Revolutionary Nightlife in Boston 1776, with J.D. Dickey (episode 354)

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Nikki:
[0:03] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

Revolutionary Boston Nightlife

Nikki:
[0:13] This is episode 354, Revolutionary Nightlife in Boston, 1776. Hi, I’m Nikki. This week, I’m chatting with J.D. Dickey, author of Boston, 1776, A Rogue Tour of Revolution City. This book is a fresh take on the intersection of history and tourism. Written as a historical travel guide, the book positions the reader as a visitor to Boston in July of 1776. You’ll navigate the turbulent streets, tub-thumping taverns and radical strongholds of a town at war with an empire. From the harbor wharves and seedy brothels to renowned assembly halls like Old South Meeting House and Faneuil Hall, Boston 1776 leads us on a vivid tour of the vital hub of the Revolutionary War. At every stop along the way, we encounter iconic names like Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, but also the forgotten men and women who bled and brawled for freedom in every corner of Boston.

Nikki:
[1:23] Boston 1776 offers a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the time and place of the revolution. My conversation with J.D. Dickey focuses on one important aspect of life in Boston in the summer of 1776, nightlife. As the colonies descended into open war, Bostonians still needed to get out of the house at night. They needed to learn the day’s news, strategize for survival, and of course, let off some steam.

Nikki:
[1:58] But before we head out for a night on the town, I just want to pause and acknowledge Hub History’s Patreon supporters. To everyone who’s already sponsoring the show, thank you. And if you’re not yet supporting the show, but you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com slash hubhistory or visit hubhistory.com and click on the support us link. And thanks again to our new and returning sponsors. J.D. Dickey, welcome to the show.

A Historical Travel Guide

J.D. Dickey:
[2:31] Thank you. Great to be here.

Nikki:
[2:32] So I have really enjoyed reading your latest book, which is Boston, 1776, A Rogue of Revolution City. And I just have to say, I think this is a really unique concept to do a historical travel guide. Can you just explain to our listeners what that means?

J.D. Dickey:
[2:53] My idea with this was to put the reader in the streets and on the ground in the grassroots of Boston in July of 1776, basically to experience what the city was like, because a lot of people know these events very well. I mean, certainly we’ve been told about the major events of revolutionary history, and we kind of feel like we have a sense of it. But Boston itself as a city and the people who live within the city have been somewhat more obscure. And there is a kind of nebulous quality about what the city was actually like in the sense that you can see old engravings of Boston. And it looks like it was this fine place with lots of brick buildings. And indeed, the holdovers, the extant buildings from the era are brick and lovely, like the old State House and Faneuil Hall. But at the same time, we don’t realize exactly what Boston was like, that it was a very different kind of place. And that’s what I wanted to showcase when I created this book.

Nikki:
[4:00] The way that we learn about the American Revolution, you know, the way it’s taught, really centers on a small cast of characters, you know, a group of heroes. One of the things that we try to impress upon our visitors at Old North Church is that the Revolution was really born out of the common person, the everyday citizen, people like you and me. And so I really appreciate that your book gives us an opportunity to see how people were really living in Boston in July of 1776.

J.D. Dickey:
[4:33] Yes, and that was definitely my approach, because the possibility of coming up with a new angle on Paul Revere or John Hancock or any of the Adamses was fairly low. And so, I opted for the approach of just providing an overview of the key figures of the historical celebrities, if you will, and then really delving into what the average person who lived in Boston would have experienced. And that’s why in my book, we find out people like rope walk workers were essential to the revolution. Well, a lot of modern people are going to say, what’s a rope walk worker? What’s a rope walk? And I try to explain this. And in just this instance, I could give you an example of these hard, difficult conditions that people labored under and often expressed their frustration against British soldiers and others and royal officials in order to kind of have an expression of revolutionary feeling. And so common people were really important in this. And I wanted to emphasize that and also emphasize where they hung out and what they did and what their communal life was like and also the physical character of the city too, what they would have experienced in the summer of 1776.

Nikki:
[5:52] So when we think about the lives of everyday people, you know, you think about work and church and social time and, you know, all of the different components that make up our day to day.

Why Nightlife Matters

Nikki:
[6:04] Right now, in this conversation, we’re going to focus on taverns and nightlife. And so what is it that draws you to that particular topic?

