“This Hawkshaw drew his sword upon us”?

Last week I wrote about some letters entrusted to Dr. Benjamin Church on 21–22 Apr 1775 which ended up in the files of Gen. Thomas Gage.

We have evidence that Gage or his staff actually read those letters for the intelligence they contained—because they got someone in trouble.

Thomas Hawkshaw was a lieutenant in the 5th Regiment of Foot, having served at that rank since 1771. He was involved in or witness to several conflicts in the first months of 1775.

In late January, Don Hagist reminded me, Lt. Col. George Maddison presided over an army court of inquiry into the actions of Lt. William Myers of the 38th. Myers testified that on 20 January two local men had baited him by calling, “The General was a Rascal” and even “The King was a Rascal.” After Myers “knocked down the man who had spoke in this manner,” the town watch showed up, bringing on a bigger confrontation.

Lt. Hawkshaw was among the witnesses in that inquiry. So, however, were more than twenty other army officers, a former army officer, seven enlisted men, two watchmen, and two civilians. That inquiry ended without apparent action on 28 January.

Four days later, on 1 February, Benjamin Alline and Philip Bass filed a complaint to Lt. Col. William Walcott of the 5th about Lt. Hawkshaw. According to Bass, he was escorting a young woman south of Liberty Tree about 9:30 P.M. the previous night, and Hawkshaw and another officer accosted them. After that confrontation, Bass went to an apothecary for a cut on his arm.

Lt. John Barker wrote in his diary for that day: “Lieut. H–ks–w of the 5th put under Arrest for having been concerned in a Riot yesterday evening, in which an Inhabitant was much wounded by him; it is supposed He will be brought to a Court Martial.”

Hawkshaw insisted, however, that he’d been in bed by 9:00 P.M. There’s no record of a formal army inquiry, so perhaps he found witnesses to confirm that and the locals had to let the matter drop.

Years back Prof. Gene Tucker of Temple University sent me transcriptions from the reminiscences of a Revolutionary War veteran named Samuel Cooper (1757-1840). He recounted several anecdotes about conflicts in Boston, but the details don’t match contemporaneous accounts, suggesting that Cooper was working with secondhand knowledge and faulty memory.

One incident stands out because Cooper said he was personally involved in it:

A party of young men, consisting of Benj. Eustis, his brother Geo[rge]., Jno. Cathcart, Ben Hazzard, Tim Green, Jim Otis, & myself had assembled about 9 o[’]cl[oc]k in the even[in]g at the corner of one of the streets, when we were approached by several officers, among them was a Lt. Hawkshaw of the 5th. We were comm[an]d[ed]. to disperse & go home & on our declining to do so this Hawkshaw drew his sword upon us but he had hardly time to raise it before he was disarmed by some of our party & the sword broken over his head; the rest of his associates withdrew.

Cooper didn’t specify when this happened, and frankly I doubted it happened as he described. In some of these fights an officer might lose his sword, as Ens. Henry King did in the January fracas. But this quick Yankee triumph sounds too good to be true, and no other report matches it.

Lt. Hawkshaw seems to have been very visible during those months in Boston. People complained about him by name while not identifying other officers who were with him. Or possibly Hawkshaw had become unpopular with the locals because of his testimony in the Myers inquiry, so people were eager to cast blame on him. But he was never brought to a court-martial.

In early April the lieutenant testified in the army inquiry about the dispute between his regimental commander, Lt. Col. Walcott, and Ens. Robert Patrick, discussed here.

And then came the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

TOMORROW: Shot in the face.

“Twill be damn’d hard to die for an old watchman!”

What did the 24 May 1773 the Boston Gazette mean by lumping Ebenezer Richardson’s pardon together with “Kennedys”?

Again, this required some digging in British sources.

Matthew and Patrick Kennedy were brothers convicted of murder in 1770, like Richardson. Unlike Richardson and unlike Edward McQuirk and Laurence Balfe, discussed yesterday, they hadn’t been part of a political brawl. But their case became politicized.

On 24 Dec 1769, the Kennedy brothers, who worked at a London auction house, and three friends went out drinking. The tavern keeper George Mallard testified: “They had two half pints of brandy, a pot of beer, a paper of tobacco, and four half-crown bowls of punch.”

The drinking buddies started wrestling. Mallard tried to break them up. The men attacked the publican, plus two more men who tried to help him. Then they left, carrying away one of the tavern’s iron pokers.

Out on the street, the Kennedy group struck several other people at random. One was a brickyard worker named George Bigby who “served that night as a watchman in the room of one Goodchild.” One witness identified Matthew Kennedy as hitting Bigby on the head, but others were unclear on which man in the bunch did it.

More Westminster Bridge watchmen, a constable, and citizens seized Patrick Kennedy. But as the constable was leading him away to the guardhouse, his friends attacked in a “rescue.” Patrick “got away, but was taken again in Channel-Row.”

Two hours after being struck, George Bigby died. As in the McQuirk and Balfe case, the blind magistrate Sir John Fielding presided over the murder investigation, collecting the poker. Bigby’s brother tracked down one of the Kennedy brothers’ companions. A constable arrested the other.

The four men went on trial at the Old Bailey on 21 February. Patrick claimed that he and his brother had actually been the victims of an attack. The two friends mainly insisted that they themselves hadn’t hit anyone with weapons and otherwise mostly confirmed what prosecution witnesses described. Matthew Kennedy’s testimony was, in total: “I know nothing at all about it.”

In the end, the Kennedys’ two friends were acquitted, but the brothers were both convicted of murder and sentenced “to be executed on the Monday following, and their bodies to be dissected and anatomized.”

In the morning at Newgate, Matthew Kennedy stepped into a cart to take his last ride to the gallows. Then a “respite” from the Crown arrived. The executions were put off for one week, then another.

It seems the Kennedy brothers had a sister, called Kitty Kennedy. She was one of the leading courtesans of the day, with wealthy and politically connected patrons. The picture above, from the opposition Freeholder’s Magazine, depicts Kitty Kennedy meeting with the brothers in the King’s Bench Prison. (Also at the table is Sir Richard Perrott, a baronet of low reputation and an anti-Wilkesite, otherwise unconnected to the case.)

TOMORROW: The personal becomes political.

Looking at Local Officials in Early America

The Summer 2024 issue of the Journal of the Early Republic includes a forum of several scholars discussing local governance.

As the introduction to that forum says, “Local governments shaped the lives of early republic Americans more profoundly than national or state-level government did. And yet, we historians of the early republic talk about local government the least.”

But that journal is behind a paywall. So the Society for the History of the Early American Republic’s Panorama blog shared some teaser essays by contributors to that forum. Here are samples.

Sung Yup Kim, “The Jack-of-all-trades Magistrate: Grappling with the Expansive Governing Role of Justices of the Peace in Early America”:

What would have happened in the early United States if one day, every justice of the peace was suddenly removed from office? Without anyone to assess rates and enforce their collection with due authority and local knowledge, maintaining the poor and building and repairing roads would become all but impossible. State and municipal governments would have a tough time getting local communities to comply with any peacetime or wartime statutory orders.

Shorn of local magistrates handling the preliminary examination of evidence and issuing of warrants on a daily basis, county courts would be overburdened, and criminal justice would grind to a standstill. And with no one entrusted to mediate and adjudicate upon petty civil disputes among local inhabitants, everyday socioeconomic interactions would be seriously hampered.

