Boston 1775: Jane Whitehouse

Showing posts with label Jane Whitehouse. Show all posts

Thursday, March 09, 2017

A Whitehouse Briefing

Last week I wrote about Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse and his bride Jane Crothers, who each testified to events on the night of the Boston Massacre. (She more reliably than he, I believe.)

Don Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War and The Revolution’s Last Men, wrote with more information about Pvt. Whitehouse and the experiences of wives attached to the 14th Regiment of Foot, so I’m gratefully sharing that information as a “guest blogger” posting.

Joseph Whitehouse was thirty years old when he married Jane Crothers in March 1770. He was born in Birmingham, England, and had pursued a trade fairly typical for that industrial city; he was a smith. By the age of twenty-five he’d tired of that profession, and he enlisted in the army.

This was a common path for a British soldier; most of the men who served in British infantry regiments during the American Revolution enlisted in their early twenties, after having pursued one or more other lines of work. The army offered steady employment, the opportunity to travel, and a pension after long service—perquisites not offered by any other profession of the era.

After their marriage, and their testimonies about the troubles in Boston in 1770, Joseph and Jane Whitehouse probably stayed with the regiment at Castle William in Boston Harbor, but they may have had opportunities to visit the mainland. Some soldiers’ wives did, and the Boston Post-Boy of 25 February 1771 reported that two of them fell into misfortune:

On Friday last as two Women belonging to the 14th Regiment were crossing the Ice at the South End of Town, they both fell through, and altho’ they were soon taken out by the Assistance of the Town’s People, yet one of them, Susannah Mills, was so chil’d with the cold, that she expir’d immediately; the other is like to do well.

Conditions on Castle Island were crowded and brought challenges different that those posed by the hostile townspeople. Late in 1771, engineering officer John Montresor wrote:

There is a deficiency [of water] from the latter end of July unto the latter end of November. . . . the 14th is now 400 men – 70 women & 90 children. Obliged to employ a large Boat every other day – sent to Boston to Peck’s wharf & bought there at one shilling per Hogshead – One hhd serves one Company of the 14th Regt Two days.

The 14th Regiment didn’t have to endure these conditions much longer, but their next station was even more difficult. In 1772 they left Boston harbor for the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies, part of a force sent to quell a rebellion by island natives. There, disease took a toll on the regiment in addition to casualties from fighting. By 1774, the regiment was due to be sent back to Great Britain after eight years in North America, but rising tensions in the colonies forced those plans to be changed. The regiment was divided up among posts in Florida, Virginia, and the Bahamas. Their grenadier company suffered severely in the Battle of Great Bridge in December of 1775.

As the British war effort turned sour in the south, the 14th Regiment was sent to join the British army in New York that was enjoying great success in the waning months of 1776. The regiment was quite worn out by this time, so the decision was made to send them home, but first the able-bodied soldiers were transferred to other regiments campaigning in America. The officers, and the soldiers no longer fit for service, were sent home, the former to recuit and the latter to be discharged.

Among the soldiers of the 14th Regiment of Foot who were discharged in England in early 1777 was Joseph Whitehouse. On 29 April, he went before the out-pension examining board at Chelsea Hospital; their examination book recorded his age, place of birth, trade and length of service, as well as the malady that prevented him from remaining a soldier. During his twelve years in the army, he had contracted a hernia, called a “rupture” in the parlance of the day, and was deemed no longer fit for service. He was granted a pension, paid semi-annually at a rate of five-eighths of a soldier‘s regular pay, a modest sum but enough to subsist on. He was still living in 1808.

What became of his wife, Jane, is not known. She was entitled to follow him with the regiment, and to accompany him to Great Britain when he was discharged from the army, but at this writing we have no information about her fate.

Thanks, Don!

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

A Lady’s View of the Boston Massacre Trials

Today is International Women’s Day, and I’m still exploring the Boston Massacre. So this posting is about how that event looked through women’s eyes.

As Katie Turner Getty wrote this weekend at Emerging Revolutionary War, only three women were invited to testify in court about what they saw on King Street on 5 March 1770. And only two of those women’s testimonies were recorded in detail.

Jane Crothers, soon to become Jane Whitehouse, was on the street near the soldiers; she testified at the trial of Capt. Thomas Preston. Elizabeth Avery was upstairs in the Customs office, looking down on the crowd. With Avery was Ann Green, who corroborated her account during the trial of Customs officers—including Ann’s brother—for supposedly shooting down at the crowd from that same room.

