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Do restless souls
still wander upon Boston Neck? Was the tragic hanging of Quakers ever
avenged by a later curse?
Boston proper was
originally a peninsula, created
by the combined delta of the Charles,
Mystic, and Chelsea Rivers. This peninsula was connected to the mainland by a
narrow strip of land that was known as Boston Neck.
Boston Neck was
fortified with a gate and guard house. Entry into the town by land was
limited to this narrow spit of land. Just south of this fortification was Gallows
Hill. Quakers, criminals, and non-conformists were executed there.
Puritan Boston was governed by a theocracy. Strict Biblical principles were enforced.
In general, if you dissented from the majority, you were banished from the
colony. If you returned, you could be hanged by the neck until dead. The
gruesome procedure was for you to be taken on a cart or marched to the Neck,
bound, made to climb a ladder which rested against a tree, and
the ladder was then tipped
over.
After a prisoner was
hanged for crimes against the State, their body was dumped in a field that
was adjacent to Gallow's Hill. The corpse was either buried by a merciful
spectator, or left there for animals to eat. This field was located on the
east side of Washington Street, between today's East Berkeley and West
Dedham Streets.
The photo above is
of Washington Street looking north from East Brookline Street in the South
End. Gallow's Hill was north and to the right of the cathedral. The image below shows
the Neck in 1775, with the lower
rampart of the fortification built on Gallows Hill (just south of today's
East Berkeley Street).
In 1659, three
Quakers were banished from the town. Marmaduke Stevenson, William
Robinson, and Mary Dyer were told to never return, upon penalty of death.
The three Quakers were compelled by their religion to immediately return to
Boston and test this "bloody law." The following is a 1667 account of the
consequences:
"And when W.
Robinson went cheerfully up the ladder to the topmost round above the
gallows and spoke to the people that they suffered not as evildoers, but as
those who testified and manifested the truth and desired them to mind the
light that was in them, the light of Christ of which he testified, and was
now going to seal it with his blood, the old priest in much wickedness said:
'Hold thy toungue; be silent; thou art going to die with a lie in thy
mouth.'
So being come to the
place of execution, hand in hand, as to a wedding day, all three with great
cheerfulness of heart, and having taken leave of each other, your
executioner put William Robinson to death and after him M. Stevenson."
Mary Dyer was bound
and had climbed the Gallows ladder prepared to die, but was reprieved
at the last moment. Mrs. Dyer was again banished from Boston but returned in
1660. She was executed soon after.
In 1674, Increase
Mather wrote that someone had erected a pillar over the graves of the
Quakers with an inscription "'Here lies the bodies of such & such, their
souls triumphing, their bodies crying out for vengeance.' This is an
ill-omen."
In 1699, a Quaker
named Thomas Story was riding from Braintree to Boston and wrote: "We went
to Boston, near which on a green we observed a pair of gallows, and being
told it was a place where several of our Friends had suffered death and been
thrown into a hole, we rode a little out of the way to see it, which was
kind of a pit, near the gallows, and full of water."
The Gallows was
later moved south, closer to the site of the cathedral in the above photo. The last Gallows on the Neck was located near
South Burying Ground, about two blocks further south of the cathedral.
Executions were later carried out in the yard of the new Charles Street Jail,
starting in 1826.
If the reader
believes in spirts or paranormal activity, the Neck is a location in Boston
where restless souls may still wander. Possibly to avenge the "crime" of
faith?
[Author's note:
The area just south of Boston Neck was known as "the Common Lands." Most
executions took place there, not at
Boston Common, which is often mistakenly
published.]
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