J.D. Dickey:
[6:14] Because it’s so unexpected, we have to realize that there was more to Boston and more to the revolution than just people standing in assembly halls and making speeches and writing important documents and, you know, comparing notes with a lot of other people of the same kind. And nightlife is the easiest way to do it because you think of that as something very modern. And the term is modern. That’s why I use it. And you can look into people’s entertainment and their pleasure and their communal time together and get a great sense for what actually animated people. Because if you were to compare it to today, for example, I doubt we would say that this entire era of 2026 is purely defined by the people in elected office and our response to them. Although the news certainly makes it out often that that’s what animates our life. Political action, political counteraction. But at the same time, we know that sports are incredibly important. The entertainment of people’s lives and what they do after work and before work, also critically important. And I wanted to bring that to life with this discussion and to talk about how learning about people’s nightlife and their entertainment can also inform their lifestyle at the time in 1776 and its impact on the revolution.

Boston’s Split Neighborhoods

Nikki:
[7:36] Today, Boston is such a different city geographically from July of 1776, right? If they time traveled and looked at a Boston guide for today, they would not recognize it. So at that time, you know, if my memory serves me well, we’re really thinking about two neighborhoods. We’re thinking about the North End, which is the North End today. And then we’re thinking about the South End, which is almost like more of the financial district today. kind of the area that stretches from the other side of the greenway over towards the common. And so how did that arrangement of two different neighborhoods impact the way that people socialized and spent their after work hours, if you will?

J.D. Dickey:
[8:22] Yes. So you think of Boston in the colonial era being the north end, the south end, and in between what we’ll call the town center. And then west of there, what was called West Boston, which we’d now call the West End. So this collection of neighborhoods on a peninsula.

J.D. Dickey:
[8:40] A little over one square mile compared to today’s, I believe, 48 square miles for the city of Boston. Huge.

J.D. Dickey:
[8:47] And the North End and the South End respectively having their roles, which is certainly somewhat different from today. Back then, the North End was defined by the maritime industry. So half of all the jobs in the North End related to the maritime industry. That doesn’t mean everyone was a sailor. But what it does mean is that there were many artisans devoted to outfitting ships and repairing ships and preparing them on slipways and doing other things that helped to outfit a crew and a voyage and also to cater to the people making those voyages. So, a lot of taverns, boarding houses, and things like that, what we’d now call boarding houses. The South End, definitely in contrast to today, was not a financial district, and it was primarily rural. In the South End, you could have along the Tidal Flats a series of wharfs where there were often distilleries directly on the wharfs. And one of them happened to be Griffin’s Wharf, famous from the destruction of the tea. And then further inland, there were various landed estates and country walks and a certain bucolic air, which is very strange if you think about it today. But at that time, it was a bit more spread out, even though a good number of people lived in the South End. Now, the other aspect of the North and the South Ends, respectively.

J.D. Dickey:
[10:17] Was a certain rivalry, especially in the working class and especially among gang members. Now, so the North End and the South End had their own respective allegiances. And there was an unfortunate event that doesn’t pop up in a lot of history books called Pope’s Day or Pope’s Night. And it was an anti-Catholic procession and riot that happened every year in November. And in it, the North End gang faced off against the South End gang and ultimately led to a great deal of violence in the center of town where they would converge and go through various theatrics. And so this was entertainment for some people, but it was also a brutal mayhem for others. But I think that was the most extreme example of how North End and South End could have their own deep-set rivalries while being somewhat different in character economically and otherwise.

Puritan Shadows Fade

Nikki:
[11:12] I also, when I think about nightlife in this period, is how different it was compared to their ancestors 100 years prior. And I think today we think back on Puritans as being very straight-laced, very contained. We would probably say zero nightlife in the Puritan times. And I I don’t think that that’s actually true, right? But certainly that’s not true in 1776.

J.D. Dickey:
[11:45] Far from it. If we think of the Puritan era being largely in the 17th century and the rise of a more modern revolutionary Boston occurring throughout the 18th century, you can find that nightlife definitely changed. Now, there were aspects from the Puritan era that were held over. For example, it wasn’t true that Puritans refused to drink, or in some cases, refused to dance. You can find examples of that, whether it’s dancing and drinking. It’s just that a lot of this activity was restricted or it was constricted in order to keep people in line, essentially keep them focused on the task at hand, which was work and family and worship. Now, by the time we get to the 18th century, we have a much more familiar kind of city in Boston, a place where there’s a great import of British goods and communication with other colonies and a much greater worldliness. And with that worldliness, in many cases, comes entertainment and the different forms of entertainment. From what you did in taverns in terms of the games you would play, the drinking you would have, the music you would listen to, to the communal activities that you’d enjoy with your friends and family. So, Boston is definitely a lot more modern than – it might be more familiar to today than certainly the 17th century would be under the Puritan rule.

