and preventing the Scurvy; also, an elegant Assortment of Perfumery for the Ladies, with a variety of other Articles too tedious to be enumerated in a News Paper.

N.B. Said Newman extracts Teeth with giving but very little Pain; also cures the venereal Disease, by a Method lately found out, without the Patient’s altering his or her way of living, or taking any Mercury, and the cure perfected in a very short Time.

Those medications had been invented in Britain. Hooper’s Female Pills and Turlington’s Balsam, for instance, had received their royal patents in 1743 and 1744, respectively. Dr. John Hill was still active in Britain, marketing his Balsam of Honey.

Since the U.S. of A. was still at war with Britain 1782, how was Newman obtaining “GENUINE” supplies of all these medications?

In September, the state charged Newman with leaving Newport on 1 August without authorization and going to British-occupied New York. He was “convicted of an illicit correspondence with the enemy, and sentenced to be fined and imprisoned.”

TOMORROW: Pleading his cases.

“A great part of my disease immediately gave way to your Chemical Essences”

When the historian Catharine Macaulay contacted Dr. James Graham, he was changing his field of medical practice.

In his advertisements in American newspapers, similar notices in Bristol, and his 1775 London pamphlet, Graham presented himself as a specialist in problems of the eyes and ears.

But in 1776 he published another pamphlet whose title suggested new treatments for many more ailments:

A Short Inquiry into the Present State of Medical Practice, in Consumption, Asthmas, Gout in the Head or Stomach, Hysterical, Spasmodic, or Paralytic Affections of the Nerves in Every Species of Nervous Weakness and in Cancerous and Other Obstinate Ulcers and a More Elegant Speedy and Certain Method of Cure by Means of Certain Chemical Essences, and Aërial, Ætherial, Magnetic, and Electric Vapours, Medicines, and Applications—Recommended.

To which is added an Appendix on the Management and Diseases of the Teeth and Gums

In this pamphlet Graham declared that the electrical lectures he had attended in Philadelphia had inspired him to develop new methods of curing people. (He also mentioned trips to Germany and Russia, which must have been very short because I have no idea when he fit them in.)

This essay may well have been what prompted Macaulay to consult with Graham. And she was pleased with the results. On 18 Jan 1777 she wrote to the doctor from the home she shared with the Rev. Dr. Thomas Wilson in Bath:

…I was unfortunately born with a very delicate constitution, and a weak system of nerves; that from my earliest infancy to the age of maturity, my health was continually disturbed with almost every species of fever, with violent colds, sore throats, and pains in the ears, attended with all the variety of symptoms which accompany a relaxed habit, and an irritable state of nerves.

In this very weak state of health, I undertook the writing the History of the Stewarts; and I do not know whether it is not impertinent to add, that seven years severe application reduced an originally tender frame to a state of insupportable weakness and debility: continual pains in the stomach, indigestion, tremblings of the nerves, shivering fits, repeated pains in the ears and throat, kept my mind and body in continual agitation; and marked, those which would otherwise have been the brightest of my days, with sorrow and despair.

In one of these fits of despair, your pamphlet came to my hands. Its contents awakened my curiosity; I sent for you; you undertook my cure with alacrity, and gave me the pleasing hope of a restoration of health, or rather a new state of constitution; and I have the happiness to declare, that a great part of my disease immediately gave way to your Chemical Essences, your Ætherial, Magnetic, and Electric Applications; the pains in my ears and throat subsided, the fevers and irritations of my nerves left me, and my spirits were sufficiently invigorated to break from a confinement of six weeks, and to exercise in the open air.

Macaulay told Graham that she gave him “full liberty to publish this declaration,” and he seized the opportunity. He included the letter in a second edition of his Short Inquiry pamphlet and put her name on its title page, twice.

For that 1777 edition Dr. Graham also added an effusive 31 March letter back to Macaulay that filled seven printed pages, addressed her as “Madam” nine times, and used fifteen exclamation points (as well as slipping in “most hearty acknowledgements” to “the Revd. Dr. Wilson”).

In April 1777, as I wrote before, Wilson organized a grand celebration of Macaulay’s birthday. As a gift he gave her a gold medal that Queen Anne had presented to one of her negotiators at the Treaty of Utrecht—a historical artifact for a historian. The published description of that event then went on:

Next advanced the ingenious Dr. GRAHAM, to whom the world is so much indebted for restoring health to the Guardian of our Liberties, and thereby enabling her to proceed in her inimitable History;—he with great modesty and diffidence presented her with a copy of his works, containing his surprising discoveries and cures…

Furthermore, one of the odes presented to the lady that day and then printed was titled “On reading Mrs. Macaulay’s Letter to Dr. Graham.” It described Clio, “Th’ HISTORIC MUSE,” worrying about the lady’s health, even seeing the statue of her Wilson sent to his church in Walbrook as a “marble tomb.” But finally the god of healing Apollo promises:

“To stop the ravage of the foe,
My GRAHAM instantly shall go,
And set thy Fav’rite free;
No more let sorrow still thine eye—
On GRAHAM’s skill secure rely,
For he was taught by me.”

Those two 1777 publications—the doctor’s pamphlet and the birthday odes—publicly linked Graham and Macaulay. As he always acknowledged, her celebrity helped his pioneering ideas about “Chemical Essences, and Aërial, Aetherial, Magnetic, and Electric Vapours, Medicines, and Applications” reach a wider audience.

Later in the year, however, Catharine Macaulay took ill again.

COMING UP: Search for a cure.

A Hoax about a Hoax

On 29 Mar 1781, a blacksmith named Benjamin Montanye (1745–1825) was detained near Haverstraw, New York, by a Loyalist squad under Lt. James Moody.

Moody discovered Montanye was carrying several letters from Gen. George Washington to Philadelphia. He had Montanye hauled into New York City and jailed.

Eventually Montanye was released and became Baptist preacher in Orange County. He talked about his experience in a fashion that led to this story as a footnote in Benson J. Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution:

[Washington] directed the messenger to cross the river at King’s Ferry, proceed by Haverstraw to the Ramapo Clove, and through the Pass to Morristown.

Montaigne, knowing the Ramapo Pass to be in possession of the Cow-boys and other friends of the enemy, ventured to suggest to the commander-in-chief that the upper road would be the safest. “I shall be taken,” he said, “if I go through the Clove.”

“Your duty, young man, is not to talk, but to obey!” replied Washington, sternly, enforcing his words by a vigorous stamp of his foot.

Montaigne proceeded as directed, and, near the Ramapo Pass, was caught. A few days afterward he was sent to New York, where he was confined in the Sugar House, one of the famous provost prisons in the city.

The day after his arrival, the contents of the dispatches taken from him were published in Rivington’s Gazette with great parade, for they indicated a plan of an attack upon the city. The enemy was alarmed thereby, and active preparations were put in motion for receiving the besiegers.

