USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 65
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The great industry in Boston was necessarily manufacturing, commercial, and agricultural. But in the colonial period it had signs of the life which has since been its pride. Long before John Foster began to print,4 book- sellers and publishers were established in Boston. Hezekiah Usher was in business as bookseller in 1652. He was agent for the society for propagat- ing the Gospel among the Indians; and it was through him that types and paper were procured, by which Green, at Cambridge, printed the great Indian Bible in 1660-1663. Many books and pamphlets were printed at Cambridge for the Boston bookseller, and before Foster printed, Usher's son and successor, John Usher, was in business.5
Thomas, in his History of Printing, mentions one Edmund Ranger, a binder in 1673; but as early as 1637 the town records of Boston mention the sale of a shop to one Saunders, a book-binder. Whether or not he followed his trade we have no knowledge. In 1679 there was a bookseller, William Avery, "near the Blue Anchor; " and when
John Vihar
John Dunton John Dunton, the London bookseller, brought a venture to Boston in 1686, he found eight bookstores and no mean supply of books.6
Dunton says nothing of a public library, which was in existence at least as early as 1673. In the Mather Papers in the Prince Library there is a
1 II. 212, 213.
2 It did not occur to the court or the town to issue their own bonds.
3 For a further discussion of this interesting subject, which is a little foreign to our immediate purpose, see Savage's note on the above pas- sage in Winthrop's History. [In 1651, William Aubrey bought a water-front Jot near the Mill Creek "for the use of the undertakers of the iron works in New England." - ED.]
4 [See the chapter on the "Literature of the Colonial Period." - ED.]
6 Dunton, in 1686, speaks of him as "making the best figure in Boston ; very rich, adventures much to sea, but has got his estate by book- selling." [Cf. also Dunton's Letters, p. 78. - ED.] 6 [Hle mentions, besides John Usher, Mr. Phillips "the most beautiful man in the town ; " Minheer Brunning [or Browning], from Hol- land; Duncan Cambel, a Scotch bookseller, " very industrious, and I am told," says the traveller, " a young lady of great fortune is fallen in love with him." Andrew Thorncomb, whose "company was coveted by the best gentlemen,"
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
will of John Oxenbridge, in which occurs the bequest: "To the Public Library in Boston or elsewhere, as my executors and overseers shall judge best, Augustine's Works in six volumes, the Century's in three volumes ; the catalogue of Oxford Library." The will is dated at Boston the twelfth day of the first month 1673. Richard Chiswell, an eminent bookseller of London, writing to Increase Mather at Boston, says: "1 have sent a few books to Mr. Usher without order, which I put in to fill up the cask. You may see them at his shop, and I hope may help some of them off his hands by recommending them to your Public Library, especially the new ones which cannot be there already, particularly Dr. Cave's Lives of the Fathers, and Dr. Cary's Chronological Account of Ancient Time, which are both exceedingly well estcemed by the most learned and ingenious men here."1 So whether the literary Bostonian went to Mr. Usher's bookstore for the freshest work from Foster's press, or to the Public Library for the latest London book, he was equally secure from light and unwholesome reading. As there was a library room in the east end of the town house in 1686, when the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe set up an Episcopal church in Boston, it is very likely that it contained the Public Library so rarely referred to.
The English Company took care to send over a barber-surgeon, Robert Morley, who was engaged to serve the colony for three years; and with him also appears to have come Lambert Wilson, a chirurgcon, sent for the same time, and instructed to cure also such Indians as needed him.2 Besides, he was charged to instruct in his art one or more youth; and Mr. Hugesson's son is especially commended to his attention as a student, " because he hath been trained up in literature." Later, when President Dunster, of Harvard, propounded certain questions to the General Court touching the affairs of the college, one answer was: "We conceive it very necessary that such as study physic or chirurgcry may have liberty to read anatomy and to anato- mize once in four years some malefactors, in case there be such as the Court shall allow of," - a permission which seems to look to a scarcity of ana- čomical subjects.