Tavern Crowds and News

Nikki:
[13:11] So, if we think about Boston’s taverns in July 1776, what kind of person or what kind of people would you encounter in a tavern?

J.D. Dickey:
[13:21] So, the type of people you would encounter in a tavern could run the gamut, a variety of people. But in certain neighborhoods, they tended to be more working class. And especially in the north end, you think of mariners and people connected to the nautical industry and others who maybe have just gotten off of a schooner or a whaler and had contributed some hard labor to that and are looking for a little relaxation. And then in other parts of town, it might be a different kind of person. It might be, for example, the Sons of Liberty and other radical patriots who are looking for a space to organize. And so, there’s a definite divergence in what people were looking for, from people who were looking at taverns as not just a social activity, but also a place where there could be what we would now call networking, or people who were just basically looking to get drunk and rowdy at the same time, and different taverns catered to different people’s interests that way.

Nikki:
[14:25] One thing that we really have to keep in mind is the fact that we have access to a 24-hour news cycle, and colonial Bostonians did not. And so, simply being an informed citizen may require you to spend some time in a tavern.

J.D. Dickey:
[14:42] Yes, that is absolutely true, because a number of things happened in taverns that you might not find elsewhere. And let’s use the example of the Golden Ball, one of the greatest taverns in Boston, run by John Marston and his wife, Elizabeth. And that’s in the town center, kind of centrally located off of Merchant’s Row. And the things that happened there were many. In other words, you wouldn’t just go there necessarily in order to drink or to have a meal or even to stay, which you could in a tavern. But also, you could catch up on the news, a great number of newspapers where you could find out what was going on overseas or in other colonies or around New England. And also books, a huge variety of books, including the speeches of parliamentarian John Wilkes all the way to Milton’s Paradise Lost and everything in between. And then you’d also have the hearth with conversation being primary. So, finding others of your ilk, which is usually of the patriot temperament, and comparing notes, and then catching up on news that way. And so, the news, as we think about it today, is a much more difficult concept to pin down because where people were getting their news was from a variety of sources, not just a box or a screen or something like that. It was often communally, it was through these different avenues, and at the same time, it was much more of an interconnected world than it had been earlier in the century.

Women Behind the Bar

Nikki:
[16:12] Would you have encountered many women in taverns?

J.D. Dickey:
[16:15] Generally not, but there is a notable exception. And even though taverns were male-dominated, and that wasn’t unusual for the time, in Boston, it’s estimated that about 40% of taverns were owned by women. They were the tavern keepers, and up to half of all new licenses were taken by women. And this is interesting because you might say on one hand, well, naturally, because women outnumbered men, there was the widowhood that kind of created the need for this because many male tavern owners had died and their wives had taken over. But at the same time, there were women who ran taverns independently or even sold liquor out of their own houses. And this is one of the most interesting aspects of the research that I’ve done because it shows that there were a number of dram shops available in town. These were low-end places where you could get a drink for a few pence. And often someone, often a widow or another woman, would set up her own barrel of rum in a room and then charge people to tap it. Or she might sell liquor on the wharf just strolling along. And sometimes this was out of desperation. sometimes out of a desire to do this rather than something else, like repairing garments or something like that, people who would rather be tavern owners than seamstresses.

J.D. Dickey:
[17:43] And it’s certainly interesting and sort of undercuts the idea that women were kept out of taverns, which is something we hear sometimes, but rather, in many cases, they were managing or owning these establishments and creating definitely a different aspect to a lot of these places.

Games, Music, and Mischief

Nikki:
[18:00] What would the entertainment be like, especially given that, you know, it would have been a mostly male environment?