Montaigne now perceived why he was so positively instructed to go through the Ramapo Pass, where himself and dispatches were quite sure to be seized. When they appeared in Rivington’s Gazette, the allied armies were far on their way to the Delaware.

Montagnie admired the wisdom of Washington, but disliked himself to be the victim.

The frightening experience of being captured by the enemy thus became part of a clever ruse by the great Gen. Washington.

Except, as Jeffrey L. Zvengrowski wrote in an article for Washington’s Papers in January, that story of a hoax was itself a hoax.

James Rivington did print one of Washington’s intercepted letters in his Royal Gazette on 4 April, a message to his cousin and plantation manager Lund Washington dated 28 March, but it didn’t mention any attack plans.

The Papers of Gen. Henry Clinton contain other Washington letters, apparently from the same mailbag:

• 23 March to Francisco Rendon, a Spanish diplomat in Philadelphia.
• 27 March to Continental Congress delegate Benjamin Harrison. (This was at least the second time the correspondence between those two Virginians was waylaid.)
• 29 March to dentist John Baker.

None of those documents say anything about a plan to attack New York. Indeed, in the letter to Harrison, Washington said that even with reinforcements he would “have an Army barely sufficient to keep the Enemy in check in New York.”

Zvengrowski writes: “Washington’s letter to Harrison was not printed for fear among British commanders at New York City that knowledge of its contents would generate pressure upon them to launch an invasion of New Jersey!” Thus, the general using those letters to manage opinion was actually Clinton.

Another reason to doubt the story printed by Lossing is that Washington didn’t make plans with the French general Rochambeau to leave the New York theater and besiege Gen. Cornwallis in Virginia until several weeks later. At that point the Continentals probably did try to fool the enemy about their plans. But not back when Lt. Moody captured Montanye.

The First Mobbing of Jesse Saville

Another event of 1770 that I neglected on its 250th anniversary this year was the mobbing of Jesse Saville.

Or rather, the mobbing of Jesse Saville in March 1770, because we have to distinguish that mobbing from several others.

To start at the beginning, in the summer of 1768 a Gloucester sea captain named Samuel Fellows told the Customs Office in Salem that the schooner Earl of Gloucester was about to arrive with undeclared molasses. Fellows used to command that ship for the merchant David Plumer, and evidently he was peeved at being replaced.

Samuel Fellows had been born in Ipswich in 1736, but was described as “of Gloucester” when he married Mercy Treadwell of Ipswich in 1763. Their first two children were sons born in Gloucester in 1764 and 1765. Samuel Fellows had also served as an ensign at Crown Point in 1755.

Acting on Capt. Fellows’s tip, Customs surveyor Joseph Dowse went to Gloucester on 6 September and seized more than thirty-three barrels of molasses from the Earl of Gloucester. At some point the Commissioners of Customs also talked to Fellows about coming to work for them. With more powers and more revenue under the Townshend Act, the department was expanding.

The next day, Plumer and several dozen friends came after Capt. Fellows. Which meant they came to the house of Jesse Saville, up on the Annisquam peninsula, where Fellows was staying.

Saville was a tanner, born in 1740 as the twelfth and youngest child of a cooper. In 1763 he married Martha Babson, and they had sons Thomas (1764), Abiah (1766), and John (April 1768), with more children on the way. The household appears to have included some of Jesse’s adult relatives, and he also spoke of “my Servant,” the usual euphemism for a slave. So I can’t tell if this was a wealthy family with a big house and a staff, or a poor family with boarders and everyone crowded together into one building used for both living and manufacturing.

This is how Saville described the confrontation at his house on 7 Sept 1768, with his own creative spelling, as published in the Essex Institute Historical Collections:

…a number of men came To my House,…the number of about 70, all of Sd. Gloucester, as nigh as could be Judged. They asked Leave to go into the house to Sarch for Capt. Fellows, wich they Did, not then ofering any abuse onely in Talek.

My wife Sent my Servant of an erant [and] David Plumer Seized him by the Coller Refusing to Let him go. His mistress called him Back [but] they would not Let him Come but Sd. If he was Sint he should not go unless they knew hiss bysness but Docter [Samuel] Rogers Tock out his Instrements, the wich he halls Teath with, [and] threatened to Hall all his teath out unless He told where Capt. Fellows was, threatening to Split his head open with a Club, Holding it over his head. Then they left the House.

[In] about an Hour, in wich Time Capt. Fellows Road up to our house, Thomas Griffin, Shore man, Seeing him Ride up that way Ran after the mob, told them he was gone up there. In about one hours time they Returnd wich my wife Seeing them told Capt. Fellows of. He ameadaately Run out of Doors as fast as posable.

No Person was in the house Excapt my wife & my mother, Dorcas Haskel, Mary Savell, with two of my Small Childredn. They Came up to the Doors and Sorounded the house with Clubs & axes. The wimen Seing them Run in Such a maner affrited fastning the Doors & windows.

They Crys with Shouting we got him. They Cryed opin the Doors.

They Refused declaring to the mob ther was no man bodey in the house Except a Child of 5 months old they could give oath.

That child was obviously baby John, but what about his older brothers, aged four and two? And who was the little girl Saville mentioned later? Was “Mary Savell” Jesse’s mother, already mentioned, or his older sister?

Mr. Plumer Told them, Gentlemen why Dont you walek in. Mr Plumer Did not go into the house himself.

My mother Told them they Come in upon the Peril of there Lives if they oferd To break Down the Doors. They immeadately Stove Down one Door and Entered a grate number of the abouve persons & William Stevens, Brick Laior, Like wise and a grate many Strangers wich they Didnot no. They Like wise beat of a Lach & buttons of another Door, struck the pole of the ax into the Door & Caseing very much Dammageing. The Same Broak a Seller window to peaces, a Chain, thro’d over barils, Chests, Tables & tubs, Ransacked the house, all parts of it, Broak a bundle of Dry fish to peaces, Destroyed a good deal of the Same, Tock a Gun and broak it by throghing it out of the garit window.

Benjm. Soams, B[arrel]. Cooper, pinted it, a Loadin Gun, Toward my wife, ordered her out of Doors, A Little gairl of about tow or three of ours so terified, Cryed To my wife fainting a way. They call’d my mother [and] my wife all the hoors and all the Dam’d biches and Every Evil name that they Could think of Stricking Down their Clubs on the flour Each Side of them. My mother beg’d they would Spare her Life for it was not Posable She Could Live one hour. They would not listen to her intreateys.

They Sarched the house over & over Several times Halling all the Beds into the flours. After awile they left the house, then went Down to the meeting house. There Joseph York, shoe macker, gave them vitels & Drink and was back and forward with them while absent from our house wich Generally is Judg’d he was ordered to Do what he Did by his father[-in-law] Deacon Samuel Griffin of sd. Town. Our folcks Sent for Some of the nabors to come for they Expected to be killed if they came again. Some sd. they were glad. Some was affraid to Come So a bitter afternoon they had.