Dr. Holmes 3 states that an examination of Savage's Genealogical Dic- and who is "extreamely charming to the Fair 1 4 Mass. Ilist. Coll., viii. 576. sex." Dunton was an English bookseller, who 2 [During the season of sickness which fol- lowed their arrival, and before the company left Charlestown, Aug 1630, they seem to have owed much to the good offices of the physician of the Pilgrims, Samuel Fuller, who came among them, and ministered to their needs. Bradford, Plymouth, 179. The Town records in 1652 Samuel! ffuller note that "Mr. Pig- hogg, a Chururgeon, is admitted a free- man."-ED.] came over with a venture of books, and was in Boston from February to July 5, 1686. He seems to have written then or later a narrative of his experiences and the persons he met, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library, and the es- sential parts of it have been printed by the Prince Society, edited by W. H. Whitmore, in 1867, as John Dunton's Letters from New England. He borrows much in them from Jos- selyn without credit. This narrative was made use of in his Life and Errors, London, 1705, - a book reprinted by J. B. Nichols in London, in 8 "The Medical Profession in Massachu- setts," in the Lowell Lectures on Massachu- setts and its Early History. 1818, and that portion relating to New England is given in 2 Mass, Hist. Coll., ii. 97-124. - ED.]
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TIIE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
tionary showed him among the names of the settlers who came over before 1692, and their descendants to the third generation, one hundred and thirty-four medical practitioners. Of these twelve, he says, and probably many more, practised surgery ; three were barber-surgeons. Johnson 1 has preserved an account of one of these last, William Dinely, whose life, death, and succession form a half-pathetic, half-grotesque tale. He was one of those who in 1637 were disarmed for heresy in following Wheel- wright and Anne Hutchinson. As a preacher of heresy he enjoyed, accord- ing to Johnson, singular advantages. "This barber was more than ordinary laborious to draw men to those sinful errors that were formerly so frequent, and now newly overthrown by the blessing of the Lord, upon the endeavor of his faithful servants with the word of truth, he having a fit opportunity, by reason of his trade ; so soon as any were set down in his chair, he would commonly be cutting off their hair and the truth together: notwithstanding some report better of the man, the example is for the living, the dead is judged of the Lord alone." In 1639, during a violent storm, a Roxbury man, suffering agonies from the toothache, sent his maid for William Dincly to come and draw it. Whether or not Dinely proposed at this fit oppor- tunity to draw also the Roxbury man's errors cannot now be said. Both man and maid lost their way in the storm, and were frozen stiff, and found so many days after. Poor Madam Dinely, sick at home, gave birth shortly after to a child, who was named, with homely pathos, Fathergone Dinely.
The Boston town records report an apothecary, William Davice, in 1646, to whom permission was given to set up a " payll" [fence] before his hall window and parlor window, three feet from his house. From entries occa- sionally in the same records it would seem that in the earliest days the doctor's services were more or less at the charge of the town. At any rate, in 1644, at a meeting of the selectmen of Boston, July 30, it was "ordered that the constables shall pay unto Tho. Oliver, Elder of the Church, seven pounds for seven months attendance upon the cure of the servant of Tho. Hawkins ; " and April 25, 1660, a like order directed the treasurer to pay Mr. Snelling2 fifty-four shillings for physic administered to Robert Higgins. Perhaps these were dispensary doctors, and it should be remembered that some familiarity with physic was a part of the education of men like Winthrop.
An interesting piece of legislation relating to medical practice appears in the Records of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, under date of May 2, 1649, beginning: “Forasmuch as the law of God (Ex. x. 13) allows no man to touch the life or limb of any person except in a judicial way, be it hereby ordered and decreed that no person or persons whatsoever that are employed about the bodies of men, women, or children for the preserva- tion of life and health, as physicians, chirurgeons, midwives, or others, pre-
1 Wonder-working Providence, bk. ii. ch. xv.
It may be that this service was performed on a Boston man at Newbury, for there was a William Snelling, a physician there, whose hard
fortune is amusingly exhumed from the court records of that town by Coffin, in his History of Newbury, p. 55. [See vol. iv. for chapters by Dr. O. W. Holmes and Dr. S. A. Green. - ED.]
