USA > Rhode Island > The "Old Stone Bank" history of Rhode Island, Vol. IV > Part 17
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Bowers yard at Pawtucket was also busily engaged in the construction of large vessels at this period.
From the earliest times until the decline of foreign commerce and the introduction of steam vessels, shipbuilding was a lead- ing industry on Narragansett Bay. Ships built of Rhode Island timber, fitted with the products of Rhode Island forges, rope walks and sail-lofts, sailed the seven seas carrying cargoes, capturing prizes, fighting battles, capturing whales, transporting slaves and carrying passengers.
In the far dim distance of long ago, the Rhode Island shipwright put aside his axe and adz, and likewise the blacksmith lost his trade in ringbolts, chain-links and stanchions. Gone are the sounds of falling trees, whirling saws and pounding mallets, and seldom heard today is the creak of dry pulleys, or the swish of a running line. Few youngsters in our time could dis- tinguish the smell of oakum or pitch, and, few, if any, have ever picked up shipyard chips to sail off the end of a gear-littered dock.
But, some of the forgotten sounds and sights that went with ships and shipbuild- ing have already returned in modern stream-lined form. Down the Bay at what will always be Field's Point to Rhode Islanders, we have seen great ships arise out of the sounds of clashing steel, the rattle of riveting and the hiss of welding. Where men and horses once tugged at the ropes that raised huge timbers into place, we have watched towering power-driven cranes and derricks swing pre-fabricated sheets and bars of steel to take their places in the fabric of a modern hull. There's no place for the sailmaker with his needles, or no need for barnlike lofts in which to cut and sew heavy yards of canvas into trim-fitting top-sails, main-sails and jibs, for the skill and ingenuity of machinists, engineers, electricians, mechanics and pipe-fitters now provide marine motive power. The rolling mills, the power press, milling machines and the power drill have replaced the axe, the adz, the hand-saw and the draw-knife, but, there's still to be heard the shouts of the bosses, the warn- ings to " get-out-from-under," and there's still to be seen the confusion of tiny men laboring to fashion a huge thing that
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floats. All the ships which were con- structed in war time at Providence, Bristol, Warren and East Greenwich are the newer members of a large and very old family - may they uphold the fam-
ily's honor and bring added glory to the place of their origin, and may they con- stitute a prolific generation, the modern forerunners of another long line of Rhode Island built ships.
GETTING ABOUT
S NIGHING for the good old days isn't ex- actly nostalgia, although the term is commonly misused in that sense. Nos- talgia really means homesickness, not reminiscence. So when we indulge in a little thinking and writing about things that went on a long or short time ago, we are not nostalgic, or homesick, we are just dwelling upon the past, as they say. There seemed to be many good causes during World War II for dwell- ing upon the past; so many things went back to what they were; the hands of the clock appeared to be turning back- wards in so many phases of our daily life under stress of war in the world.
For example, getting from place to place certainly reminded at least some of us of the not-so-long-ago days of much slower motion in travel. Walking, wheel- ing, trolleying or bussing was much slower than those earlier days of forty or more miles an hour in a heated sedan with handy ash trays and touch button radios, but a lot of good Rhode Island folks got there and back by way of sidewalks, saddles, carriage wheels and trolley tracks for many years before the trip from Red Bridge to Market Square became a five minute auto ride. But, to see what we've missed, or what we may come to again, the story of getting about in Rhode Island must go back to the beginning.
Take the very first settler in what is now Rhode Island - how did he get from place to place in these parts? In 1635, urged by a desire to pursue a sequestered life of contemplation and study in addi- tion to other good reasons, William Black- stone invested his small capital in cattle, and with his few belongings, including his precious books, he set out from Boston into the wilderness in search of a new . took place - it leads us to conclude that home. He took with him one companion,
named Abbot, from whom Abbot's Run in Cumberland takes its name. This little expedition of two men, and a few head of cattle, including a bull, followed the In- dian trails and finally came to a place called Wawepoonseag by the Indians. There a settlement was established in a territory without a single white inhabit- ant. It was then a part of Rehoboth, and is now Cumberland, Rhode Island. Leg- end has it that Blackstone rode the bull much of the way. According to Ernest Hemingway, and sundry National Geo- graphic authors a bull ride could be a little bit on the rapid side, but maybe our first settler's bull was a trained bull, that main- tained an ox-like pace. If so, the first known journey by the first white man who came to stay in what is now Rhode Island territory probably broke no speed records even in those days.