TOMORROW: Where was Jesse Saville?

[The photo above shows the Edward Haraden House, built on Annisquam in the mid-1600s and expanded in the mid-1700s and later.]

Some Out of Town Jasper

As I quoted yesterday, in 1853 a story surfaced saying that Josiah Waters, Jr., had delivered intelligence about the impending British army march on 18 Apr 1775.

This story is significant in predating Henry W. Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” which romanticized the event and focused people’s attention on Revere over all the other people involved in the Lexington Alarm.

It also came with a provenance: from Waters himself to Joseph Curtis to his relation Catherine Curtis to the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Though that story might have evolved along that path of transmission, it’s always good to know that path.

Waters reportedly credited his knowledge of the British military plans to “Jasper, an Englishman, a gunsmith by trade, whose shop was in Hatter’s Square.” This man “worked for the British,” gaining their trust. He rented space to the family of a sergeant major who ended up “telling him all their plans.” Or at least the plans that a sergeant major would be privy to.

Of course I went looking for traces of a gunsmith named Jasper working in pre-Revolutionary Boston. I didn’t find any. But I did find a man named Jasper who came from Britain and worked with metal, so he could have repaired gunlocks along with other things.

William Jasper moved from Britain to North America soon after the end of the French and Indian War. The first sign of him is this advertisement from the 29 Aug 1763 New-York Gazette.

WILLIAM JASPER, cutler, Just arrived from England, is now settled in New York, near the Fly, Queen-Street, near the Burling’s and Beekman’s Slip next Door to Mr. Murray’s, takes this Method to acquaint the publick, That he makes all kinds of Surgeons instruments, and grinds and cleans them; makes Razors, Pen knives, scissars, and all kinds of Edge Tools, which he also grinds; and makes Cutlery in general; makes Buckles of the best Block-Tin, wrought and plain Men’s Gold and Silver Ware; Pinking-Irons of all Sorts; Sadlers Tools; Fret-Saws; Hatters knives; likewise draws Teeth with great Ease and Safety, being accustomed to it for many Years. He likewise has brought over a Quantity of Copper and Tin Hard-Ware. All Persons that please to favour him with their Custom, may depend upon being served in the best and cheapest Manner.

A cutler, according to Dr. Samuel Johnson, was “one who makes or sells knives.” Jasper made all sorts of bladed tools, from surgeon’s scalpels to fret saws, and he also offered some dentistry.

In 1768 William Jasper was in Boston, marrying Anne Newman on 29 June 1768. This couple appears on the list of marriage intentions read in all the pulpits, and it’s not clear to me where they actually wed. I also can’t find records of the couple having children, though there’s a mention of them having done so.

The Curtis story said Jasper the gunsmith had a shop “in Hatter’s Square,” which was also known as Creek Lane and later Creek Square. It was near the center of town, literally on the Mill Creek that defined the edge of the North End. I can’t situate William Jasper the cutler there, but he must have rented a shop somewhere.

Weapons collectors have found William Jasper’s name on a couple of blades possibly made during the war. Above is his maker’s stamp on a spontoon head from the late 1700s. In For Liberty I Live, Al Benting described a halberd inscribed with Jasper’s name. I don’t see any sign that he made guns, though perhaps he repaired them.

There was also a William Jasper among the American prisoners of war taken on the Boston-based privateer Rising States on 15 Apr 1777 and housed in Forton Prison in Britain. I have no idea what happened to that man and thus whether he could be the cutler. But the surname Jasper was rare in Massachusetts.

The next time William Jasper appeared in a newspaper was this notice in the 8 Aug 1782 Continental Journal:

TO THE PUBLIC.

JASPER, Surgeon Instrument Maker in Boston, has lately invented and compleated an Instrument for drawing Teeth perpendicular, which was never done before, for which if he can have a patentee from Congress, it shall be universally known, if not, let it die in oblivion.

I see no indication that the Confederation Congress considered granting Jasper a patent for this new dental instrument. There was no statutory process for the national government to grant patents until 1790, and the Congress had a lot of other business to handle in 1782.

Finally, the Continental Journal of 23 Nov 1786 reported that “Mr. William Jasper, Cutler,” had died in Boston. Anna Jasper administered William’s estate, relying on two men to complete the paperwork since she couldn’t sign her name. William Jasper’s property, evaluated at £24.6.6, included metal-working tools, some old books and pictures, and household utensils, but no real estate. Probate judge Oliver Wendell signed off on the administration, which included a general mention of children.

On 10 Apr 1791 a woman named Nancy Jasper married Joseph Jones in the Rev. Thomas Baldwin’s Second Baptist Meeting-house. Was this the widow Anne Jasper? Or a daughter of the 1768 marriage? The next year, on 25 Mar 1792, another Baptist minister, the Rev. Samuel Stillman, married Mary Jasper to John Dumaresque Dyer. Was this a daughter of the cutler William Jasper? If the family had been Baptist before the war, that would explain why there are no records of the children being baptized soon after birth, as there usually are for Congregationalist and Anglican families.

Thus, the sparse record of William Jasper’s life in America shows that he could have been Josiah Curtis’s informant in April 1775 but is far from confirmation of that story.

“Bateman, he thinks, could not have made the deposition”

When the Rev. William Gordon visited British prisoners of war in Concord in the spring of 1775, he reported that Pvt. John Bateman was “too ill to admit of my conversing with him.”

Bateman didn’t get any better. In 1835 local historian Lemuel Shattuck wrote that this wounded redcoat “died and was buried on the hill.” That was Concord’s elevated burying-ground, shown in the right foreground of the Amos Doolittle print of regulars searching the town.

In 1825 Elias Phinney’s History of the Battle of Lexington argued that the militiamen of Lexington were the first to shoot back at the redcoats. Two years later, the Rev. Ezra Ripley of Concord published A History of the Fight at Concord to refute that claim; five years later, Ripley brought out an expanded edition.

Both Phinney and Ripley gathered new testimony from veterans of the battle to support their case. Ripley also republished John Bateman’s deposition from 1775, which had said, “I testify, that I never heard any of the [Lexington] inhabitants so much as fire one gun on said troops.”

A few weeks back, I quoted some statements that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote into his diary after a visit from Thaddeus Blood, a long-lived veteran, on 5 Aug 1835. (Thanks to Joel Bohy for alerting me to this latter-day source.) After recording Blood’s recollection of Lt. Isaac Potter, Emerson wrote:

Bateman, he thinks, could not have made the deposition in Dr. R[ipley]’s History. A ball passed through his cap and he cried, “A miss is as good as a mile.” Immediately another ball struck his ear and passed out at the side of his mouth, knocking out two teeth. He lived about three weeks, and his wounds stunk intolerably. It was probably Carr’s or Starr’s deposition.