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
sume to exercise or put forth any act contrary to the known rules of art, nor exercise any force, violence, or cruelty upon or towards the bodies of any, whether young or old (no, not in the most difficult and desperate cases), without the advice and consent of such as are skilful in the same art, if such may be had, or at least of the wisest and gravest then present." The consent of the patient also, if he was compos mentis, was essential, and heavy penalties were laid for the infraction of the law. Whether or not some fatal accident resulting from malpractice had frightened the General Court into this legislation, which was vague and apparently unpractical, it is to be noted that the names of seven deputies are given who dissented from the order; among them the Boston recorder, Edward Rawson, and Robert Keayne and James Penn, also from Boston.
There was but one lawyer in colonial Boston, and he had a sorry time of it. Thomas Lechford, of Clement's Inn, came to Boston in 1637, willing to cast in his lot with the people here, though not entirely at one with them in questions of doctrine. He brought with him his knowledge of his profes- sion, but both doctrinally and professionally he was regarded with sus- picion. The magistrates, speaking through Winthrop at a little later date, held it objectionable that lawyers should direct men in their causes. No advocates were allowed ; but, what could scarcely have been less prejudicial to justice, magistrates, who were afterward to decide causes, were accus- tomed to give private advice beforehand.1 Several of the magistrates had been students of law in England; they had exercised also there the func- tions of justices, and they brought to the business of legislation a certain technical knowledge of law. Attorneys were discountenanced, though not actually forbidden, and a prisoner or suitor might plead his own cause, or a friend might appear in his behalf, but not for a fee. Lechford, for going to a jury and pleading with them out of court, was " debarred from pleading any man's cause hereafter unless his own, and admonished not to presume to meddle beyond what he shall be called to by the Court." 2 This one solitary case, in which the lawyer was employed for the prosecution of an action to recover under a will, snuffed out the advocate and left the Court as it had been. Lechford thereafter tried to maintain himself as a scrivener, and obtained a little employment from the magistrates. His doctrinal posi- tion being equally prejudicial to his interests, he finally abandoned Boston to its lawyerless fate. "I am kept," he writes, " from the Sacrament and all place of preferment in the Commonwealth, and forced to get my living by writing petty things which scarce finds me bread; and therefore some- times I look to planting of corn, but have not yet here an house of my own to put my head in, or any stock going."3 He stayed here about three years, but there was no place for him.
1 [Not quite so objectionable were the efforts twoe Elders have had the hearing and desyding to keep people from going to law. In 1635, it of the cause, if they Cann."- En.] was ordered " that none among us shall sue at 2 Mass. Col. Records, i. 270. the lawe before that Mr. Henry Vane and the
8 Plain Dealing, 69. [This book of his was
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
A town which could get along without advocates could not get along without courts and government. This is not the place in which to sketch the organization of the town or commonwealth, but it may be permitted to indicate the political duties and privileges of a Boston freeman at this period. It must be borne in mind that only a minority of the townsmen had any voice in the government ; but the courts were open to all, as were the house of correction and the stocks. A standing rule required a freeman to be first a member of the church; and Lechford makes the statement that " three parts of the people of the country remain out of the church." 1 It is certain that the franchise was not eagerly sought, since it carried with it many vexations, and it is fair to conclude that a comparatively small propor- tion of the men of Boston engaged in its civil affairs ; but then those who did were very lively in their interest. The freeman was called upon to choose deputies to the General Court, but was not restricted to a choice among his townsmen. He was called upon also once a year to cast his vote for governor, deputy-governor, and assistants. The form of election is pre- served for us by Lechford : -
"The manner of the elections is this : At first the chief Governor and magistrates were chosen in London, by erection of hands, by all the Freemen of this society. Since the transmitting of the Patent into New England, the election is not by voices, nor erection of hands, but by papers,2 thus : The general Court electory sitting, where are present in the church, or meeting-house at Boston, the old Governor, Deputy, and all the magistrates, and two Deputies or Burgesses for every town, or at least one ; all the Freemen are bidden to come in at one door and bring their votes in paper for the new Governor, and deliver them down upon the table before the Court, and so to pass forth at another door. Those that are absent send their votes by proxy. All being delivered in, the votes are counted, and according to the major part the old Governor pronounceth that such an one is chosen Governor for the year ensuing. Then the Freemen, in like manner, bring their votes for the Deputy-Governor, who being also chosen, the Governor propoundeth the Assistants one after the other. New Assistants are, of late, put in nomination by an order of General Court beforehand to be considered of.3 If a Freeman give in a blank, that rejects the man named ; if the Freeman makes any mark with a pen upon the paper which he brings, that elects the man named; then the blanks and marked papers 4 are numbered, and according to the major part of either the man in nomination stands elected or rejected. And so for all the Assistants. And after every new election, which is by their Patent to be printed in 1642, and has been reprinted in 3 by ballot." - Palfrey, Hist. of New England, Mass. Ilist. Coll., iii., and carefully edited since i. 375. by J. H. Trumbull, who had the advantage of 3 This order, made in May, 1640, was in con- sequence of some jealousy of the magistrates and apprehension that they were assuming greater power. access to a manuscript journal of Lechford's. The original edition is rare, but is found in several of our libraries. A part of the original MS. of the book is in the Historical Society's cabinet. - ED.]