J.D. Dickey:
[18:08] So, the entertainment could have been a number of things. If you think of cards, which people played constantly, they were playing the latest games, which were things like Whist and Piquet and a variation called Boston and Lou and other games that were popular in the colonies. And they also, depending on the layout of the tavern, might enjoy nine-pin bowling and lawn bowling, depending on what the tavern was equipped with, and chess and drafts or checkers, as we call it, and a number of other games. So people definitely enjoyed that. But there was also a darker side to the entertainment. And that was in the form of blood sport, like bull or bear baiting. And that often involved gambling. And so, for some people, gambling was a quiet thing that was enjoyed, even though it was illegal. And that people would gamble on any number of things, from card games to blood sport to individual fights between men who had a beef with each other for some reason. And apart from that, apart from those things, the entertainment could be quite varied and unusual. So in some taverns, you’d see displays of exotic birds or mechanical contrivances or displays of electricity or anything you can think of. And finally, there was also music and dancing in taverns. So it truly was a variety of things that people could do and enjoy themselves with.

Nikki:
[19:33] What type of music and dancing was most popular?

J.D. Dickey:
[19:37] So the traditional kind of music, especially in Boston, tended to be more patriotic airs and sometimes hymns and things like that. It wasn’t, you know, kind of a hoedown type of thing where people would get into a sort of crazy spirit about the music, as you might find, say, in London or something like that. But rather, you’d have drum and fife and horns and kettle drums and things like that for people to listen to at taverns like Concert Hall, which routinely put on these kind of concerts along with balls. And the place also had a dancing and fencing academy and other means for people to enjoy themselves. And then in terms of dancing, you’d find that in some taverns, not all, but there would be reels and country dances and people generally having a free-spirited time within reason. And in other neighborhoods like North Slope Village.

J.D. Dickey:
[20:35] Which was in West Boston, you would find often enslaved people enjoying music in dance halls or dance cellars with instruments familiar from Africa. So, drums, tambourines, and fiddles, and the like. So, the type of music and dancing that was done really depended on the type of tavern it was and the type of neighborhood where it was located. But people generally, at least according to my research, seem to have a pretty good time of it. And it definitely wasn’t as staid or as buttoned down as you might think, especially if you’re viewing it through a lens from the previous century.

Courtship in Public View

Nikki:
[21:14] Given that taverns weren’t exactly a place for genders to mingle, where would a gentleman take a respectable lady if they wanted to listen to music or dance or essentially go on a date? Did people in Colonial Boston go on dates in the evening?

J.D. Dickey:
[21:35] They did. They did. Often this was for couples courting. We might think of them going to an assembly hall or to a lecture to take in a high-minded speech by someone, something instructional. They probably weren’t going to blood sport to enjoy a bout of bear baiting or something like that. But rather, it was this kind of socially acceptable entertainment. And sometimes dancing, it’s true, although that could be touch and go a bit. But often, if you think about dating, what traditionally would happen, the most acceptable form of that was to have an encounter between the members of the couple in front of the eyes of their elders. In other words, they’d be observed carefully just to make sure there was nothing untoward going on. And so the family could get involved. They could also go out on their own. It’s true. But I think that some of the more interested families would have a firm hand in trying to figure out who this new person was and trying to assess them rather than just letting them go out on their own, especially if they were young, where taverns weren’t always a place for couples to go.

Nikki:
[22:47] We’ve talked about taverns as really being a place for the working class.

Elite Society’s Private Parties

J.D. Dickey:
[22:52] Yes.

Nikki:
[22:53] So, where would the wealthier Bostonians go for nighttime entertainment? Where would they go for theater and opera and things like that?

J.D. Dickey:
[23:02] So, I’ll start with the tavern part of the equation, because usually upper class Bostonians could find themselves in taverns. I mean, John Hancock certainly mingled with the working class in taverns. We know that to be the case. And in some cases, there were elite clubs like Merchants Club, which met at the British Coffee House, which included members of the ruling establishment, royal officials and things like that. So, in some taverns, there was space devoted for this kind of thing. But often, what you’d find is that the wealthier members of society entertained themselves at each other’s mansions and their homes. So north of the common, there is a stretch wherein you’d find the mansion of John Hancock and James Bowden and Edward Bromfield and others kind of arrayed along there. And often these grand levies or these parties would take place in which there would be music and games and high-spirited entertainment and feasting and Everything you’d want as a member of the elite and that you wouldn’t have to go to a tavern to find. So essentially, the upper crust, much as it is today, could find their own amusement by doing so in their own private homes.

Boston Versus Other Cities

Nikki:
[24:25] How did all of this compare to nightlife in the other colonial cities, to New York or Philadelphia, for example?