Evidently Bateman’s wound became infected, and he died in American custody. Don Hagist tells me the muster rolls of Bateman’s regiment, the 52nd, state he died on 21 April, but his deposition was dated 23 April and Gordon encountered him after that. He probably died in early May.

Was Blood correct in saying that Bateman was never well enough to give the testimony published over his name? Probably not. In addition to magistrates Dr. John Cuming and Duncan Ingraham on 23 April, four other people told Gordon that they “heard the said Bateman say, that the Regulars fired first, and saw him go through the solemnity of confirming the same by an oath on the bible.” Those four reported witnesses were Bateman’s fellow prisoners in Concord.

I therefore think Bateman’s 23 April deposition was authentic, though he may well have been under the duress of being a prisoner and needing medical care.

TOMORROW: So who was “Carr” or “Starr”?

New Education Center at the Paul Revere House

Years back, I gave a teachers’ workshop at the Paul Revere House in the North End. It took place upstairs in the neighboring Pierce-Hichborn house.

As I recall, we had about two dozen people crowded into a small, irregularly shaped room with sloping ceilings. It really gave one a sense of what it must have been like to live in that neighborhood in a family of fourteen.

Now the Paul Revere House has a lot more space. This weekend it opens its new Education and Visitor Center at Lathrop Place. The museum bought another neighboring building—an old tenement put up in 1835—and fixed it up into new exhibit, meeting, sales, and office space. In the process, the Revere house became wheelchair-accessible as well.

All told, this project required raising more than $4 million and overseeing extensive construction. As museums have to do these days, several of the new spaces are named for donors. Thus, there’s an Revere Education Room, a Curtis Classroom, and a Citizens Bank Enrichment Center [get it?].

I visited the new building last night along with other friends of the site. It’s a very impressive expansion—all the more impressive when one sees photographs of the same rooms before renovation. Lathrop Place will be open to the public all this weekend. There will be refreshments, music, and demonstrations of tinware and basketmaking.

This diorama is part of a new permanent exhibit about Revere’s many businesses, including as a silversmith, engraver, and dentist. It shows pre-industrial production in Revere’s shop.

Ben Edwards, Boston tour guide and Revere descendant, told me that this scene was originally made for the Boston Museum of Science maybe fifty years ago. After years on display there, the diorama was retired. Later, when that museum decided to throw it out deaccession it, a manager called to ask if the Paul Revere House wanted it. The scene spent several more years in storage until the house had just the right spot to display it, and now it does.

To go with its new building, the Paul Revere House also has a new website with good resources for people who can’t get to the North End.

Dr. Warren As You’ve Never Seen Him Before

Way, way back, Boston 1775 stumbled into the seemingly bottomless topic of Dr. Joseph Warren’s body. After the doctor was killed at Bunker Hill, the British forces put his body in a shared grave, and then after the siege of Boston—on 4 Apr 1776, in fact—the Americans dug him up again. At other times people claimed, apparently without foundation, that his corpse had been mutilated and that they were bringing the fatal bullet back to Boston.

Derek W. Beck was seeking information about Warren for his manuscript 1775. Another reader alerted me to a report of the Warren family taking photographs of their collateral ancestor’s skull, and eventually Derek found reproductions of those photos. Go to Derek’s blog today for a third image and more analysis.

Physicians, including Warren’s brother John, examined this skull in some detail in 1776 to be sure the body was actually his; eventually Paul Revere identified his dental work. William H. Sumner later described seeing the remains:

the skull was perforated by a musket ball in the upper part of the head, in such a place, as I am informed by professional gentlemen, would probably have produced sudden, though it might not instant death.

“The upper part of the head” suggests the larger hole in the back, rather than the smaller one below the left eye. Sumner, not being a “professional gentleman,” or doctor, might have mistaken that larger hole for an entry wound rather than an exit wound, and thus become the source of mid-1800s statements that the British had shot Warren from behind.

George Washington’s Teeth, Yet Again

There are only two more years to visit Mount Vernon and see the teeth that Boston native John Greenwood carved for George Washington out of hippopotamus bone!

The webpage says:

On loan from The New York Academy of Medicine, the denture was the first of several dentures that John Greenwood made for Washington and is dated 1789, the year that Washington took his oath of office in New York City. The denture is engraved with: Under jaw. This is Great Washington’s teeth by J. Greenwood. First one made by J. Greenwood, Year 1789.

Carved from hippopotamus ivory, the denture contains real human teeth fixed in the ivory by means of brass screws. The denture, which was anchored on the one remaining tooth in Washington’s mouth, has a hole which fit snugly around the tooth and probably contributed to the loosening and eventual loss of that tooth.

The Mount Vernon website notes that there is no extra cost to see these teeth.

George Washington’s Teeth, Even Closer

Back in 2007, Boston 1775 ran an item titled “George Washington’s Teeth, Close Up.” It featured an image from the American Dental Association website of the first President’s false teeth, made by North End native John Greenwood. That A.D.A. webpage got edited away into the aether, as sometimes happens, and the image disappeared off the ’net.

But this year (actually next, judging by the copyright date) Lerner Classroom is publishing John Greenwood’s Journey to Bunker Hill, by Marty Rhodes Figley. The back of that book kindly recommends Boston 1775’s material on Greenwood. And then it says this site includes “a picture of the false teeth John made for George Washington!”

I can’t let the schoolchildren of America down. So with Google’s help I restored a smaller image of those teeth to the original posting. And now, thanks to Barista, I have the pleasure of sharing this larger picture of the same dentures. So now, children of America, you can sit down happily to your school lunches.

Still hungry? Here’s another set of Washington’s teeth on display at Mount Vernon.

Finding Dr. Joseph Warren’s Head

Yesterday I quoted Abigail Adams’s 31 July 1775 letter complaining that British officers had cut the head off Dr. Joseph Warren’s corpse after they found it on the battlefield of Bunker Hill. Of course, Adams was living in Braintree, and had no firsthand knowledge of what went on in army-occupied Charlestown or Boston. She was angrily recounting what unstated sources told her that a recent British deserter had said. How strong is that letter as evidence that Warren was indeed posthumously beheaded?

Adams herself knew that a defector’s report might not be reliable. In the paragraph just before the passage about Warren’s head, she wrote:

5 deserters having come into our camp. One of them is gone I hear to Phyladelphia. I think I should be cautious of him—no one can tell the secret designs of such fellows whom no oath binds—he may be sent with assassinating designs. I can credit any viliny that a Ceasar Borgea would have been guilty of—or Satan himself would rejoice in.

Furthermore, it seems significant that I can’t find any mention of Warren’s decapitation in newspapers of the time, in other people’s letters, or in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress report on the battle. Patriots were seizing any opening to complain about British cruelty, including the treatment of prisoners of war captured in Charlestown, so they wouldn’t have kept secret about this event if the evidence were strong.