Roger Williams came here on foot, in the dead of winter, and there's no record of how many days and nights he spent in travel on the way from Salem, Massa- chusetts to what is now Warren, Rhode Island, on his historic flight into the wil- derness. It must have taken him at least the good part of one week, if not more, and all the other founding fathers came the same way, on foot. Not much time elapsed after the establishment of the Providence settlement, in 1636, before canoes and shallops were procured for getting places around the head of Narra- gansett Bay and up and down its shores, but, not until 1652 do we find the record that there were "wild and uncouth woods filled with frequented ways and rivers overlaid with bridges passable for both horse and foot." This quotation indi- cates in a general way the transition that horses became of steadily increasing im-
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THE FIRST "MOTOR COACH" IN PROVIDENCE - BROAD STREET TO PAWTUXET.
portance as the settlement of this part of the country proceeded and the towns became more numerous and widely sep- arated. The first horses were landed in Massachusetts as early as 1629, and ap- parently quite a few years passed by after the founding of Providence before the relatively poor pioneers on these shores could afford the luxury of imported mares and stallions to lighten the toil of agri- culture and to make travel speedier and more comfortable.
The age of horse travel in America, in Rhode Island, was a long one. It lasted far beyond the time when man learned how to make motive power help with his work, propel his ships, and carry him and his goods over the land at rapid speed. In fact, many of us can vividly remember, the twilight and the virtual sunset of the day of the horse, survivor of all modes of both inter- and intra-urban travel until the ultimate appearance of the horseless carriage.
Until just about one hundred years, we should say, only a hundred years ago,
when the steam railroad came to stay in Rhode Island, the speed of land travel was limited to the swiftness of pace, gait and gallop, and horses did not do any too much running or galloping on long or short trips. The average pace of travel in the nearly two-century-long days of the horse might more accurately be de- scribed as just "jogging along." From the very first horse that nibbled Rhode Island grass to the not-too-vaguely re- called Tom, Jim, Betsy, and Prince that faithfully hauled the milk wagons and Adams Express teams around the city streets, Rhode Islanders seemed to get along fairly well with just jogging along. They rode to church and to market on horseback and in buggies and carryalls; horse-drawn drays and low-gears did the heavy hauling; and there was a time, not so very long ago, when, for quick, com- fortable and luxurious about-town trans- portation there was nothing finer than a two-seated turnout wheeling along behind a pair of spanking bays, a water-tight top sporting jiggling fringe and a full set of
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RHODE ISLAND HOSPITAL TRUSTS SAFE DEPOSIT & STORAGE VAULTS
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LOWER WESTMINSTER STREET IN 1892. HORSES AT RIGHT ARE BEING SHIFTED FOR THE RETURN TRIP OF THE PROVIDENCE AND PAWTUCKET CAR NUMBER 232.
never-tight storm curtains neatly rolled up under the front seat for the sudden shower and the customary argument over what section went where. And the hacks, designed, built and painted for funerals, but easily transformed into gay chariots for bride, groom, bridesmaid and best- man (four only) with a few white ribbon streamers, a bow tied on the whip, and a rattly-banging trail of tin cans and old shoes attached to the rear spring. This does sound a little homesicky, but the real days of horse transportation were far beyond the memories of any of us, they go way back to times of blasting horns, whip snapping, shouting, cursing, rattling, jouncing, swaying, of hens scattering, mud splattering, dogs scurrying, and folks waving - when stagecoaching was in its hey-day.