J.D. Dickey:
[24:34] Yes. So, following up on your question about theater and opera, that’s a good segue. You wouldn’t find theater in Boston, for the most part. It had been banned by the general court in 1759. And there were occasional examples of this law being violated, for example, during the British occupation, shortly before the evacuation, which your podcast had a good episode on a few months ago about the time that British officers put on theater right before they evacuated. But for the most part, the theater was banned, along with things like palm reading and puppet shows and acrobatics and things like that. And so theater and opera were not essentially to be found in Boston, with some exceptions. So Concert Hall put on a series of operas in 1769, but that fell by the wayside. A lot of Bostonians weren’t interested. And so, to go back to your question, the clearest differentiation between Boston and other colonial cities, especially to the south, not necessarily New England, but to the south, going toward Virginia.

J.D. Dickey:
[25:41] New York, Philadelphia, was in the variety of entertainment on offer. And this often meant theater, which was more to be found more often, but not always, in those other colonies and even opera. But since these things had a European air to them, there was always a sense of suspicion about them, wherever they were in the colonies. And it’s not surprising that in 1774, Boston delegates to the Continental Congress got the body to make a statement against such entertainments and warning against engaging in them because they were counter to the revolutionary spirit. Killjoys. In short.

Nikki:
[26:23] Yeah. It sounds like maybe this was one area where we had some holdover effects from the Puritan era.

J.D. Dickey:
[26:33] Yes, very much so. And theater was definitely looked down upon, even at the time, even to the degree where Boston was considered an outlier. And I have a quote from an early English Puritan leader that was somewhat extreme, but at the same time, there was this holdover, as you mentioned, a feeling about the theater. And what they didn’t like were, quote, the wanton gestures, the amorous kisses, compliments and salutes, the meretricious songs and speeches, the lascivious whorish actions, beautiful faces, ravishing music, witty obscenities, adulterous representations with all the other fomentations of uncleanliness in the playhouse. And the general court, in its ban on theater, went further and said it It encouraged impiety and a contempt of religion, as well as immorality. So, there was definitely this feeling that the theater contributed to bad behavior. And for Bostonians who were looking to build a new republic or a new kind of world out of the ashes of what the British Empire had left, theater did not figure into it. And indeed, it would take several more decades before theater to become accepted in Boston.

The Ban on Street Performers

Nikki:
[27:54] In Boston, would one have encountered street performers? Would you have seen musicians or jugglers or anything like that on the streets from time to time?

J.D. Dickey:
[28:07] No, because it had been banned by the town meeting, these sorts of things. Acrobatics.

Nikki:
[28:11] All the good stuff.

J.D. Dickey:
[28:12] Yeah, acrobatics and fortune telling and puppet shows and mummers plays, street theater. all of that was not considered appropriate for various reasons. Now, if we talk about mummers, for example, which is definitely something you would find in Europe, one of the reasons that Bostonians didn’t particularly like it, and didn’t like Christmas either for other reasons, which we won’t get into, and largely didn’t celebrate it, at least Congregationalists were suspicious of it, unlike Anglicans, was that often mummers would break into people’s houses around Christmas time and put on skits. And if they didn’t get handsome compensation or food from the owner, they ransacked the place. And so, a lot of people were disgusted by that kind of behavior and associated it with theater in general. And so, mummers and other kinds of.

J.D. Dickey:
[29:13] Ad hoc performers were not appreciated and often scorned. Because I think it’s important to note that Boston wasn’t alone in that a number of other colonial towns and cities still had this holdover of thinking that had come from the early modern era in which actors were not to be trusted whatsoever. And they were considered little better than criminals in some cases, and definitely members of the lower class. And you find this in engravings of the time, like Hogarth, for example, does a series of engravings in which you see actors. And it’s hard to tell if it’s backstage at a theater or if it’s a brothel, because that’s the way it’s depicted, because of the, kind of narrow-minded perspective a lot of Americans and others had about what the theater meant and what it represented.

Illicit Pleasures in Boston

Nikki:
[30:08] We’ve kept our conversation about nighttime activities really PG up until now, but I’m sure there were other types of nighttime activities that were also illegal and that were still taking place. So where would you take a not respectable woman to dance?

J.D. Dickey:
[30:27] Okay. So the two things that were considered particularly illicit was any place where gambling was prioritized. So, if you were going to a bull or a bear baiting venue, like the George Tavern, just off of the neck, this was a place where a lot of civilized folk might not go to. I say that in quotes, but still, blood sport is a nasty business. It was like a bull tied to a post and then vicious dogs attack it and people bet on the outcome. So, gambling in some cases was associated with kind of low behavior. But at the same time, many people did gamble illegally on cards and other things. And so illicit entertainment primarily meant some form of gambling. But at the same time, it could also mean prostitution.