Gabriel J. Loiacono, “Let’s Give Hog Reeves Their Due!”:

Few towns [in the early republic] still elected [hog reeves] by that name, but might elect field drivers or haywards, whose remit would include regulating hogs and other animals, as well as the fences used to confine them all. Those that did specify hog reeves, according to a 1793 Boston newspaper editor, chose newly married men by custom. This seems to have been a mild form of hazing. Election to the post was often intended as a snub, as this 1790s vignette makes clear:

A certain Priest, being informed that he had been nominated in a public meeting to the office of a Hog-Reeve–replied, “I have hitherto supposed myself to be a shepherd among my flock; but some of my people, it seems, perceiving themselves to be hogs, wish me to be in a more proper relation to them, than the one I now sustain.”

That the joke was reprinted in largely Congregationalist New England, and describes a “priest,” suggests that readers appreciated both the insult of a hog reeve nomination aimed at a Church of England clergyman, as well as the witty comeback that he flung at members of his own congregation.

Nicole Breault, “When Did the Police Become a ‘Machine’?”:

Boston’s watch was not a professional police force, nor would the men who served in the watch have seen the modern police officer as a kindred official. They did not practice preventive policing; in other words, they did not patrol in an effort to prevent crimes before they happened, nor did they seek out individuals and populations suspected of criminal behavior. . . .

The role of local policing entities as agents of state has changed so dramatically over time, from a patchwork of actions performed by non-professional watches to a highly visible form of regulation by armed, uniformed law enforcement. As I suggest in the forum, Boston’s watch, officers of the “police of the town” were the most common ways in which ordinary people interacted with the state, and arguably, this remains true to the present. And, of course, one that must be held accountable for its potential for “abuses and evils.”

Upcoming Events on Revolutionary History at the M.H.S.

Here are three different types of online events coming up from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Tuesday, 6 February, 5:00 to 6:15 P.M.
Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar Series
“The Social World of Revolutionary New England”
Panel discussion with:

• Nicole Breault, University of Texas, El Paso
• Christopher Walton, Southern Methodist University
• Mark Peterson, Yale University

Nicole Breault’s research centers on Boston watchmen who walked the streets at night to monitor for signs of fire, distress, and disorder. Through night constables’ reports, orders governing watches, town records, acts of the General Court, and justice of the peace records, Breault’s paper examines local-level police training prior to the professionalization of law enforcement and more broadly, quotidian acquisitions of legal knowledge in early America.

Christopher Walton’s work examines how Congregational clergy in the Connecticut Valley ministered to their communities through suffering during the American Revolution. As the religious community dealt with sickness and death locally, it learned to respond piously to loss at the battlefront. Through suffering, religion became personal as individuals took solace in religious truth and cultivated piety.

Peterson, author of The City-State of Boston, will comment on Breault and Walton’s papers (which are available to seminar subscribers).

Register for “The Social World of Revolutionary New England” here.

Thursday, 15 February, 6:00 to 7:00 P.M.
“First Family: George Washington’s Heirs & the Making of America”
Cassandra Good, Marymount University,
in conversation with Sara Georgini, M.H.S.

While George and Martha Washington never had children of their own, they raised numerous children together. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, and also meet the children he helped to raise. The children of Martha Washington’s son by her first marriage—Eliza, Patty, Nelly and Wash Custis—were born into life in the public eye. Raised in the country’s first “first family,” they remained well-known not only as Washington’s family, but also as keepers of his legacy throughout their lives.

As the country grapples with concerns about political dynasties and the public role of presidential families, the saga of Washington’s family offers a human story of historical precedent.

Register for “First Family: George Washington’s Heirs & the Making of America” here. This is a free public event.


Monday and Tuesday, 19–20 February, 9:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.
“Perspectives on the Boston Massacre & the Legacy of Crispus Attucks”
Teacher Workshop

This two-day workshop is offered for Grade 3-12 educators with a focus on Grade 5, covering content relevant to Grade 5 Investigating History, Early U.S., 19th Century, and African American History.

On a cold night in March 1770, simmering conflict broke out into a riot between colonial Bostonians and British soldiers. Competing witness accounts from across all walks of Boston life made it difficult to know exactly what happened, but the night ended with the death of five colonists including Crispus Attucks, a Black and Indigenous sailor, and became a flashpoint in the conflict between colonists and British rule.

Eighty-five years later, Black historian and community leader William Cooper Nell brought Crispus Attucks back into the public’s consciousness, connecting Black participation in the Revolutionary Era to 19th-century abolitionists’ calls for emancipation and equal civil rights for Black Americans.

Using primary sources and resources from the MHS’ History Source, educators will:

• Explore conflicting witness testimonies and multiple perspectives from a diverse array of Bostonians.
• Investigate ways in which people of color have been both present for and critical actors in turning points in American history.
• Discuss how and why public memory of the Boston Massacre has changed over time–and how point of view influences our interpretation of the past.
• Model strategies for analyzing primary sources in the classroom.

This teacher workshop has a fee of $40 per person. Participants can earn P.D.P.’s or other professional credits—see the webpage for any additional fees. Register for “Perspectives on the Boston Massacre & the Legacy of Crispus Attucks” here.

The Resources of the Royal Governor

Andrew Roberts’s Spectator essay about the Boston Tea Party, discussed yesterday, ends with the line:

One wonders what would have happened if only Governor [Thomas] Hutchinson had put an adequate armed guard on the ships.

This facile suggestion reflects popular depictions of Boston in 1773 showing redcoats pushing around civilians (e.g., Assassin’s Creed III, Deryn Lake’s Death at the Boston Tea Party, &c.). So it’s worth explaining the reality Hutchinson faced.

The only British soldiers in greater Boston in late 1773 were the 64th Regiment out on Castle Island. They were too far away to quell a disturbance and too few to patrol the whole port.

Hutchinson did order that regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie, to be ready to fire Castle William’s guns on any ship that tried to leave the harbor without unloading and being authorized to sail.

Hutchinson could also call on, though not command, the resources of the Royal Navy. Adm. John Montagu stationed warships in secondary channels of Boston harbor, also preventing the tea ships from leaving with their cargo. Thus, the governor did act rather strongly with military power.

What civilian authorities did Gov. Hutchinson have at his disposal? Not many. Inside Boston, the royal government had one arm of law enforcement: the Customs service. That department’s administrators took the same hard line Hutchinson did, refusing to bend the rule that required ships to be unloaded within three weeks.

But then top Customs officials lay low, staying at Castle William or their country homes. Lower-level officers carried out their job of watching the ships at the wharf but put up no resistance when scores of men showed up on 16 December and started destroying the tea. There were too few of them to stand up to the united populace.

Boston had no police force yet. It had about a dozen watchmen who walked around town at night, looking for trouble and fires. Those men were employed by the town, not the colonial government, and therefore answered to the selectmen rather than the governor.

Hutchinson could give orders to Stephen Greenleaf, the appointed royal sheriff of Suffolk County. However, in Massachusetts the sheriff wasn’t an active law enforcer with armed deputies, like in western movies. His job consisted mainly of delivering writs and warrants.

On 30 November the governor actually sent Sheriff Greenleaf to the Old South Meeting-House with a declaration that the gathering there was illegal and the people must disperse. Instead, the people there voted unanimously to go on with their meeting. And then they had that vote published. Clearly the populace wasn’t cowed by that expression of royal authority.

Then there were the magistrates—justices of the peace and of the quorum. Royal governors appointed these men, too, and theoretically commanded their loyalty. But many had commissions for life from past governors, and they tended to act, or not act, independent of Hutchinson.

One magistrate, Nathaniel Hatch, was in the Clarke family warehouse when a crowd attacked it on 3 November. Hatch tried to invoke the Riot Act. Hutchinson’s described what happened:

Mr. Hatch a gentleman of Dorchester & a Justice of peace commanded the peace & required them to disperse but they hooted at him & after a blow from one of them he was glad to retreat. It had no effect.