Stagecoaching began here in Rhode Island just one hundred years after the founding of Providence, but that does not mean that folks did not get about in Rhode Island before then in horse-drawn
vehicles for hire. 1736 marked the begin- ning of travel in and out of the colony by stage-coach, and if you had been living, say in 1767, and had wanted to visit your sick aunt or rich uncle in Boston, you would have been informed at the tavern on Market Square, or at the public house two blocks down on South Main Street that Mr. Thomas Sabin's stagecoaches left Providence on Tuesdays and came back from Boston on Thursdays. Near the end of the eighteenth century, the increase in the number of packets docking and sailing from Providence had a marked influence on the stage-coaches; increasing their business ten-fold. Passengers from Boston, Worcester and Springfield would come to Providence and proceed by water to New York. Many a race between rival coach lines gave a zest of excitement to this form of travel. Frequently a number of them would arrive in Providence at the same time all bound for the same boat. If you think it a bit exciting around the motor-coach terminal on Fountain Street
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about five in the afternoon, or in front of Gibson's at the corner of Dorrance and Westminster Streets at evening movie letout time, you should have lived when about eight four-horse, top-heavy stage- coaches thundered into town, lurching from side to side, bounding over the cobble stones, crammed with cramped passengers, loaded above and below with bulky baggage, the sweating horses, snort- ing and slipping, the showing off of whip snapping and rein yanking, rival coach- men yelling insults at each other. The nearest thing to all that comes out of vivid memories of the horse-drawn fire-engines, but they too like the exciting days of travel by stage-coach have gone the way of all horse-flesh. But, who knows, we may yet go out to the old garage to hitch up a late model mare for an errand to the corner store, and, someday, down-town parking places may have good need of watering troughs and hitching posts. And, a no highway accident day may yet mean - no runaways today.
Going back again - the railroad came to stay in Rhode Island in 1840, and al- though the stage-coach lines cut rates and offered other inducements they could not compete with the iron horses that run on smooth rails. A few minor lines con- tinued to serve sparsely settled districts not reached by the railroad. They called
those vehicles "omnibuses," but even the omnibus went out of vogue with the advent of the horse-car lines in 1863. Think of that, the advent of the horse-car only seventy-nine years ago. Offhand, one might guess that we have had electric powered street-cars for at least that long, but, the first trolleys in Rhode Island began to replace the horse-car only a half century ago.
So, one can see that, for not such a long time have we been tearing about at forty miles or more, to visit our friends, to post our letters, buy our groceries or see some- body about something. Certainly we have changed but not distances-it's no farther between places within and without Rhode Island than it ever has been - just a century ago, the fastest stage-coach made the trip from Providence to Boston in four hours and fifty minutes. Roger Wil- liams walked here from Salem in the winter of 1635-1636, and, he once paddled a canoe from Providence to Newport to debate George Fox the Quaker. It took President George Washington seven hours to sail from Newport to Providence in 1790, and a whole day to get here from Boston on horseback in 1776. Getting about has not always been so fast as it has been for us, - but, some very important people in these parts seemed to have been able to get there and back.
CRIME SHOULD NOT PAY
YRIME may not pay, in the long run, but C law-breaking all the way from petty larceny to murder constitutes a constant threat to peace and order, and to the peace of mind of the great majority of the citi- zens. The inexorability of "murder will out" and of "crimes eventually catch up with the perpetrators " is of little comfort when "Peeping Toms" are about their depraved business; when armed thieves successfully elude detection after weeks of nightly holdups and robberies; when we seem to be passing through what is com- monly called a "wave of violence and crime." Despite good intentions expressed in public support of various character-
building endeavors, and after three cen- turies of faith in the corrective powers of education and spiritual guidance, we still must rely upon law enforcement author- ities for the protection of our life and property.
We are yet a long way from any reliable honor system in human relationships. The threat of apprehension and the fear of punishment still remain the most effective deterrents to law violation. And, though it may be somewhat disillusioning, if not discouraging, relative human behavior in any given unit of society can be meas- ured by the efficiency of its law enforce- ment.
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If, for example, it is believed by some that the City of Providence, in 1944, ex- perienced a crime wave, featured by more violations and less arrests and convictions, it may be that abnormal conditions caused reduced efficiency of its Police Depart- ment. It may be that higher rewards in other fields of endeavor lured able and efficient veterans away from the law and order profession; it may be that these abnormal conditions demanded a larger force, rather than a smaller, despite the difficulties of recruiting new members. However, in war times and in peace times, the maintenance of law and order in Provi- dence and elsewhere throughout the State, has always been a major problem for organized society. Thieves, murderers, ruffians, counterfeiters, and every other kind and character of lawbreaker have been with us from the very beginning, and it is only when their deeds grow out of proportion that we concern ourselves with the efficiency of our main defense against crime of all degrees - the police.