1 Plain Dealing, 73. Cotton, examining Lechford, indignantly protests against the state- ment. See Trumbull's edition of the Plain Dealing, p. 151.
2 " This is the first instance of an election
4 In 1643, it was ordered " that for the yearly choosing of assistants for the time to come, in- stead of papers the freemen shall use Indian beans; the white to manifest election, the black for blanks." [Mr. Whitmore has collected the different orders for conducting elections in his Mass. Civil List, p. 12, &c. - ED.]
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
upon the last Wednesday in every Easter term, the new Governor and officers are all newly sworn. The Governor and Assistants choose the Secretary. And all the Court consisting of Governor, Deputy, Assistants, and Deputies of towns give their votes as well as the rest ; and the Ministers and Eklers and all church officers have their votes also in all these elections of chief magistrates. Constables and all other inferior offi- cers are sworn in the general, quarter, or other courts, or before any Assistant." 1
The magistrates and officers with whom the townsman of Boston woukl have to do bore, with one exception, well-seasoned English names. The name of "selectman," so familiar to New England ears, appears to have been evolved from the exigencies of town life here. The Boston records are curious in illustrating this point. General meetings were warned from house to house ; and once in six months until 1647, after that once a year, a num- ber of citizens were chosen, as the phrase generally ran, " for the affairs of the town," or " for the town's occasions." The number varied, but they are called in 1634 the "ten men; " in 1641 the " ninc men; " again, the " over- seers ; " " sometimes they are called the "townsmen." Indeed, it would appear as if this name may have been the familiar title, for in 1643 the phrase is the "select townsmen ;" in 1647, when the election was made annual, it becomes and remains " selectmen ;" and in 1655 we read that a certain question of administration of a will, which required the witness of memory, was referred " to the present selectmen, together with the help of the ancient townsmen." 2
The town records of Boston include the proceedings of the general town- meetings and of the meetings of the selectmen. A large part of the business was in allotting portions of the peninsula to inhabitants, but cognizance was taken of all matters of local concern, and special officers were appointed as occasion arose, so that the records have great valuc as containing the grad- ual evolution of that distinguishing feature of New England life, - the self- government of the town.3 Almost from the beginning the town of Boston had its town-clerk, its treasurer, and its constables. The surveyor of high- ways was an officer carly needed, and his appointment grew out of the necd. " It is agreed that every one," reads the record of Jan. 4, 1635, "shall have a sufficient way unto his allotment of ground, wherever it be, and that the Inhabitants of the town shall have liberty to appoint men for the setting of them out as need shall require, and the same course to be taken for all common highways, both for the town and country." The need that cows should be kept by the inhabitants of Boston, and the lack of separate and de- fined pasturage, led carly to the appointment of cow-keepers. A fold-keeper was appointed with duties apparently of a pound-keeper, and since there are no references to folding after the use of the ferm pound, pounder, or pound- keeper, it may be that both the offices were the same, called at first by one name, afterward by the other. The regulations respecting the yoking and
1 Plain Dealing, 24, 25. the chapters on Charlestown and Dorchester. - 2 [A list of the early selectmen is given in Ed.]
Mr. Whitmore's chapter in this volume. See VOL. I .- 64.