What’s more, Adams and her family stopped mentioning Dr. Warren’s severed head after this letter, though their letters and memoirs contain many remarks about their late friend and physician. None of the early American histories of the Revolution repeat the report. The Warren family published multiple memoirs in the 1800s without lamenting their honored ancestor’s decapitation. Richard Frothingham didn’t include the detail in his 1865 biography of the doctor, though he did say that Warren’s “coat was sold by a soldier in Boston.”

Furthermore, we have firsthand information about the treatment of Dr. Warren’s body from the man put in charge of burying it. In a letter dated 23 June 1775, Capt. Walter Sloane Laurie described giving the enemy leader a swift and humble burial on the battlefield:

Doctor Warren, President of the Provincial Congress, and Captain General, in the Absence of [John] Hancock and [Samuel] Adams, and next to Adams, in abilities, I found among the Slain, and stuffed the Scoundrel with another Rebel, into one hole, and there he, and his seditious principles may remain

Laurie had no reason to treat Warren’s corpse well, but also no impetus to lie to his friends about how he’d treated it. His letter contradicts what Abigail Adams later heard on two points. Not only did he say nothing about decapitation, but he also said he’d buried the doctor with one other body; Adams understood there were “many bodies over him”—or at least over his headless corpse.

Finally, the most commonly related story about Dr. Warren’s body is that, after the British evacuation, occasional dentist Paul Revere identified it by recognizing a false tooth he had made for the doctor. It would be awfully hard to identify a body by its false teeth if the whole head has been buried separately. Furthermore, in 1776 Bostonians reportedly found Warren’s body in a grave with one other corpse, agreeing with Laurie’s account instead of Adams’s rumor. It had been “stripped of its covering,” which supports the accounts that British soldiers took Warren’s clothing, but not his body parts.

Assessing this rumor offers a chance to highlight one difference between the Massachusetts Historical Society’s two online databases of Adams family letters. The Adams Electronic Archive offers a look at Abigail Adams’s handwritten letter, with a transcript. The Founding Families Adams Papers offers a transcription plus the published edition’s notes, which say: “AA is reporting only a part of the rumors that circulated then and later about British indignities to Joseph Warren after his death in Bunker Hill battle.” Those notes go on to quote the Laurie letter as more reliable.

One odd treatment of this rumor is in John Cary’s 1964 biography of Warren. It says that some British officers wanted to decapitate the doctor, but a Freemason among them stopped them. In essence, Cary decided that the deserter’s story about cutting off Warren’s head was entirely reliable—except for the actual cutting-off-the-head. That seems like an odd way to combine historical evidence. It’s as if one dubious source says George Washington was in Vermont on a particular date, and all other sources say he was in New Hampshire, so an author concludes that he was in New Hampshire but thinking about going to Vermont that whole day.

Josiah Flagg, Surgeon Dentist

The Massachusetts Historical Society’s Object of the Month for this month is a 1796 broadside advertising the expert services of dentist Josiah Flagg (1763-1816). It assured Bostonians that Flagg:

Traisplants [sic] both live and dead Teeth with greater conveniency, and gives less pain than heretofore practiced in Europe or America:—Sews up Hare Lips;—Cures Ulcers;—Extracts Teeth and stumps or roots with ease;—Reinstates Teeth and Gums, that are much depreciated by nature, carelessness, acids, or corroding medicine;—Fastens those Teeth that are loose; (unless wasted at the roots) regulates Teeth from their first cutting to prevent feavers and pain in Children;—Assists nature in the extension of the jaws, for the beautiful arrangement of the second Sett and preserves them in their natural whiteness entirely free from all scorbutic complaints. . . .

I suppose if one had to have live teeth transplanted, one would want it to be done “with greater expediency.”

The broadside includes images of toothbrushes and dental tools. The reverse side includes valuable advice on dental self-care, written in Flagg’s own hand. Alas, the M.H.S. can’t shed light on why a 1795 newspaper notice referred to Flagg as a “vile miscreant Son.”

What’s Missing in the John Adams Household

In the John Adams miniseries on H.B.O., Laura Linney as Abigail Adams has received universally good reviews in a very sympathetic part. (Some authors, such as Paul Nagel, might say that part was written too sympathetically.) Paul Giamatti as John has been getting generally good reviews, with a few critics saying he’s not up to carrying the series. I think he’s doing a fine job in a role that’s written to carry a tremendous burden (all of American independence!) yet is never fully likable and admirable. But I’ve been a fan of Giamatti’s acting since I saw him in a college production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.

So far the series looks mighty impressive in terms of sets, costumes, and other details of everyday life in eighteenth-century America. I’ve seen complaints about the details of the British military uniforms, which are part of tomorrow’s entry. Kent Sepkowitz wrote at Slate about the differences evident on screen between modern show-business teeth and the teeth of the past. (Thanks to PhiloBiblos for this tip.)

One of the most difficult things to get right in historical movies, as Jill Lepore hinted at in her New Yorker review, is people’s behavior inside the sets and costumes. The action and manners of the John Adams characters often seem too forward and modern. I’ve been thinking in particular about how the miniseries portrays the Adams household in light of the quotations I’ve posted over the past few days.

The series shows the Adamses as a modern nuclear family: mother, father, and (by the end of episode two) four kids. We see John and young John Quincy working in the fields. We see John saddling his own horse. We see Abigail scrubbing the floors by herself and watching over the children as they recover from smallpox inoculation. Though we don’t do those same activities today, it’s easy to imagine modern parents doing equivalent tasks in much the same way.

But eighteenth-century genteel families didn’t live the same way that twenty-first-century middle-class families do. They lived a lot closer together, with less stuff in less space but more people from outside the nuclear family. The miniseries’s picture of the Adamses’ domestic life appears to be missing the following elements.

Servants. On the night of the Boston Massacre in 1770, John worried about Abigail being “alone, excepting her Maids and a Boy in the House.” In other words, Abigail was alone except for three people whose jobs were to look after her, the house, and the children (then aged four and two). The Adamses never had slaves, but as a genteel family they were used to having servants. Here are letters they exchanged in 1764 as they were setting up their household and hiring help. Here’s a receipt from Rachel Marsh, who received “one pound six shillings and eight pence lawful money for a quarters wages” from Abigail in May 1765. Most modern Americans are unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, with the idea of personal servants, but that was an essential element of eighteenth-century genteel life. John Adams did work in his fields. Abigail did clean her house. But they didn’t do that work all alone.

Relatives. The Adamses had nearby relatives whom they often visited, hosted, or worked alongside. Abigail was very close to her older sister Mary Cranch, who had settled in Braintree, and her in-laws. Abigail and Mary’s parents and younger sister Betsy lived in nearby Weymouth. John Quincy Adams recalled that these Smith grandparents “seemed to me as a second father and mother.” When John was out of town, Abigail had to do business through her male relatives because, as a woman, she had limited legal rights. John’s parents were dead, but he had brothers in town. In 1774 Abigail’s cousin John Thaxter came from Hingham to be John’s law clerk; since John was away at the Continental Congress and the courts were closed, Thaxter ended up becoming tutor to John Quincy and Charles for years. He hasn’t shown up in the series yet; I wonder if he’ll appear on the boys’ voyage to Europe in 1779 because he certainly went along.