Perhaps the life of a police officer might be made more enticing, his duties less burdensome, if we returned some of the old measures of punishment which our forefathers practised upon those who failed to walk the straight and narrow path of good behavior in human society. Perhaps not, but then, it might be inter- esting to look back at some of the older methods used long before the days of heart-to-heart talks, suspended sentences, paroles, and reforming institutions.
The early criminal code of Rhode Island was comparatively mild, although it grew more severe in the course of time, as the first settlements became less secluded, and strangers, with their pet vices, came here to enjoy freedom, not necessarily religious freedom.
Throughout the entire history of Rhode Island, human life has always been held in sanctity. The pillory, cropping, branding, and whipping, however, were in use here long after being discarded by neighboring Commonwealths, and the agitation for some more humane method of dealing with criminals was carried on for years before the legislature was reconciled to a radical change in the laws.
The early punishments were inflicted
for seemingly slight misdeeds; many of them were of a peculiar character. The man who violated the sanctity of another's family was whipped for the first offense, through two towns; for the second offense, through every town in the State. As no provision was made for the third offense, it is presumed that, by then, the offender had reformed, or moved to greener pas- tures. A "notorious and accustomed swearer and curser " was admonished by a magistrate for the first offense, and put in the stocks for the second, or fined five shillings. Counterfeiting was punished by the pillory, cropping of both ears, and branding the cheek with the letter C, besides imprisonment for six years, or a fine not exceeding four thousand dol- lars.
For the information of those who do not know the meaning of pillory, it is best described as a wooden frame in the shape of the letter T. The offender's head and hands were locked into the frame, usually erected in some public place, for all to behold, and for small boys to use as a target for stones and other missiles. Nothing in the old records contains refer- ence to the one who usually performed the hideous operation of ear cropping, but it was practised right here in Providence, by some official ear chopper, and upon several whose privately-engraved five pound notes were not quite perfect. The branding business sounds a bit gruesome, too, but not so horrific as the ears on the chopping block.
For many years during the Colonial period, beginning with 1718, the thief was not only compelled to restore fourfold to the victim and fourfold to the colony, besides being whipped, but was sold into slavery for a term not exceeding three years, to pay the costs. The sale of a cash drawer robber, a sneak thief, or a high- wayman, was advertised in the news- papers, as we now offer to sell a cow, an auto, or a skiff. Our ancestors appear to have been most practical in their dealings with the light-fingered kind.
Up to 1838, not much over a century ago, a bigamist would be compelled to sit on the gallows with a rope around his neck, and the more one thinks about it, there was something rather symbolical
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Courtesy, Earl R. Davis
THE POLICE FORCE OF PROVIDENCE IN FRONT OF THE OLD CENTRAL POLICE STATION, CANAL STREET, IN THE LATE SIXTIES.
about that unique form of punishment for wholesale matrimony.
By the digest of 1822, the burning of a house was made punishable by fine, im- prisonment, the pillory, ear cropping, and branding.
Difficult as it is to believe, the grand- parents, or at least the great-grandparents of a person who has now reached middle- age, undoubtedly remembered seeing on the public streets of Providence, men stripped to the waist, tied to a post, and an executioner checkering their backs with stripes, from which blood flowed at every blow.
But, such scenes, and such practices gradually came to an end as facilities for confining prisoners were provided and constantly expanded, and that change can be dated just about a century ago. Before the days of county jails, and a state prison, the cruel penalties inflicted upon criminals had two objects; one, the pun- ishment of an offender without the public expense of maintaining him for a long period in jail; and the other, to warn the public against those convicted of heinous crimes by marking them in a way that could be readily recognized. If our rate of crime continues to increase rather than to decrease, and if we find it necessary to keep on enlarging our houses of correc- tion, as we like to call them, it may be that our great-grandparents were wiser than they were cruel.