J.D. Dickey:
[31:19] Now, in terms of Boston brothels, you don’t often associate Boston brothels.

J.D. Dickey:
[31:26] With that, because we have this idea that because of what the Puritans did against sex workers, which was quite extreme and typically involved steep fines and whipping and public shaming and other things, that that must have carried over into the 18th century. While a lot of those laws were still on the books, they just weren’t enforced, or at least not enforced very much. In fact, there was only a handful of prosecutions in the decade or so before the revolution. And part of this was just a sense of a changing feeling about what brothels were and who the people who were working there were. I think Bostonians understood that a lot of women that worked in a bordello or what was called the house of ill repute were doing so because of desperate measures. To do that to stay out of the almshouse or another facility caring for the poor.

J.D. Dickey:
[32:19] And so I don’t think that the narrow-mindedness and cynicism of the 17th century had necessarily carried over into the 18th. And so subsequently, enforcement was more lax against brothels, and people would go there. Now, you wouldn’t take a date there, as you mentioned, but rather it would be more along the lines of a soldier or a mariner or other working class men, maybe rope walk workers, something like that, going to a brothel on an off night. And usually in around the same area, there was what we would call today a red light district around Ann Street.

J.D. Dickey:
[32:59] Which was just on the northern part of Merchant’s Row near the town dock around where the triangular warehouse was. So, in this central part of town that has long since vanished and there’s no sign of it left, people would go there into these narrow little alleys and find, brothels or people just operating out of their own rooms or out of a boarding house and then pay money for sex. And certainly, this was a form of, I guess you’d call it entertainment. I mean, it was a form of whatever, fill in the blank. But at the same time…

Nikki:
[33:36] Passing the time.

J.D. Dickey:
[33:36] Yes, passing the time. It’s difficult to… What is the proper word for that? Because you don’t want to say entertainment, but at the same time, it was something that’s obviously been carried on for many, many millennia. So, it was a pursuit and there was always an audience for it. And that’s the place where a lot of working class men would go for this. It wasn’t too far away from the shipyards of the North End, and they could just venture right down to Ann Street and do their business.

Nikki:
[34:08] And Ann Street is what we call North Street today, if I’m correct in my geography.

J.D. Dickey:
[34:13] It’s roughly the same. The terms for the streets are obviously very different because Ann Street then would have given way to Fish Street and then Ship Street. And then that would later be North Street, but there was a North Street at the same time as well. And so, parts of the old North Street got carried over to what’s now North Street. And it’s all very confusing to look at these maps from the era and try to piece it out. But yes, it’s roughly where that is in the old kind of warren of streets around Merchant’s Row and around Corn Court and some of these other alleys that were near where the old shoreline was before it was filled in.

Drinking Across Boundaries

Nikki:
[34:56] Now, these places that were a little more illicit, whether it was gambling or prostitution, would these places have been more racially and economically diverse, or would they still have been fairly segregated?

J.D. Dickey:
[35:12] I think it depends on where you go.

J.D. Dickey:
[35:15] So, enslaved people, indentured servants, and servants generally, were not allowed to drink by law. And so, any sort of drinking would have to take place illicitly, often in a back room or a cellar, something like that, and away from the eyes of the law. Not that the law was a heavy presence. It certainly wasn’t a police state. But it’s certainly away from the eyes of public officials. Now, often this would take place in dram shops, which were the low-end drinking establishments, or in people’s private homes. And in some cases, widows would serve alcohol to people who were enslaved or indentured servants if they could just pay a few pence for a slug of rum or something like that. And so people did find a way to drink, but if it’s the case of a major tavern that everybody knows, like the Green Dragon or the Bunch of Grapes or the Golden Ball, at those places you would find more racial segregation there. And of course, enslaved people couldn’t drink, but freedmen could and often in their own neighborhoods, like North Slope Village in West Boston, aka West End. So you would find drinking establishments, taverns, dram shops there as well. And the racial composition tended to be a bit more diverse than it was in other parts of Boston.

Signs, Symbols, and Politics

Nikki:
[36:45] So I’ve always been tickled by tavern names, the green dragon, the bunch of grapes, the bell in hand, you know, and I’ve always understood that tavern names were meant to be things that could be illustrated.

