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Commonwealth Museum   Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin
Commonwealth Museum Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin

The View from the Street


“

In the fray many were much bruised and wounded in their heads and arms some dangerously.”

– Account of Pope Night, Evening Post, November 11, 1764

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The Stamp Tax crisis brought disadvantaged groups into the political process in ways that were unsettling to British colonial officials.

A portrait of Thomas Hutchinson
- Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

This painting depicts one of the “leather apron” men who worked with their hands and were called “mechanics” during the eighteenth century. Later Samuel Adams convinced some to give up their leather aprons as part of a boycott of British goods.

The Outsiders
In the eighteenth century they were called the “people out of doors,” to signal that they were outsiders in the political process. Th e “people in doors” made policy. At the top were respectable artisans, “the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,” according to historian Alfred Young. Below them was an angry group of unemployed dockworkers, sailors, transients, and the very poor. Th ey were receptive to the idea that British policies were responsible for their plight and ready to protest, even violently, whatever needed protesting

Poster titled ‘South end forever [cut] North end forever. Extraordinary verses on Pope-night,’ commemorating the fifth of November with historical verses and imagery from 1768 Boston.
Pope Night in Boston
- Library of Congress

Pope Night
 November 5th was called Pope Day in Boston. It echoed the annual celebration of Guy Fawkes Day in England when a plot by Catholic dissidents to blow up Parliament was foiled. Th at evening North and South End gangs carried effi gies of the Pope and the devil before descending on each other with rocks, fi sts, and clubs. In 1764 a child was killed when run over by a cart. Samuel Adams thought that these energies could be put to better use and introduced himself to the leader of the South End gang.

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart - Museum of Fine Arts

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart
- Museum of Fine Arts

Youthful Indiscretions
For a time in the 1760’s Henry Knox, hero of the American Revolution and President Washington’s Secretary of War, was a lieutenant in the South End gang.

This petition from the Massachusetts legislature to king and parliament protests the stamp act’s burden on the poor. the rural population will have difficulty traveling “forty to fifty miles” to the “metropolis” to buy stamps. “besides it was found that this tax lay heaviest on the poor sort, and those least able to bear that or any other tax.”
-  Massachusetts Archives

This petition from the Massachusetts legislature to king and parliament protests the stamp act’s burden on the poor. the rural population will have difficulty traveling “forty to fifty miles” to the “metropolis” to buy stamps. “besides it was found that this tax lay heaviest on the poor sort, and those least able to bear that or any other tax.”