Fortunately, local history does not reveal many cases of treason, but, the
records do contain references to one cele- brated case, which may be of interest to mention. David MacLane came to Provi- dence, from the vicinity of Franklin, Massachusetts, and was established in business for a number of years somewhere along North or South Main Streets. Fail- ing in his enterprise, and unable to make satisfactory adjustments with his credi- tors, he left town suddenly. In 1797, he was arrested at Quebec, Canada, on an accusation of treason, and his trial took place in July of that year. He was accused of conspiracy "to compass the death of the King" and to seize the City of Quebec. The chief witness against him was one John Black, a ship carpenter, who swore that MacLane had confided to him a plot to arm five hundred men with pikes seven or eight feet long, drug the troops of the garrison with laudanum, and seize the City of Quebec, in behalf of the French government; also, that MacLane, who entered Canada under the name of Jacob Felt, had exhibited a letter of recommen- dation from the French minister to the United States. Other evidence of a similar nature was given, but not a particle to show that there was any conspiracy, or that the suggestions were other than fancies of an enthusiastic, if not disordered imagination.
Much of the testimony had to do with a conversation held in Vermont, beyond the jurisdiction of Great Britain. But, the Chief Justice, by the name of Osgood, was determined to convict, and the Jury
CHURCH, METCALFE C
G. & S. OWEN, MANUFACTURING JEWELERS
ADAMS EXPR
H. ARMINGTON & CO
HARD WARE & JEWELERS SUPPLIES.
H. ARMINGTON & C
ILAR
THE CABLE EXPRESE CE
ALL EYES ON THE MAN WITH THE CAMERA AND BLACK CLOTH AT THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF WEYBOSSET AND DORRANCE STREETS ON A SUNNY DAY IN THE 1870'S.
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selected was composed of English inhabit- ants only. David MacLane from Provi- dence, in defending himself at the trial, revealed himself to be a man of more than average intelligence, and incidentally, he pretty well proved that his letter from the French minister was for use in France where his wife, who had relatives in Newport, was entitled to some property.
In the end, he was convicted and sen- tenced to the barbarous penalty for trea- son. At that time, if the convicted were a man, he was drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until dead. Then his head was severed from the body, and the body divided into four quarters, the head and quarters to be at the disposal of the Crown. If the convicted happened to be a woman, she was burned alive.
David, who once ran a store of some kind along South or North Main Streets
in Providence, went to the scaffold calmly in Quebec, not so many, many years ago, and the horrible decree was duly carried out save that the victim was undoubtedly dead before the executioner began the work of mutilation, and, that instead of dividing the body, incisions were made marking where the division should have been accordingtothelaw. David MacLane was the last person subjected, in the Brit- ish Dominions, to the ancient and bar- barous English penalty for treason.
We still have all of the same old crimes, although we deal with such in what we believe to be more humane fashion, for we like to believe that the gates of mercy and repentance should never be closed by any legislative act.
However, common sense tells us that for the common good and the safety of life and property, we must have laws, and the laws must be enforced.
THE BLUE POINTERS
P RESENT-DAY Providence has been singu- larly free from the widely publicized social problem known as a "gang," al- though many large communities through- out the country have been compelled to adopt stringent measures in an effort to curb the anti-social activities of those who organize themselves into secret bands for the purpose of pursuing lives of crime and violence. The gang problem is not a new one in this country, although previous generations seemed to have had much more success in protecting honest citizens from harm and annoyance wherever criminals or just plain hoodlums carried on their under-cover law-breaking. Perhaps that was true because former gangs openly in- dulged in mischief and petty depredations and did not often go to the extent of mur- der and wholesale robbery. The old gangs were generally neighborhood groups that confined their warfare to feuds with rival gangs, and organized society was not often involved unless the bloody battle-ground happened to be located, for the moment, in some law-abiding, peace-loving section of a town or city. Then windows, store
fronts, gardens, street lights and innocent bystanders that happened to be in the range of brickbats, clubs, rocks and de- cayed fruit became casualties of the fray, and the free-for-all would rage on until the sheriff or the town constable could muster enough help to stem the tide of battle and drag a few of the ringleaders away to the lock-up. Of course, the battle would be renewed a day or so later in some other section of the community, and the palm of victory would alternate between the "Northenders" and the "Fox Point- ers," or between the "Dogtowners" and the "Pike Tigers."
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