How did British law expect magistrates to enforce such orders? By calling on a larger group of people to help enforce the law against the lawbreakers, either in a “hue and cry” emergency or in the form of a mobilized militia. Obviously, this system didn’t work when most people supported the behavior in question.

In fact, there was a “guard on the ships” in the weeks leading up to the Tea Party. It was set up at the 28 November meeting of the people in Old South. Those patrols were composed of fervent volunteers; eventually Boston’s militia companies took turns supplying the men. That guard carried out the orders of the people, not the royal government. Its job was to ensure the tea wasn’t officially landed, and it succeeded.

Thus, the counterfactual that Roberts proposed is unrealistic. Under British and Massachusetts law the governor had no way to put armed guards on the tea ships strong enough to hold off an assault.

Another counterfactual that could actually have happened is:

One wonders what would have happened if only Governor Hutchinson had let the ships sail back to England with the tea.

Obviously the imperial government wouldn’t have been pleased with that outcome. Lord North might have responded with actions similar to what he and Parliament enacted in 1774: replacing Hutchinson with a stricter governor like Gen. Thomas Gage, rewriting the Massachusetts constitution, even sending in troops to patrol the port—but to protect free trade (i.e., the unloading of tea ships) rather than to stop all trade.

The next question would be how that situation would have played out differently in Boston and in the other North American colonies.

“Orders for the Lighting of the Lamps”

As I recounted yesterday, the official records of Boston’s selectmen from the end of August 1774 reveal that the town’s first street lamps, acquired at great expense and trouble just a few months before, were no longer being lit.

The immediate question was how the town would treat its contract with Edward Smith, hired back in March to oversee the lamplighters and maintain supplies. On 31 August the selectmen decided:

Whereas it was agreed with Mr. Edward Smith to take the care of the Town Lamps for twelve months he to receive the sum of Forty Pounds Sterg. for that term of time, and whereas £13–6–8– lawful mony has been paid him for one quarter, & another quarter expires this day; but by reason of the distress occasioned by the Boston Port Bill, the Lamps have not been light the last Quarter—therefore,

Voted, that mr. Smith have a draft for said last Quarter as tho’ the service had been performed he having engaged to perform said service in any future time when called upon for that purpose, it being his intention and agreement to perform the service at the rate he had engaged for a twelve month, when the Town shall think proper to have the Lamps again lighted; and to consider this 2d. Quarters pay as so much advanced on account of service, which remains still to be performed by him, when called upon for that purpose.

In the memo. Book he has signed his Name to such a Writing as the above.

The town was thus still spending money on the street lights even though they weren’t lighting anything—and in a difficult economic time, too. But the selectmen could justify that as a payment for future service, and they kept Smith satisfied.

The decision to stop lighting the lamps coincided with the return of British army regiments to the streets. The presence of those soldiers didn’t make Bostonians feel so secure they decided street lighting was unnecessary. Based on their memories of 1768, citizens expected that having hundreds more young men in town, especially entitled young officers, would bring more trouble, not less.

At a meeting on 3 November, the town endorsed a recommendation to “augment the Town Watch to the Number of Twelve Men in each Watch” instead of four—a huge increase in personnel and expense.

That same town meeting took this confusing series of votes:

Upon a Motion made, Voted, that the Selectmen be desired to give Orders for the Lighting of the Lamps, when they shall think it proper.——

Voted, that a Comittee be now chosen to procure Subscriptions for the Purpose of Lighting of the Town Lamps.

On a Motion made, Voted, that the above Vote respecting Subscriptions for lighting the Lamps be reconsidered

That appears to be the last recorded discussion of the street lamps before the war. Presumably they remained dark.

On 24 November, the selectmen chose one of their number, Timothy Newell, to “receive from John Rowe Esq. all the Lamps and Tin Plates which he has in his hands, and to deposite the same in the upper loft of Faneuil Hall.” Rowe (shown above) had chaired the committee to acquire and install the street lights, and now he was done with the project. The extra equipment went into Boston’s attic, not to be brought out until the lamps had been lit again.

Watchmen in the Family

Josiah Carter was born on 31 Aug 1726, one of the nine children of Josiah and Lydia (Ambrose) Carter arriving between 1724 and 1738. He was baptized the next day in Boston’s First Meetinghouse, nicknamed “the Old Brick.”

Josiah’s father might have been the Josiah Carter who advertised psalm-singing lessons at his house on Union Street in the late 1740s.

It’s also possible that Josiah’s mother died and his father married Lydia Thayer in 1741 and had five more children between 1742 and 1749. There was certainly a Josiah and Lydia Carter active in that decade.

On 23 Apr 1763, the Rev. Andrew Eliot of the New North Meetinghouse married Josiah, Jr., to Mary Bradford. She was probably a daughter of Thomas Bradford, born in 1729. (There was another Mary Bradford born to other parents the year before, so I can’t be completely certain, but I’m going to proceed on that assumption.)

Josiah and Mary’s first daughter, also named Mary, was baptized in the First Meetinghouse on 15 Apr 1764. In regular order they had:

• Lucy (1765).
• Thomas Bradford (1767), named after his maternal grandfather.
• Josiah (1769), possibly named in honor of his paternal grandfather; his father stopped being designated “Jr.” at this time.
• John (1771).

Thomas Bradford had worked as one of Boston’s watchmen since 1734, patrolling the streets at night. The arrival of four British regiments in late 1768 complicated that job. Army officers resented having to answer to these working-class civilians, and there were several brawls between them and the watchmen.

Boston’s selectmen responded by beefing up law enforcement with new watches, including a “New South Watch” in October 1769. Bradford was one of the veterans assigned to that squad. In fact, the town made him acting “Constable of the South Watch”; I quoted his commission from the selectmen back here.

After the Massacre and the removal of the troops, the selectmen cut back on the watches in late 1770. Then, pressed by the public in town meeting, they reinstated a “South Watch near the Lamb Tavern” in early 1771 and put Bradford in charge.

Back in 1765, Josiah Carter had joined his father-in-law among the watchmen. He became part of Constable Bradford’s squad in 1771. The next year, the town appointed a fourth man to that watch; usually there were only three, but maybe they needed more manpower to cover all the nights. In November 1772, the selectmen replaced Bradford as Constable. It’s possible he hadn’t been up to the job for a while.

On 16 March 1773, Bradford later recounted, “i was carred Home from the Watch taken with a pain in my right Legg i Could not put it to ye. Ground.“ At the end of April, his daughters were still dressing his leg, and “i Have ben Con find for about a month.”

At age seventy-five, Bradford told the selectmen, he thought he had “but a few Days more to Live and now I intend to retier and to Take my Natrel Rest.” He asked for a small pension, enough for “a Littel fier & bread,” since he had no other income.

Josiah Carter’s name stopped appearing on surviving records of the Boston watch after March 1773, just as his father-in-law retired. Perhaps that was when he left town employ and became sexton at the First Meetinghouse, where he and his children had been baptized. That job involved looking after the church building and digging graves for its congregants.

The next we hear of Carter is in the 2 Jan 1775 Boston Evening-Post’s death notices:

Mr. Josiah Carter, aged 50. Sexton of the Old Brick, or first Church, in this Town.

Printer John Boyle recorded that Carter had died on 28 December. He was in fact only forty-eight years old.

TOMORROW: Josiah Carter and the young doctor.

When Boston Cracked Down on Drivers

On 11 Jan 1775, the selectmen of Boston sent an order to the Constables of the Town Watch to do what they could to curb “the driving of Slays thro’ the Town, with beat of Drum & other Noises at unseasonable times of the Night.”