Boston’s report on the confrontation, A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, quoted many other women about how they interacted with soldiers in their houses. But it appears few had come out to King Street to help fight the fire or watch the confrontation between locals and soldiers, as many men did.

That reflects how eighteenth-century society saw women as outside the public political sphere, or at least that part of the political sphere that involved the use of force.

Nevertheless, the culture recognized that women were interested in political events. The February 1771 issue of a new British periodical called The Lady’s Magazine; Or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex included this report:

AMERICAN NEWS.

Boston, New England, Dec. 10. At the Superior Court of Judicature, now holding at Boston, came on the trial of eight soldiers belonging to the 29th regiment, who stood indicted for the murder of the several persons on the 5th of March last, by firing their guns in King-street. The examination of witnesses took up five days; the Counsel for the Crown and the Counsel for the prisoners held about two days: On Wednesday the honourable Court summed up the case, when the jury brought in their verdict, two of the soldiers guilty of manslaughter, the other six not guilty. The two former were recommitted to gaol, imd the six were discharged.

The two soldiers convicted as above, have since been branded in the hand in open Court, and discharged.

Boston, Dec. 17. At the Superior Court held in this town last Wednesday, came on the trial of Edward Manwaring, Esq; an Officer of the Customs, Mr. John Munro, Notary Public, Hammond Green and Thomas Greenwood, who had been charged with firing guns out of the Custom-House on the 5th of March, and indicted by the Grand-Jury for the murder of those persons that were killed at that time, and for which Manwaring, &c. were imprisoned. After a few hours trial, they were acquitted.

That was the same text that appeared in many other British newspapers and magazines of the same month because printers thought that news would interest all their readers.

Thursday, March 02, 2017

Jane Crothers, Witness to a Massacre

In early 1770, Jane Crothers lived near the head of Royal Exchange Lane, thus near the Boston Customs House. On the night of 5 March she heard noise outside. She went out to ask the army sentry guarding that building, Pvt. Hugh White, what was the matter.

White said he didn’t know—not mentioning that earlier in the evening he’d clubbed a teen-aged barber’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, on the head.

Then Crothers saw people coming from the direction of the Town House (now the Old State House). She heard them say, “There’s the Centinel, the bloody back Rascall, let’s go kill him!” Those people had been riled up by Garrick and his friends, hoping for justice.

Crothers would later testify in court about what happened next. There are two sets of notes about what she said, mostly in agreement. An anonymous notetaker recorded:

They kept gathering throwing Snow balls, Oyster Shells and chunks of Wood at the Centinel. Beat him from out of his Box to the steps.

A space after saw a party coming from the Main Guard, an Officer which proved to be Capt. [Thomas] Preston with them. He desired his Men to halt and the Centinel to recover his Arm, fall into his Rank and march up to the Main Guard. The Centinel fell in and the men wanted to move forward to the Guard house but could not for the Riot.

The people called out fire, damn you why dont you fire, you cant kill us [all]. I steppd to the Party. Heard a Gentleman ask the Capt. if he was going to order his men to fire. He said no Sir by no means, by no means. A Man—the Centinel—then pushed me back. I step’d back to the corner. He bid me go away for I should be killed.

A Man came behind the Soldiers walkd backwards and forwards, encouraging them to fire. The Captain stood on the left about three yards. The man touched one of the Soldiers upon the back and said fire, by God I’ll stand by you. He was dressed in dark coloured Cloaths. I don’t remember he had a Surtout or any lace about him. He did not look like an Officer. The man fired directly on the word and clap on the Shoulder.

This testimony, from one of the very few women on the scene that night, helped to exonerate Capt. Preston of having ordered the soldiers to fire.

By the time of Preston’s trial, Jane Crothers was no longer Jane Crothers. On 27 March, three weeks and a day after the Massacre, she married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment at Christ Church (Old North). She was thus attached to the army, though not identified as such in the trial records.

Instead, those notes record another unusual aspect of Jane Whitehouse’s testimony. Under Massachusetts law, witnesses could swear to tell the truth simply by holding up their hand and reciting or assenting to an oath. But someone “said that Jane Whitehouse thought there was no obligation from Oaths administred by holding up the hand.” She was therefore “Sworn upon the Bible.” I’ve tried to find a discussion of that distinction from the period in hopes that it would say something about the woman’s religion, and I haven’t.

TOMORROW: What Pvt. Whitehouse had to say.

Boston 1775

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