Books. John Adams’s personal library was notably large in his time, and represented a big investment for a middle-aged lawyer. I was struck by a line from John Quincy Adams’s 1823 letter about his memories of the outbreak of war:

I remember the packing up and sending away of the books and furniture from the reach of [Gen. Thomas] Gage’s troops, while we ourselves were hourly exposed for many months to have been butchered by them.

The children can face a little risk, but save the books! That’s the sort of family value I believe in. A scene of packing up all the books might have shown what made the Adams family distinct, and how valuable books were.

I suspect that these details of the series were partly dictated by the budget—putting servants and relations on screen, even in the background, would have meant paying for more actors, more costumes, more takes, &c. But those choices also reflect, and reinforce, our difficulty in imagining how much people’s daily lives have greatly over the centuries.

(The portrait above of Abigail Adams around 1766 comes from the Massachusetts Historical Society, and is on display in its current exhibit of Adams family letters.)

Dr. Joseph Warren's Body: the second identification

The first thing that British army officers did after identifying Dr. Joseph Warren among the corpses on Bunker Hill was to search his body. They discovered letters that had come out of Boston, and soon the men who wrote those letters were under arrest.

One officer noted that Warren had “died in his best cloaths: every body remembered his fine silk-fringed waistcoat.” (In 1780 this man’s letters were published in The Detail and Conduct of the American War, a critical analysis of the conflict by a soldier who had fought in it, of the sort that we’re seeing again now.)

Then it was time to bury the doctor’s corpse. Capt. Walter Sloane Laurie, who had been in command at the North Bridge in Concord, was in charge of the burial detail. On 23 June he wrote that he had “stuffed the scoundrell with another into one hole and there he and his seditious principles may remain.” The fact that Warren had been buried with one other provincial, a detail also recalled by some locals, became significant after the British army left Boston in March 1776 and the doctor’s survivors went looking for his corpse.

William H. Sumner (1780-1861; shown above, courtesy of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society) wrote his “Reminiscences relating to General Warren and Bunker Hill” in two stages: a letter to a newspaper in 1825 and a longer paper in 1857, published in the New England Historical & Genealogical Register for 1858. About the identification of Warren’s corpse in 1776 he wrote:

Gen. Warren’s body had mouldered in the grave for ten months, when it was disinterred. . . . After the evacuation of Boston, Warren’s friends were informed where he was buried. This was not as “Historian” [someone who had written to the Boston Patriot in July 1825, who Sumner thought was Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846)] says it was, “with the promiscuous slain, in the common trench of the dead;” though it was in the same grave with a person with a frock on. Warren’s body was found stripped of its covering, while the other was buried in its common habiliments.

Mr. [Jonathan] Clark,...as well as another soldier whose name I have forgotten, was here on the 17th, who assisted at the exhumation in the presence of the Doctor’s two brothers, who were satisfied of the identity of the body, by many circumstances which they detailed. If stronger evidence of its identity were wanting, that afforded by Col. [Paul] Revere, who set the artificial tooth, (which “Historian” says led to the “mere conjecture” that it was Warren’s body,) and who recollected the wire he used in fastening it in, would afford it.

One thing, however, is certain; that the skull was perforated by a musket ball in the upper part of the head, in such a place, as I am informed by professional gentlemen, would probably have produced sudden, though it might not instant death.

Revere’s identification of Dr. Warren’s corpse is said to be one of the first examples of forensic dentistry in American history. But Dr. John Jeffries claimed to have used the same clue of the false tooth in the same way ten months before.

TOMORROW: Dr. Warren’s corpse moves—but where are the photographs?

Dr. Joseph Warren's Body: the first identification

Today CSI: Colonial Boston enters a three-episode story arc involving the most famous case of forensic medicine during the American Revolution: the identification of Dr. Joseph Warren’s body after the Battle of Bunker Hill. It turns out that, because the doctor kept being buried and dug up again, there were actually multiple identifications.

The first occurred on 18 June 1775, the day after the battle. According to Samuel Swett’s 1818 study, “In the morning young Winslow of Boston, recognised the body of Warren, and announced the fact.” This young man was John Winslow (1753-1819), a clerk in the hardware store of his uncle, selectman Jonathan Mason. It’s not clear to me what he was doing on the battlefield.

Swett continued:

[Gen. William] Howe would scarcely credit the account; it was so improbable that the president of [Massachusetts Provincial] Congress was in the battle.

Dr. [John] Jeffries was on the field dressing the British wounded, and the wounded American prisoners, with his usual humanity and skill. Howe inquired of him if he could identify Warren; he recollected that he had lost a finger nail and wore a false tooth, and informed the general that Warren had five days before ventured over to Boston in a canoe to get information, invited Jeffries to join the Americans as surgeon, and informed him that he was himself to receive a commission in the army.

Warren was instantly recognised, and the enemy declared this victim alone was worth five hundred of their men.

I don’t actually believe all of this. Dr. Jeffries was a Loyalist and army surgeon during the war, and settled in Britain afterward. Having spent a lot of his money on ballooning, he decided to return to his home town of Boston and rebuild his practice there. Jeffries succeeded and became very popular by the end of his life, as Swett’s praise of his “usual humanity and skill” indicates. But I think he’s a slippery character.

In particular, that anecdote about Dr. Warren crossing the Charles River on a canoe on 13 June 1775 seems dubious. Jeffries is apparently the only source for it. And with Warren dead, who could contradict him?

Did Warren really risk being captured by the Crown when he had thousands of men ready to spy for him and Boston was leaking information like a sieve? Would he really have tried to recruit Jeffries, who had been aligned with the Crown for years? Did Jeffries really tell Gen. Howe right after the horrible battle that, oh, by the way, he’d had a secret meeting with the head of the rebellion, but hadn’t bothered to mention it to any royal authorities at the time?

I’m happy to accept that Dr. Jeffries helped to identify Dr. Warren’s body for the British army. As for the other details, who benefited most in the 1800s from a tale that the great Warren had thought so highly of Jeffries’s medical skills as to recruit him for the American army?

TOMORROW: Identifying Dr. Warren’s body again.

Open Wide

A couple of years ago, a celebrated writer turned to me at a military reenactment and said, “The fife is really the dental drill of musical instruments, isn’t it?”

He was speaking metaphorically, and from a more informed appreciation for music than mine. (He’s written a couple of books on the topic.) But, oddly enough, there is a close connection between music and dentistry in Revolutionary Boston.

Exhibit 1 is John Greenwood (1760-1819), whose memoir I’ve quoted several times on Boston 1775. As described in this posting, Greenwood started playing the fife around age nine or ten, enlisting in the provincial forces before the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war he became a dentist in New York. Greenwood’s manuscript of music, dated 1785, is now at the New-York Historical Society.