That same meeting produced this order:

The following Advertisement was sent to Mr. [Isaiah] Thomas for a place in their Paper — vizt. —

Complaints have been made to the Selectmen that numbers of the Inhabitants have been greatly disturbed by the driving of Slays thro’ the Town, with the beat of Drums & other noises, at unseasonable Times of the Night; To prevent such Disorders for the future, Orders have been given the Constables of the Town Watch to stop such offenders and make Report of their Names, that they may be dealt with as the Law directs.

By Order of the Selectmen
William Cooper Town Clerk
Boston Jany. 11. 1775.

I don’t think that first line is an example of “their” taking a singular antecedent. Rather, Cooper was used to writing such orders for Edes and Gill, who had been the town’s preferred printers for many years. But in these months they were giving business to Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy.

So far as I can tell, the selectmen’s notice didn’t appear in the Spy. Instead, on 12 January Thomas reprinted the town’s traffic by-laws, as Edes and Gill had already done in the 9 January Boston Gazette. Here’s the text of those laws, as confirmed in 1757:

4. And it is further Ordered that henceforth no Cart Dray Trucks or Sled, drawn by either Horse or Horses, Horse & Oxen shall be suffered to pass through any of the Streets and Lanes of this Town but with a sufficient Driver, who shall during such Passage keep with his said Cart Dray Trucks or Sled, and carefully observe & attend such Methods as may best Serve to keep said Horse or Horses or Oxen under Command, and shall have the Thill-horse by the head; and whatsoever Carter or others undertaking to drive any Cart Dray Trucks or Sled, shall during such passing through the Streets and Lanes as aforesaid either ride in said Cart Dray Trucks or Sled, or otherwise neglect to observe and attend the Rules prescribed in this Order, such Carter Driver or Owner of such Cart Dray Trucks or Sled shall forfeit and pay the Sum of eight shillings for every such Offence.

5. And it is further Ordered that no Slay shall be drove in the Streets of this Town without Bells fastned to the Horses that draw the same, and whoever shall offend herein shall forfeit the Sum of ten shillings for every Offence. Great Dangers arising oftentimes from Coaches Slays Chairs and other Carriages on the Lord’s days as the People are going to or coming from the several Churches in this Town, being driven with great Rapidity, and the Public Worship being oftentimes much disturbed by such Carriages driving by the sides of the Churches with great force in time thereof.

6. It is therefore Voted and Ordered that no Coach Slay Chair Chaise or other Carriage shall at such time be driven at a greater rate than a foot pace, on Penalty of the Sum of ten shillings, to be paid by the Person driving, or if he be a Servant or Slave by his master or Mistress. . . .

9. And it is further Ordered that no Person whatsoever shall at any time hereafter Ride or drive a Gallop or other swift Pace within any of the Streets Lanes or Alleys of this Town, on Penalty of forfeiting the Sum of five shillings for every such Offence.

Was all this interest in traffic a response to the sailors’ procession with a plow on 6 January? Or perhaps the target was rowdy British army officers riding in and out of town. Either way, the “beat of Drum” shows that the selectmen saw a different type of nuisance from what their predecessors had dealt with.

“David Bradley, came down with me to the corpses”

On 5 Mar 1770, eleven days after David Bradlee saw Ebenezer Richardson shooting out of his house, there was a confrontation between soldiers and civilians in King Street. That became, of course, the Boston Massacre.

Among the people on the scene was Benjamin Burdick, Jr., constable of the town house watch. He testified about what he saw in multiple forums. Burdick’s most detailed account appears in the town’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, and in part it says:

I then looked round to see what number of inhabitants were in the street, and computed them to be about fifty, who were then going off as fast as possible; at the same time I observed a tall man standing on my left-hand, who seemed not apprehensive of the danger he was in, and before I had time to speak to him, I heard the word “Fire!” and immediately the report followed, the man on my left hand dropped, I asked him if he was hurt, but received no answer, I then stooped down and saw him gasping and struggling with death. I then saw another man laying dead on my right-hand, but further advanced up the street.

I then saw the soldiers loading again, and I ran up the street to get some assistance to carry off the dead and wounded. Doctor Jos. Gardner, and David Bradley, came down with me to the corpses, and as we were stooping to take them up, the soldiers presented at us again; I then saw an officer passing busily behind them. We carried off the dead without regarding the soldiers.

At the soldiers’ trial the shorthand expert John Hodgson, who was a relative newcomer to town and didn’t know everyone, quoted Burdick this way:

When the Molatto man was dead, I went up, and met Dr. Gardner and Mr. Brindley. I asked them to come and see the Molatto, and as we stooped to take up the man, the soldiers presented their arms again, as if they had been going to fire, Capt. [Thomas] Preston came, pushed up their guns, and said stop firing, do not fire.

“Mr. Brindley” is clearly the man Burdick knew as “David Bradley.”

The tailor David Bradlee was thus at three violent political events in Boston in the space of five months: the tarring and feathering of George Gailer on 28 Oct 1769, the fatal confrontation at Richardson’s house on 22 Feb 1770, and the Massacre.

Furthermore, Bradlee was willing to walk under the guns of the British troops to help pick up Crispus Attucks’s body.

We write a lot about the Boston “crowd” and the “Sons of Liberty” as a collective actor, but of course that group was made up of individual people. David Bradlee was evidently one of those people. He did the work of resisting Crown authority at the street level. He was part of the crowd that genteel political leaders like Samuel Adams, James Otis, and William Molineux relied upon.

COMING UP: The Bradlees and the Tea Party.

“The officer swearing and cursing to us”

At the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Beehive blog, Nicole Breault has shared a sample of her research into the town watch of eighteenth-century Boston.

This snapshot is from the fall of 1768, just after units of the British army started to arrive from Canada and Ireland. The Boston government had responded by strengthening the nightly watch, the small squads of men patrolling different sections of town, each under the command of a constable of the watch.

Breault writes:

In November 1768, three constables of the watch filed monthly reports and formal complaints with the town selectmen charging that officers of the regiments used strong language and threats of violence to challenge watch authority.

John Martin of the South End watch reported that one of his watchmen was “asolted,” struck by an officer of one the regiments for inquiring who was walking at night. Benjamin Burdick of the Townhouse watch filed a complaint regarding the threats officers made against their watch unit. Edward Ireland of the Dock Square watch listed five separate incidents, two in his complaint and four in his monthly report.

The complaint written by Ireland is located here in the MHS collection. One of many encounters he reported that month, Ireland described an incident outside of the door of his watch house as such:

the officer swearing and cursing to us we had no business to hail an officer and said do you think to stand four regiments, god dam you? We have four regiments here and we will burn you all to ashes in a moments time, we will send you all to hell and damnation in a minute and drew his bayonet and stabbed it against the door and said god dam you come out here. what do you think to do with us, times is not now as they have been.

The fact that an “officer,” not a regular soldier, was assailing the watch this way fits into my theory that part of the conflict on Boston’s streets in 1768 was class-based. British army officers were from the genteel class. Watchmen were men from the middling and laboring class. This officer felt that such men “had no business to hail an officer.” Meanwhile, the watchmen and the selectmen who employed them wanted all the people in Boston, including gentlemen of the army, to answer to local law.

“Here comes A new or A Strange Lobster”

I’ve gotten away from reporting on what was happening in Boston 250 years ago, but this date offers a chance to catch up.

John Ruddock was the North End’s big man. He owned a shipyard and thus employed a large number of laborers. He was a justice of the peace and later a selectman. He was the captain of the militia company that manned the North Battery protecting that part of Boston harbor. (The picture of the North Battery above was engraved by Paul Revere for a militia certificate; the copy at the American Antiquarian Society is signed by Ruddock.) Ruddock was a fervent Whig in the pre-Revolutionary turmoil, as were his adult sons, John, Jr., and Abiel.