3 [Sec note on page 217. - ED. ]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
ringing of swine and the freedom of these animals about town required the appointment of a hog-reeve. Water-bailiffs had oversight of the shore, " to see that no annoying things either by fish, wood or stone, or other such like things be left or laid about the sea-shore." There were elerks of the market, and later sealers of weights and measures, packers of fish and meat, gaugers, and scalers of leather, all elected in town-meeting. There was a town- recorder who was sometimes also the treasurer. In 1659, for the first time, a moderator was chosen to hold office for a year and regulate public town- meetings. A clerk of the writs kept the records of births, marriages, and deaths.
If the townsman or any servant or Indian ran against the laws, -and as these met one at every turn, chances for infraction were multiplied, - there was a variety of punishment provided. The whipping-post appears as a land-mark in the Boston records in 1639, and the frequent sentences to be whipped must have made the post entirely familiar to the town. It stood in front of the First Church, and was probably thought to be as necessary to good discipline as a police-station now is. A community in which whipping was freely used was probably not much surprised when Presi- dent Dunster, of Harvard, whipped two of his students for an offence, applying the rod faithfully himself.
The pillory and stocks were easily moved, and could be placed anywhere where they might be needed. The stocks stood sometimes near the whipping-post; some- times, as by an anticipatory sarcasm, at the head of State Street. The builder of the first stocks in Boston -at THE STOCKS. least the first mentioned in the records - had the honor of being the first to try them. Edward Palmer, in 1639, was employed to build stocks in Boston, but when he pre- sented his bill it was held to be extortionate; and by a piece of grim pleasantry the Court fined him, and sentenced him to be set an hour in the stocks. Winthrop tells an amusing story, not without some sense of its humor himself, of a scrape into which one of La Tour's party fell. Writing in 1644, he says : -
"There arrived here a Portugal ship with salt, having in it two Englishmen only. One of these happened to be drunk, and was carried to his lodging ; and the constable, (a godly man and zealous against such disorders), hearing of it, found him out, being upon his bed asleep ; so he awaked him, and led him to the stocks, there being no
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
magistrate at home. He being in the stocks, one of La Tour's gentlemen lifted up the stocks and let him out. The constable, hearing of it, went to the Frenchman (being then gone and quiet), and would needs carry him to the stocks ; the French- man offered to yield himself to go to prison, but the constable, not understanding his language, pressed him to go to the stocks; the Frenchman resisted and drew his sword ; with that company came in and disarmed him, and carried him by force to the stocks ; but soon after the constable took him out and carried him to prison, and presently after took him forth again and delivered him to La Tour. Much tumult there was about this : many Frenchmen were in town, and other strangers, which were not satisfied with this dealing of the constable, yet were quiet."
The magistrates looked into the case, and decided that the gentleman must go back to prison till the Court met. Their Dogberry must be sus- tained. Some Frenchmen offered to go bail, but their offer was declined as coming from strangers : -
" Upon this two Englishmen, members of the church of Boston, standing by, offered to be his sureties, whereupon he was bailed till he should be called for, because La Tour was not like to stay till the Court. This was thought too much favor for such an of- fence by many of the common people, but by our law bail could not be denied him ; and beside the constable was the occasion of all this in transgressing the bounds of his office, and that in six things : 1. In fetching a man out of his lodging that was asleep upon his bed, and with- out any warrant from author- ity. 2. In not putting a hook 4420214 upon the stocks, nor setting some to guard them. 3. In laying hands upon the French- man that had opened the stocks, when he was gone and quiet, THE PILLORY. and no disturbance then ap- pearing. 4. In carrying him to prison without warrant. 5. In delivering him out of prison without warrant. 6. In putting such a reproach upon a stranger and a gentleman when there was no need, for he knew he wonkl be forthcoming, and the magistrate would be at home that evening; but such are the fruits of ignorant and misguided zeal."
The constable was evidently the most ubiquitous representative of the law, and it is not surprising that he should sometimes assume the office of the magistrate, when he was charged daily with so many functions. His appear- ance was nearly as impressive as that of a drum-major, for, beside the stern- ness of countenance which his calling demanded, it was directed by the
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