Exhibit 2 is Josiah Flagg. The father of that name (1738-95) was a silversmith and engraver who started publishing psalm books and putting on concerts in Boston in the 1760s and 1770s. His namesake son (1763-1816) created America’s first known chair designed for dentistry—shown above, and now on display at Temple University. Grandson Josiah Foster Flagg (1788-1853) also managed a dental school.

Exhibit 3 is Paul Revere, a childhood friend of the elder Flagg. Of course, we know Revere best as a silversmith and carrier of important messages. But he also engraved many images for printers, including Flagg’s 1764 psalm collection and the frontispiece for William Billings’s first collection of original songs. Indeed, the Music Publishers’ Association has named its engraving awards after Revere. When his other businesses were slow, Revere advertised that he cleaned teeth and made dentures. What would qualify a silversmith to do all those things? Basically, Revere was good at scraping.

George Washington's Teeth, Close Up

In 1798, George Washington ordered what was probably his last set of false teeth. Here they are, courtesy of the American Dental Association.

The dentist who supplied these choppers was John Greenwood, who has appeared on Boston 1775 as a ten-year-old boy waiting up nights for a visit with the ghost of his roommate Samuel Maverick, killed in the Boston Massacre; and as a fifteen-year-old soldier during the Battle of Bunker Hill. I love being able to trace people through their lives like that.

The Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore has an online display on the correspondence between Greenwood and Washington from 1791 to 1799. Those pages also include an image of a different set of lower dentures.

Greenwood sent his client this professional advice in 28 Dec 1798:

I send you inclosed two setts of teeth, one fixed on the Old Barrs in part, and the sett you sent me from philadelphia which when I received was very black. Occasioned either by your soaking them in port wine, or by your drinking it. Port wine being sower, takes of all the polish and All Acids has a tendency to soften every kind of teeth and bone. Acid is used in coloring every kind of Ivory. Therefore it is very pernicious to the teeth.

Greenwood’s father Isaac was an ivory craftsman, so he knew what he was talking about.

I advise you to Either take them out after dinner and put them in clean water and put in another sett, or clean them with a brush and some chalk scraped fine, it will Absorbe the Acids which collects from the mouth and preserve them longer.

I have found another and better way of using the Sealing wax, when a hole is eaten in the teeth by acid, etc.—first observe, then dry the teeth, then take a piece of Wax and cut into as small pieces as you think will fill up the hole. Then, take a large nail or any other piece of Iron and heat it hot into the fire, Then put your piece of wax into the hole and melt it by means of introducing the point of the nail to it. I have tried it, and found it to Consoladate, and do better than the other way and if done proper it will resist the saliva. It will be handyer for you to take hold of the Nail with small plyers, than with a tongs thus, the wax must be very small not bigger than this [dot].

If your teeth grows black, take some chalk and a Pine or Cedar stick, it will rub of[f]. If you whant your teeth more yellower soake them in Broath or pot liquor, but not in tea or acid. Porter is a good thing to coulor them and will not hurt but preserve them but it must not be in the least pricked.

You will find I have Altered the upper teeth you sent me from philadelphia leaveing the enamel on the teeth dont preserve them any longer than if it was of, it only holds the color better, but to preserve them they must be very often Changed and cleaned for whatever attacks them, must be repelled, as often or it will gain ground and destroy the works.

the two setts I repaired is done on a different plan than when they are done when made entirely new, for the teeth are screwed on the barrs, instead of haveing the barrs cast red hot on them, which is the reason I believe the[y] destroy or dissolve so soone near to the barrs. Sir, after hopeing you will not be Obliged to be troubled very sune in the same way, I subscribe myself,

Your very humble servant,
John Greenwood

The additional charge is fiveteen dollars

P.S. I expect next Spring to move my family into Connecticut State. If I do, I will rite, and let you know, whether I give up my present business or not. I will as long as I live, do anything in this way for you or in any other way in my power—if you require it.

Washington wrote back, “I shall always prefer your services to those of any other in the line of your present profession.”

Dr. Baker's Brand Marketing

Starting with his first advertisement in America, dentist John Baker promoted his dentifrice as a preventive or cure for practically any tooth problem: gum disease, loose teeth, discoloration. Leaving Boston in 1767, Baker assured his customers that:

His Dentifrice, with proper Direction for preserving the Teeth and Gums, will be to be had at Mrs. Eustis’s, near the Town House, after he had left the Town. N B. Each Pot is sealed with his Coat of Arms, as in the Margin of the Directions, to prevent Fraud.

Using the Baker coat of arms (perhaps the one shown here, perhaps not) was not only a protection against “counterfeit drugs” but also a signal to customers that Baker came from a respectable family.

After he moved from Virginia to Philadelphia in 1778, Baker stated that “His well known Antiscorbutic Dentifrice for preserving the teeth and gums, may be had...at Messrs. Dixon and Hunter’s office in Virginia, with brushes and directions.” Dixon and Hunter were printers of one incarnation of the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg.

The 14 Sept 1782 Independent Gazetteer of Pennsylvania included this ad touting Baker’s dentifrice and a new, related product called “Albion Essence”:

DOCTOR BAKER,
Begs Leave to inform the Public in general, and his Friends in particular, in the Thirteen United States, that he has just received a fresh Assortment of Medicines, which will enable him to prepare the genuine Antiscorbutic Dentifrice, and Albion Essence, for preserving the Teeth, Gums, Sockets, Breath, &c. &c.

This Essence and Dentifrice is prepared by himself, and warranted perfectly free from the least corrosive Particle or Injurious Property whatever.

It is replete with that Balsamic Quality, which prevents all defluxions, falling on the gums, or putrefactions that cause bad breath; It takes off the mucilaginous properties that dissolve the sockets of the teeth, and prevents the tooth-ach arising therefrom; it prevents obstructions and inflamations of the nerves and vascular parts of the teeth, and the head and tooth-ach arising therefrom; It concocts the vitiated juices, renders, beyond description, a juvenile fragrance to the breath, makes the teeth white and beautiful, causes the gums to grow firm to the teeth, makes the salivia pure and balsamic, eradicates the scurvy, and restores the gums to their pristine state, if the teeth and gums have been thoroughly cleaned by some skilful Dentist.

Its efficacy is well known to the principal nobility, gentry, and others, of France, Holland, Great-Britain, Ireland, and other principal places in Europe, also to some thousands in America.

N.B. Dr. Baker’s Albion Essence, and Antiscorbutic Dentifrice, is sold wholesale and retail, at his house in No. 45, Second-street, below the City Tavern; where all merchants, shop-keepers, masters of vessels, and others, may be supplied with any quantity to send to foreign parts, with proper printed directions. By attending properly to the directions, and observing the necessary precautions, people may not only free themselves from a great deal of pain, and preserve their teeth and gums throughout life, but also those of their children; as health, and beauty of the teeth, depend in a great measure of the care and treatment of them in early life.