Justice Ruddock was also literally, physically big. When he died in 1772, John Andrews reported that he was “ye most corpulent man among us, weighing, they say between 5 and 600 weight.” Andrews’s numbers were typically exaggerated, but even Ruddock declared he was “a Very Heavy Man.”

So keep that picture in mind as we consider today’s sestercentennial event, recounted by Sgt. Thomas Smilie of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot:

That on the 8th. day of June 1769, John Ruddock [Jr.] Gent: with others assaulted said Serjt. Thomas Smilie on His Guard with Stones, Sticks &ca. & upon Sd. Smilie Entreating them to Desist from such outrages, they Swore bitterly that they would Either Kill or be Killed before they would go away, useing at the same time the most scurrilous & abusive Language to Sd. Smili, Such as Blood back Rascal, Red Herring &ca.,

Upon which Sd. Smilie Secured the Sd. John Ruddock untill he Could acquaint his Father being a Magistrate of the Town of Boston, Who Came Soon after in a Chaise with another Son, who used the Same Invectives Swearing that they would make the bloody back Rascals pay for it, Wishing fervently to have Sd. Smilie farther from the Barrack, Swearing if they had or his Guard should never Disturb the Inhabitants of Boston More.

Another member of the 29th Regiment also complained about how Bostonians behaved in June 1769, as recorded in mid-1770 by magistrates more sympathetic to the Crown than John Ruddock was.

Pvt. Joshua Williams stated:

That in the Month of June one Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty Nine A few Days after he Joined the Regiment in Boston, he was going to his Barracks and was met by a Mob of People unknown to him, being A stranger in the place, they speaking to Each other in this manner, here comes A new or A Strange Lobster, and saing who sent him here, knock him Down, which they did, their Weapons being wood with one Sharp Edge, which Weapons Fractured, this Deponents Scull, some of them drove A Pike or Other Weapon into his Temples A Considerable length, they used this Deponent most Barbarous after he was knocked Down and was going to throw him into the Sea, others sai’d never mind him further, he is Dead already they Imediately left Deponent takeing A new Regimental Hatt, with them

It’s striking how Williams said his skull was fractured and he was left for dead, but he was still upset about that new hat. I suspect he got in trouble with his sergeant for losing that hat.

In both these cases, we have only a soldier’s description of what happened. Smilie and Williams provided sworn testimony, but they weren’t questioned by anyone representing the people they accused. We don’t know if they left out pertinent information that would complicate the picture of peaceful soldiers whom angry locals suddenly assaulted for no reason.

For example, Pvt. Williams’s story would look quite different if it turned out the men who attacked him with “A Pike or Other Weapon” were town watchmen carrying bill-hooks, trying to enforce the law.

So how does Sgt. Smilie’s depiction of the Ruddocks match up with what other sources say?

TOMORROW: A conflict from two sides.

“I suppose the affair will drop”

On the night of 20 Jan 1775, as I described back here, there was a big fight between Boston’s watchmen and British army officers, with a few civilians involved on each side.

While the immediate spur was a mistaken belief that the watchman had arrested an officer, the underlying cause was the ongoing dispute over authority in Massachusetts.

When I took notes on this conflict while examining the Gage Papers at the Clements Library, I didn’t see any indication that the army’s board of enquiry led to charges, discipline, or acquittal for the officers involved.

Instead, Gen. Thomas Gage appears to have decided to leave the next steps to the civil courts. He had achieved his immediate goal of calming the town a bit by ordering a public enquiry, with five high-level officers taking testimony from over three dozen men.

That strategy worked, at least for some people. John Eliot told the Rev. Jeremy Belknap: “His Excellency seems dispos’d to do everything in his power to prevent mischief & satisfy the people, & me judice [in my judgment], the times being considered, is a very good Governor.”

So how did the civil magistrates and court system deal with the case? As the Boston Gazette reported,  Patriot-leaning magistrates ordered eight officers and saddler Richard Sharwin to answer to charges at the next court term. But the newspaper then acknowledged there was a huge obstacle in the way of any trial:

but the good People of this County will rather chuse to hear no more of this Matter, than return Jurors to the Superior Court upon the Act of Parliament to regulate the Government of this Province, which they have resolved never to submit to.——

For months the Massachusetts Whigs had been urging people not to cooperate with the royal court system, first in protest of salaries for judges from the tea tax, then in protest of the Massachusetts Government Act. Crowds had kept the county courts outside of Boston closed since the previous summer. Most of the men of Suffolk County felt the same way.

Lt. John Barker likewise saw where the controversy was heading on 25 January:

Several of the riotous Officers bound over to appear at the April Assizes, when I suppose the affair will drop, as they can’t have any Jury but according to the new Acts which they are hitherto so much averse to.

There were no “April Assizes” in Massachusetts that year. Instead, that month brought war.

“By what Means this Riot was introduced”

While the king’s army held a public court of enquiry into the violence on the night of 20 Jan 1775, the Massachusetts civil authorities did the same.

Town watchmen swore out a legal complaint against certain army officers. According to John Eliot, witnesses “were examined in the Court House before Justice [Edmund] Quincey,” shown here. Or, as the 30 January Boston Gazette reported:

On Tuesday and Wednesday last there was a full and impartial Examination of Witnesses before the Worshipful Edmund Quincy and John Hill, Esquires, two of his Majesty’s Justices of the Quorum for this County.—

Back in 1768-70, the first time the army patrolled the streets of Boston, Justice Quincy became known for his hostility to any soldiers brought before him. Justice Hill had been one of magistrates most involved in collecting testimony for the town report on the Boston Massacre. So, despite the Boston Gazette’s assurances, friends of the royal government must have been dubious those men were conducting a “full and impartial Examination.”

The army board sat that whole week in “the New Court House,” according to John Andrews, so what “Court House” did these two justices of the peace use? The Town House had served as a courthouse for many years, so perhaps that’s what Eliot meant. It’s hard to imagine the two inquiries taking place side by side.

Edes and Gill published the outcome of the magistrates’ inquiry this way:

By the Evidence it appeared, that previous to the Riot the following Circumstances took place: A little after Ten o’Clock two young Men passing down Milk-Street, near the Entrance into Long Lane, they were accosted by an Officer, not in the English, but as they supposed in another Language, which they did not understand; they asked him what he meant; he said he meant to tell them to go about their Business.

That detail about the officer not speaking in English might have been a dig at Scotsmen in the army. Or he might just have been speaking in another language, or incoherently.

They said they were going, and passed along into Long-Lane. They had not gone far before the Officer called them to stop—they stopped till he came up to them, and angry Words ensued. The young Men, however, parted from him the second Time and went on their Way towards their Homes.

The Officer followed and overtook them near the Head of the Lane, and stopped them again, telling them he supposed they were stiff Americans; to which one of them said, he gloried in the Character.—Here again Words ensued, and the Officer drew his Sword, flourished it and struck one of the young Men on the Arm, who immediately seized him.—

At this Juncture, three or four of the Town Watch, who were upon the Patrole, came up and separated them, advising them to go Home. The two young Men did so, but the Officer refused, saying, he was the Prisoner of the Watch and would go with them; they told him he was not their Prisoner, but might go where he plea’d, and if he desired it, they would see him safe Home; but he insisted upon it, that he was their Prisoner ——

The Watchmen went down the Lane towards their Head Quarters in King-Street, where they had been going before, and the Officer accompanied them. In the Way they met with several Persons, whom they took to be Servants of Officers, who supposing this Officer to be in the Custody of the Watch, attempted to rescue him, but he insisted upon being a Prisoner, and said the Watchmen were his Friends, and he would go with them.

They then went forward, and in Quaker-Lane, which leads into King-Street, they were met and assaulted by more than twenty Officers of the Army, who took several of their Watch-Poles from them and wounded some of them.

We thought it necessary thus far to give a Detail of the Affair, that our Readers might know by what Means this Riot was introduced.——

The Particulars that happened afterwards are too many to be enumerated in a News-Papers. It is sufficient to say, that upon the Evidence the Justices thought proper to bind eight of the Officers, and a Sadler, named Sharwin, who had lived a few Years in Town, to answer for their Conduct at the Superior Court, and in the mean Time to be on good Behavior…

The newspaper clearly painted Sharwin the saddler as a troublemaking outsider. I just hunted for information about him and ended up tracking Richard Sharwin’s career over two decades, followed by his widow’s involvement in the sale of an enslaved woman that linked the Long Island spy Robert Townsend to the Massacre witness Richard Palmes. Someday I may tell that story.

As for the story of what happened on the night of 20 Jan 1775, Eliot supplied this understanding:

Betwixt ten & eleven in the evening an officer in liquor desired the watch to go home with him. A young gentleman of the town, seeing him with two men & thinking him abus'd, went to the British Coffee House, & acquainted the officers collected there that one of their companions was involuntarily led away & made prisoner by the watch. They rushed out, attacked the watchmen with drawn swords, & held the battle till orders were received from the Governor [Thomas Gage] to disperse.

Plus, at some point the main guard turned out under Capt. John Gore, though he was allegedly as drunk as any of the officers from the coffee-house or the first officer who kept cheerfully insisting he was a prisoner of his friends, the watchmen.

TOMORROW: The results of the two investigations.

“Five field Officers, to enquire into the circumstance of the Riot”

The morning after the fight between British army officers and town watchmen that I reported yesterday, the higher authorities swung into action.

That morning six selectmen met at Faneuil Hall: John Scollay, John Hancock, Thomas Marshall, Samuel Austin, Oliver Wendell, and John Pitts. The record of that session says: “Mr. [Benjamin] Burdick & other Constables of the Watch, appeared and complained to the Selectmen of great abuses received from a number of officers of the Army, the last Night.”

The selectmen must have asked the watchmen to produce sworn testimony because that afternoon “Mr. Isaac Pierce, Mr. Joseph Henderson & Mr. Robert Peck & Mr. Constable Burdick gave in their Depositions.”

Gov. Thomas Gage, who was also the general in charge of the soldiers, took steps the same day—a politic move to calm the town. Lt. John Barker wrote in his diary, “A court of Enquiry is order’d to set next Monday, consisting of five field Officers, to enquire into the circumstance of the Riot.”

The prospect of punishment might, however, have made some officers more resentful. The merchant John Andrews wrote on 22 January:

The Officers’ animosity to the watch still rankling in their breast, induc'd two of them to go last night to the watch house again at about 10 o’clock and threaten the watch that they would bring a file of men and blow all their brains out.

The watch thereupon left their cell and shut it up, and went and enter’d a complaint to the Selectmen—some of whom waited on the Governor at about 12 o’clock, who was very much vex’d at the Officers’ conduct, and told the Gentlemen that he had got the names of three that were concern'd in Fryday night’s frolick, and was determin’d to treat them with the utmost severity—and likewise order’d a guard to patrole through every street in town and bring every officer to him that they should find strolling or walking.

Fortunately, the 22nd was a Sunday, so nobody really expected to be out having fun in Boston, anyway.

On Monday, 23 January, the court of enquiry met. It was headed by Lt. Col. George Maddison of the 4th regiment, with two other lieutenant colonels and two majors on the bench. They took testimony every day from Monday to Saturday, according to records in Gen. Gage’s files.

Barker wrote, “it is supposed it will be a tedious affair, and will not be finished for some time.” Andrews also reported:

Yesterday the Officers were all examin’d at the New Court house, respecting fryday night’s affair, being carried there under arrest, nine in number (after which the General is to deal with them): being a great number of evidences they were oblig’d to adjourn till [to] day.

The list of witnesses included:

• five army captains, including Hugh Maginis of the 38th, who had fought with the watch back in November.
• twelve lieutenants from the army and Marines, including Gage’s aide de camp Harry Rooke; Lt. House of the 38th, who had sustained a cut on his forehead; William Pitcairn of the Marines, son of the major commanding that unit; and William Sutherland of the 38th, who would later leave a detailed report on the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
• seven ensigns, including Ens. King of the 5th, whose sword had been taken.
• a sergeant and at least five privates.
• “Mr. Winslow,” who had been escorting Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver’s wife Elizabeth home from “Mr. Vassall’s,” probably her brother, John Vassall.
• watchman William McFadden.
• “Thomas Ball Esqr. late Capt. in the Royal Irish Regt. of Foot,” who testified that townspeople were yelling at the soldiers to fire.

At the start of the inquiry John Andrews had high expectations: ”the Captain of the Guard [John Gore] at least will be broke, for being drunk when on duty.”

Meanwhile, some of the town’s justices of the peace held their own hearings.

TOMORROW: The magistrates’ findings.

“Drunken Officers attacked the town house watch”?

On 20 Jan 1775, there was a confrontation between the Boston town watch and several British army officers.

I’ve written before about such conflicts, especially during the 1768-70 occupation, and how they reflect differences in class and disagreements about sources of authority. Did British military gentlemen need to defer to working-class Bostonians who had been empowered by local law, especially if those gentlemen were in Boston in the first place because of alleged disrespect for Parliament’s law?

Naturally, there was disagreement about the nature and fault of this fracas, too.

The merchant John Andrews wrote to a relative on 21 January:

Last evening a number of drunken Officers attacked the town house watch between eleven and 12 o’clock, when the assistance of the New [i.e., West] Boston watch was call’d, and a general battle ensued; some wounded on both sides.

A party from the main guard was brought up with their Captain together with another party from the Governor’s [i.e., from Province House]. Had it not been for the prudence of two Officers that were sober, the Captain of the Main Guard would have acted a second Tragedy to the 5th March, as he was much disguis’d with Liquor and would have order’d the guard to fire on the watch had he not been restrain’d.

His name is [John] Gore, being a Captain in the 5th or Earl Peircy’s regiment. He was degraded not long since for some misdemeanour.

On the other side, Lt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote in his diary for the same day:

Last night there was a Riot in King Street in consequence of an Officer having been insulted by the Watchmen, which has frequently happen’d, as those people suppose from their employment that they may do it with impunity; the contrary however they experienc’d last night: a number of Officers as well as Townsmen were assembled, and in consequence of the Watch having brandished their hooks and other Weapons, several Officers drew their Swords and wounds were given on both sides, some Officers slightly; one of the Watch lost a Nose, another a Thumb, besides many others by the points of Swords, but less conspicuous than those above mention’d.

As for Andrews’s statement that Capt. Gore had been “degraded” in rank, Barker had already noted when Gore was “removed from the light Infantry” company of the 5th. That wasn’t for “some misdemeanour” but after “having complained to the Comr. in Chief [Thomas Gage] of the insufficiency of some of the accoutrements of the Company.

Barker added that Gore, Lt. Col. William Walcott, and Col. Percy “have long been upon ill terms.” And going over his regimental commanders’ heads hadn’t helped Gore’s standing.

TOMORROW: Higher authorities step in.

[Let me just note that this Capt. John Gore of the royal army was completely different from the militia captain John Gore who headed the family profiled in The Road to Concord. But colonial Boston being what it was, of course there would have to be two men called Capt. John Gore in a community of only 20,000.]