Each pot of Anti-Scorbutic Dentifrice, has, to prevent fraud, his name on the cover, and sealed with his coat of arms, the same as the copper-plate arms on the lable of the bottle of Albion Essence.

Starting in 1785, the printer of the State Gazette of South-Carolina sold Dr. Baker’s products in Charleston. The next year, Spotswood and Clarke of Baltimore announced themselves as the exclusive source in Maryland. Other merchants in the big American cities carried Baker’s dentifrice along with others.

On 25 Nov 1790, the Newport Herald of Newport, Pennsylvania, offered this news:

MARRIED] On Sunday evening the 14th instant [i.e., this month], Doctor JOHN BAKER to Mrs MARY BONANG—a Lady of real worth.

Evidently Dr. Baker had married a wealthy widow, changing his circumstances. He seems to have stopped promoting his services as a surgeon-dentist. But Baker’s dentifrice and Albion Essence stayed on the market. Perhaps he was still making it; perhaps he had licensed it to someone else. Throughout the 1790s Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser ran ads like this, from 14 Aug 1793:

DOCTOR BAKER’s
Antiscorbutic Dentifrice
and Albion Essence,
Just received, and for sale at
W. Poyntell’s stationary store,
No. 21, Second-street, between Market and
Chestnut-streets 3aw3w

I’m not sure what “3aw3w” meant, but it and similar codes appear in lots of Philadelphia newspaper ads from the 1780s on. I suspect they were how printers kept track of how often an ad had run.

I haven’t found out any more about Dr. John and Mary Baker, nor whether they retained “a juvenile fragrance to the breath.”

Gen. Clinton Reads About Gen. Washington's Teeth

When I started this series of postings on dentistry with the arrival of John Baker in Boston, I’d never looked into that man’s life before. I was just trying to distract myself from the stitches in my gum. But the more I’ve scraped, the more I’ve found, and today’s posting is about how it’s even possible that Baker’s dental practice affected on the outcome of the Revolutionary War.

As I wrote on Tuesday, Baker set up shop in Williamsburg in 1772. He treated George Washington, among other Virginians. After the war began, he went on the move again. The Pennsylvania Packet of 24 Dec 1778 announced:

Doctor Baker,
SURGEON-DENTIST,
Has just arrived in this city from Williamsburg, Virginia. His stay here will be short. Those who are disposed to apply to him may not be disappointed.

This was, as far as I can tell, the first time Baker used the title “doctor” in advertising his services. And whether or not he intended to stay in Philadelphia at that time, he eventually did settle there for many years—perhaps the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, Washington, now busy commanding the Continental Army, continued to consult Dr. Baker about his false teeth. On 29 May 1781, Washington wrote to him (as shown above):

A day or two ago I requested Col. Harrison to apply to you for a pair of Pincers to fasten the wire of my teeth. — I hope you furnished him with them. — I now wish you would send me one of your scrapers as my teeth stand in need of cleaning, and I have little prospect of being in Philadelph. soon. — It will come very safe by the Post — & in return, the money shall be sent so soon as I know the cost of it.

This letter is now in the papers of Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, then the commander of British land forces in North America. Despite Washington’s confidence that a scraper would “come very safe by the Post,” British spies or patrols must have intercepted Washington’s mail packet and delivered it to Clinton’s headquarters.

In mid-1781 Clinton was trying to figure out whether Washington and the French army that had landed in New England were going to attack him in New York, or whether he could send some of his troops south to reinforce Gen. Cornwallis. This letter told him that Washington felt he had “little prospect of being in Philadelph. soon.” The fact that the letter was about such a personal matter as cleaning his teeth implied that it was genuine, not a ruse designed to mislead enemy agents. And that meant any other documents in the same packet were probably genuine as well. Clinton gained confidence that Washington wasn’t preparing to head south through Philadelphia to attack Cornwallis.

Indeed, at the time he wrote, Washington was planning to attack New York. Just about a week before, he and the French commander, the Comte de Rochambeau, had agreed to engage Clinton’s forces as soon as the French navy arrived. In July, Rochambeau’s land forces came into the New York theater.

But then in August, Washington and Rochambeau received a dispatch from the French admiral, the Comte de Grasse, saying that he’d left the West Indies to join up with American forces in Chesapeake Bay. Washington abandoned the plans for New York and marched to Virginia instead. Clinton had lost his chance to send reinforcements south, and in October the French and Americans forced Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. That turned out to be the decisive campaign of the war.

Of course, there were a lot of factors involved in Clinton’s decisions, and it’s unclear whether Washington’s letter to Dr. Baker played a significant role. But the mere possibility tickles me; teeth really do have deep roots.

According to James Thomas Flexner’s four-volume biography of Washington, a couple of years later another letter from the general to Dr. Baker also went astray and ended up in Clinton’s files (now housed at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor). In that one, Washington asked for the plaster or powder that Baker had used to make a mold of his mouth—which he probably never got. I have to wonder how the general was sending his Philadelphia mail.

Pulling Teeth in Colonial Boston

Before John Baker arrived from London and promoted the notion of specialized “surgeon dentists,” it looks like most Bostonians went to their regular doctors for dental care—which usually meant having teeth pulled rather than repaired. Indeed, losing one’s teeth seem to have been an experience that connected people.

John Cary, the biographer of Dr. Joseph Warren, wrote: “During the first years of practice, Warren charged one shilling, four pence for the extraction of teeth, one of his most common medical services.” On 27 Jan 1765, for example, Warren recorded extracting a tooth from Hannah Flucker, who was then fourteen years old. Her father was Thomas Flucker, later the last Secretary of the royal province, and her younger sister Lucy married Henry Knox.

Dr. Elisha Story extracted teeth from town watchman Benjamin Burdick’s wife and children. Indeed, Story’s office records for 12 Oct 1768 seem to be the only documentation for one of those children. Burdick and Knox were both at the Boston Massacre, trying to calm the conflict.

Ame [pronounced, I think, as “Amy”] and Elizabeth Cumings were two sisters who came to Boston from Scotland in the 1760s to set up a shop. Among the many things they sold, according to their ad in the 11 Nov 1765 Boston Gazette, were “Teeth Tincture and Powder.” In 1771 Knox rented space from the Cumingses for his first bookshop.

Merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary on 14 June 1769:

Sent for Dr. [James] Lloyd to have my Tooth drawn & had not Resolution to go thro’ the Operation.

One person who didn’t remove teeth was the painter John Singleton Copley (whose painting of Warren appears above, and who also painted Flucker). But the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Sr., who rarely passed by a chance for a pun, reportedly told a man to go to Copley’s house to have a tooth drawn. Drawn—get it? (With jokes like that, it’s no surprise that Dr. Byles’s congregation swiftly voted to remove him from their pulpit after the war began.)