“Whether we are or are not a proper garrison town”

It’s time for another peek into the Boston Whigs’ complaints about soldiers being stationed in their town. Here’s the entry from their “Journal of Occurrences” dated 30 Nov 1768, or 250 years ago today.

An honourable gentleman of his Majesty’s Council, lately riding over Boston Neck in his coach, was stopped by some soldiers on guard, one of which had the assurance to open the door, and put in his head; upon being asked what had occasioned such freedom, he had the insolence to reply, that he was only examining whether any deserter was concealed there.

As I wrote earlier, the main reason for the checkpoints on Boston Neck at this point was to stop deserters. The army command did have reason to suspect that locals, even members of the Council, didn’t care as much about desertion as they did. Earlier in the week a jury had acquitted “A countryman named Geary” on the charge of enticing soldiers to desert. (This may have been the same man whom Capt. John Willson had confined at the Castle in October.)

But there were army guards posted elsewhere in town as well:

A number of gentlemen passing in the night by the Town-House, were hailed by the guards three [there?] several times, without answering; whereupon they were stopped and confined in the guard-house for a considerable time:

A young gentleman in another part of the town, having a lanthorn with him, was challenged by some soldiers, but not answering so readily as was expected, he was threatened with having his brains immediately blown out unless he stopped:

A merchant of the town passing the grand guard this night about ten o’clock, was several times challenged by the soldiers, and upon telling them, that as an inhabitant he was not obliged to answer, not had they any business with him; they replied that this was a garrison town, and accordingly they presented their bayonets to his breast, took and detained him a prisoner for above half an hour, when he was set free; having procured the names of those who had thus used him, he is prosecuting them for the same; and we may expect soon to have it determined, whether we are or are not a proper garrison town.

Perhaps by treating the most respectable of our inhabitants in this sort, it is intended to impress our minds with formidable ideas of a military government, that we may be induced the sooner to give up such trifling things as rights and privileges, in support of which we are now suffering such great insults and injuries.

A 1780 military dictionary defined a “Garrison Town” as “a strong place, in which troops are quartered, and do duty for the security of the town; keeping guards at each port, and a main guard in the market place.” That would mean taking control from the town watch and other civil authorities.

The “Journal of Occurrences” was sounding a classic British Whig political warning: if people don’t protest abridgments of their rights, even small ones, then gradually they’ll be reduced to vassalage and slavery.

Of course, the same Whigs had earlier approvingly reported that “orders have been given by the Selectmen to the town watch, to take up and secure all such Negro servants as shall be absent from their master’s houses, at an unseasonable time of night.” Slavery meant different things for different people.

The 30 November mention of the “young gentleman” out walking with a “lanthorn” is notable. Supposedly carrying a light signaled that one was out for an innocent purpose. By November 1769 the watchmen were specifically instructed that enslaved people of color out after 9:00 P.M. had to be “carrying Lanthorns with light Candles.”

“Went so far as to wound some officers with their Watch Crooks”

Yesterday I quoted the Boston Whigs’ side of some early confrontations between British army officers and the town watch.

There were, of course, two sides to such stories. I haven’t found officers’ accounts of such conflicts from the 1768-70 occupation, but there are reports from 1774-75.

On 15 Nov 1774, Capt. Hugh Maginis of the 38th Regiment told Gen. Thomas Gage that three nights before he and another captain had been attacked near Liberty Tree by a local named Bennet and his “whole Guard” armed with “long Poles with Spikes & Bills at the Ends of them.”

Looking back from 1782, Ens. Jeremy Lister of the 10th noted this same incident in his account of the outbreak of war. Bostonians, he wrote, “even went so far as to wound some officers with their Watch Crooks Captn. McGinny of the 28th. [sic] Regt. was one of those unfortunate gentlemen amongst many more.”

The way those officers described the altercation shows how they rejected the authority of the watchmen. Magenis mentioned “long Poles with Spikes & Bills at the Ends of them,” which were the billhooks or pikes that watchmen carried all over the British Empire. Lister even called those weapons “Watch Crooks.” But neither officer deigned to admit that those men might have had legal power to stop people.

The leader of that crowd probably even identified himself to Magenis since the captain knew his surname. Checking the Boston town records shows that man must have been John Bennet, appointed “Constable of the Watch at the South and near the sign of the Lamb” in December 1772.

Notably, back on 28 Sept 1774 Bennet had reported “a very Warm dispute between an Officer of the Fourth Regiment about the Right of Challening of One of their Cloth”—i.e., someone wearing a scarlet army uniform. That confrontation ”was Decided by an Officer of the 38 who Comanded the Grand Rounds at that Time”—the same regiment Magenis came from. Since Bennet didn’t complain about that second officer’s decision, he must have been satisfied with the outcome. Not every confrontation had to end in violence.

Officers versus Watchmen in the Streets of Boston

I’ve remarked a few times on how Boston’s town watchmen and the British army officers sent to the town in the fall of 1768 got into arguments and fights.

Those conflicts were about different forms of government authority, and they were about class deference. In fact, some of the combatants made those arguments explicit, as in this report from the Whigs’ “Journal of Occurrences” on 25 Nov 1768, 250 years ago today:

The town watch has been lately greatly abused and interrupted in their duty by some officers, two of them came to the Town-House watch with swords under their arms, calling them damned scoundrels, forbidding them to challenge officers as they passed, or to give the time of night in their rounds as also from keeping in the watch house, threatening that in such case they would have them in irons, and bring four regiments to blow them all to hell; also telling the watchmen they were the King’s soldiers and gentlemen, who had orders from his Majesty, and they were above the Selectmen who gave them their orders:

Upon another night, others officers came to the dock-watch, one of them with a drawn hanger or bayonet, striking it against the door and asking, whether they thought the times were now as they had been, and that they could stand four regiments; also damning them, and threatening to burn all of us to ashes, and to send us all to hell in one month’s time:—

At another time the south watch was also assaulted, one of the men struck at, and much abused with profane and threatening language.

I happily quoted the first paragraph of that complaint about “the King’s soldiers and gentlemen” in my Dublin Seminar paper about the town watch in the years leading up to the Boston Massacre, published in this volume.

Depending on the individuals, of course, there might have been other factors in those conflicts. Some British officers in their late teens and early twenties might have still been enjoying their wild youth. The watchmen tended to be middle-aged and tasked with keeping the peace. And surprising as it might seem, alcohol might have been involved in some of these incidents.

The same dispatch from the Whigs had other complaints about military officers:

The last evening a gentleman of distinction, seeing an officer of a man of war in the coffee-house, who had two evenings before called out to him in a rude manner, thought proper to ask him why he was thus accosted; upon which the officer desired him to go into a room, for he wanted the pleasure of taking his life; that as he did not suppose him acquainted with the sword, pistols would do; he then called out to the gentleman, will you not fight me? upon which the gentleman desired, and the officer agreed to meet him at his house in the morning, to determine what was to be done; the officer not coming, we hear the gentleman having learned he was a Lieut. of marines, intended a prosecution, but was prevented by his confining himself to his ship.

This report suggests the marine lieutenant was threatening a duel with swords or pistols, but the local “gentleman of distinction” responded with a legal “prosecution” instead—another example of New England culture at odds with the manners of British military gentlemen.

Finally, there were more complaints about Capt. John Willson of the 59th Regiment:

Captain W——n, of the regulars, tho’ bound to his good behaviour for the Negro business, has notwithstanding repeated his offences, by drawing his sword upon some persons the last evening and otherwise abusing them, and we hear complaint has been made to one of our magistrates respecting this affair.

Again, Boston’s civil authorities were trying to keep army officers bound to the local law.

“The inhabitants of this town have been of late greatly insulted and abused”

By late October 1768, the army regiments in Boston had all moved into rented barracks. The town’s Whigs therefore could no longer complain about them occupying public buildings or trying to push poor people out of the Manufactory.

Those activists therefore focused on recording conflicts between soldiers and locals in the streets. Here’s a sample of their complaints from the “Journal of Occurrences.”

29 October:

The inhabitants of this town have been of late greatly insulted and abused by some of the officers and soldiers, several have been assaulted on frivolous pretences, and put under guard without any lawful warrant for so doing.

A physician of the town walking the streets the other evening, was jostled by an officer, when a scuffle ensued, he was afterwards met by the same officer in company with another, both as yet unknown, who repeated his blows, and as is supposed gave him a stroke with a pistol, which so wounded him as to endanger his life.

A tradesman of this town on going under the rails of the Common in his way home, had a thrust in the breast with a bayonet from a soldier; another person passing the street was struck with a musket, and the last evening a merchant of the town was struck down by an officer who went into the coffee-house, several gentlemen following him in, and expostulating with the officers, were treated in the most ungenteel manner…

Note how solid the class division of eighteenth-century British-American society was. The physician, merchant, and other “gentlemen” got into conflicts with officers who allegedly behaved “in the most ungenteel manner.” Meanwhile, the tradesman and “another person” were accosted by enlisted men.

1 November:

An householder at the west part of the town, hearing the cries of two women in the night, who were rudely treated by some soldiers, ventured to expostulate with them for this behaviour, for which boldness he was knocked down with a musket and much wounded, they went off undiscovered; another had a thrust with a bayonet near his eye, and a gentlemen of this town informs, that a day or two before the physician already mentioned met with his abuse, he overheard several officers discoursing, when one of them said, if he could meet that doctor he would do for him.

2 November:

Two men and a lad coming over the Neck into the town, were haled by one guard and passed them: soon after they were challenged by another, they replied they had just answered one, but they hoped they were all friends; upon which a soldier made a pass or two with his bayonet at one of them, who parried the bayonet at first, but was afterward badly cut on the head and grievously wounded in divers parts of his body.

One passing the south town watch was challenged but not stopped, he drew his sword and flourished it at the watch, using very insulting language; he was then discovered to be an officer a little disguised [i.e., drunk], another soon joined him, full as abusive, both declared that if they had been challenged in the street and no orders shewn, they would have deprived the watchman of his life.

A country man also coming into town, was thought to have approached nearer the guards than he should have done, for which offence he was knocked off his horse with a musket.

The conflict between the “south town watch” and the two officers was unusual in crossing class boundaries. The watchmen were working-class men, but they were employed and empowered by the town to keep the peace. The officers, in contrast, were gentlemen answering to the Crown government. Which group of men had authority to order the other around? That argument played out in the streets for months.

And then there was the exacerbation of the guardhouse on the Neck.

TOMORROW: Why did the British army need to guard the Boston Neck?

“The Negroes shall be free, and the Liberty Boys slaves”?

As I described back here, on the night of 28 Oct 1768 Capt. John Willson of the 59th Regiment was reportedly heard “to persuade some Negro servants to ill-treat and abuse their masters, assuring them that the soldiers were come to procure their freedoms.”

The next day and again on Monday, 31 October, the Boston selectmen’s official business included “Taking Depositions relative to Capt. Willson & Negros.” Selectman John Rowe’s diary confirmed that “they were all present” for the Saturday discussion.

One result of those meetings was officially that “The Several Constables of the Watch [were] directed by the Selectmen, to be watchful of the Negros & to take up those of them that may be in gangs at unseasonable hours.” Or as the Boston Whigs interpreted it for newspaper readers in other ports:

In consequence of the late practices upon the Negroes of this town, we are told that orders have been given by the Selectmen to the town watch, to take up and secure all such Negro servants as shall be absent from their master’s houses, at an unseasonable time of night.

It’s notable that the selectmen’s directive specified “those of them that may be in gangs” while the report for other colonies referred to “all such Negro servants.” In practice the watchmen probably were stopping all black people, in groups or alone, enslaved or free. Not that there was any real evidence for an incipient uprising.

The selectmen also took action in the court system. The Whigs’ “Journal of Occurrences” reported on 31 October, 250 years ago today:

The following complaint was regularly made this day, viz

to the worshipful Richard Dana and John Ruddock, Esqrs. two of his Majesty’s justice of the peace for the county of Suffolk, and of the quorum.

The subscribers Selectmen of the town of Boston, complain of John Willson, Esq; a captain in his Majesty’s 59th Regiment of foot, a detachment whereof is now quartered in the said town of Boston, under his command, that the said John, with others unknown, on the evening of the 28th day of October current, did, in the sight and hearing of divers persons, utter many abusive and threatening expressions, of, and against the inhabitants of said town, and in a dangerous and conspirative manner, did entice and endeavour to spirit up, by a promise of the reward of freedom, certain Negro slaves in Boston aforesaid, the property of several of the town inhabitants, to cut their master’s throats, and to beat, insult, and otherwise ill treat their said masters, asserting that now the soldiers are come, the Negroes shall be free, and the Liberty Boys slaves—to the great terror and danger of the peaceable inhabitants of said town, liege subjects of his Majesty, our Lord the King, and the great disturbance of the peace and safety of said town.

Wherefore your complainants, solicitous for the peace and wellfare of the said town, as well as their own, as individuals, humbly requests your worship’s consideration of the premises, and that process may issue against the said John, that he may be dealt with herein according to law.

Joshua Henshaw
John Rowe
Joseph Jackson
Sam. Pemberton
John Hancock
Henderson Inches

Boston elected seven selectmen, but only six signed this complaint to the magistrates. Who was the seventh? None other than John Ruddock, one of the magistrates who took the complaint. Bostonians must have known that he’d been in the discussion that led to that legal action before him. But people in other American ports wouldn’t have spotted that maneuver.

The next day, 1 November, the Whigs reported:

In pursuance of a complaint made to Mr. Justice Dana, and Ruddock, relative to Capt. Willson and others, a warrant was issued by those justices for taking up said Willson and bringing him before them, which was delivered to Benjamin Cudworth [1716-1781], a deputy sheriff of the county, who being opposed in the execution of it, applied to the high sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf], who with divers constables went to apprehand him; at first he also met with opposition from one of the officers, but the said Willson soon after surrendered himself to the sheriff, who brought him before the justices at Faneuil-Hall, which was crowded with people; and after the examination of divers witnesses upon oath, the complaint, was so well supported, that the justices ordered him to become bound with sufficient sureties for his appearance at the Superior Court in March next, to what shall then be alledged against him, touching the matters complained of, as also for his good behaviour in the mean time.

Sheriff Greenleaf had tried to seize the Manufactory for the Crown earlier in the month, but here he was taking Capt. Willson before the law. In both cases, Greenleaf was doing his main job to serve legal papers. (He wasn’t a peace officer the way we picture sheriffs in the Old West.)  The magistrates held their hearing in Faneuil Hall, “crowded with people,” which only a couple of days before had been crowded with troops.

John Rowe recorded the 1 November action in his diary, “Capt. Willson was carried before Justice Dana for some Drunken Behaviour & bound over to the Sessions.” Rowe had signed that formal complaint, of course. But privately he referred to Willson’s alleged incitement to bloody rebellion merely as “some Drunken Behaviour.”

As usual, Rowe was playing both sides. He spent part of that evening socializing with James Otis, William Molineux, and other Whiggish merchants and the rest at a gathering with Gen. Thomas Gage, Col. James Robertson, Col. William Dalrymple, Col. Maurice Carr, and other high-ranking army officers.