J.D. Dickey:
[36:59] Yes.

Nikki:
[36:59] So that you wouldn’t have to read a sign, you could see the sign with the illustration of the green dragon. Is this true?

J.D. Dickey:
[37:06] Yes, absolutely. So, you would see a signboard and it would have something like the dog and pot, which is what it would be called. And there’d be a dog and there’d be a pot with a dog, you know, the dog sniffing it. Or Bacchus, named after the Roman god of the vine. And then there’d be a libertine there with a bunch of grapes. Or the bunch of grapes, where there would be the titular, you know, fruit on the label. And in some cases, you could tell a lot about the place simply by the name and the sign attached to the tavern. So, for example, probably the most sexist sign I can think of was called the Good Woman, and it was a picture of a woman without a head. And so, that must have appealed to a certain kind of mariner or someone who was drinking who didn’t particularly like women. And then you’d find another place like Cromwell’s Head Tavern, which was a picture of the Lord Protector of England from the 17th century in all of his glowering seriousness. And the sign would hang so low that patrons would have to duck their head to enter, meaning they’d have to bow to Oliver Cromwell in order to go inside. And this was a way to keep British soldiers out, because anyone who had allegiance to the king obviously didn’t want to bow their head to someone who had cut off the head of a previous king in the 17th century.

J.D. Dickey:
[38:34] So they served a variety of political and social functions. And you could tell a lot about a tavern by what was out front.

A Guide to 1776 Boston

Nikki:
[38:41] I love that. So I want to bring the conversation back to your book for a few minutes. And I think a conversation about taverns and nightlife is so relevant to this bigger topic of a historical travel guide. Because when I think about planning a trip today, I’m thinking about museums and historic sites that I’m going to go to in the daytime, and then where I’m going to have dinner in the nighttime. And so what else will readers be able to experience in your travel guide to Boston 1776?

J.D. Dickey:
[39:16] So one of the things that they’ll be able to learn is exactly what the town looked like, and the layout of it. And by implication, what one would do there, essentially what you would do with a modern travel guide, except adapted to 1776, and what it meant for 1776. And so, if you ventured to Boston at the time, you would find some things that aren’t going to pop up in history books, for example. For example, when you got off of a ship, you might first have to, the captain or public officials might have to determine whether you’re a disease carrier because there’s a smallpox epidemic going on in Boston in the summer of 1776. You also have to prove that you’re not destitute or a warner, as the job is called, might tell you to leave town within 21 days. And so even getting oriented into Boston could be a challenge for some people. But once you get here, you can find different things to do in terms of often through social interaction with people. Now, if you know someone, that’s easy.

J.D. Dickey:
[40:26] You can go to their house, you can have a tea party, you can enjoy company in their parlor or other area. But if you don’t, you’re going to find yourself in a tavern, and often the tavern would be at the center of people’s social world. So, you’d find people having breakfast in a tavern, staying there overnight in a bed shared by other people. And, of course, drinking and enjoying different meals there and enjoying games of nine-pin bowling or card games or whatever you might have or catching up on the news and doing other things that made people get a sense of what Boston was actually like. And if you had another purpose, like a patriot purpose in town, then you might want to commune with or compare notes with members of the Sons of Liberty or the Loyal Nine or another radical patriot club. And so there were many different ways that people could go about entertaining themselves. And not surprisingly, taverns were at the center of this. And so nightlife wasn’t just a unique, discrete concept, but rather something that bled over into what people did generally, because often they would have their nightlife in the same places where they would spend their days, especially if they were a traveler.

Nikki:
[41:44] So for those who would like to time travel, what is the best way for our listeners to purchase your book?

J.D. Dickey:
[41:50] So you can go to my website, www.jddickey.com, and there are a series of links there to the book. I also have short, fun, kind of popular videos that illustrate some of these concepts in a bite-sized format. That’s the simplest way. Or you can also contact me by way of the website if you have some difficulty. I would recommend going to different ordering sites. You can find those. Some take longer, some take shorter in terms of the book delivery. But the book is available in most places wherever you buy your books.

Nikki:
[42:28] Well, J.D. Dickey, thank you so much for joining us today and for talking about taverns in Colonial Boston.

J.D. Dickey:
[42:35] It was great to be here. I appreciate it.

Nikki:
[42:38] To learn more about Boston nightlife through the centuries, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 354. We’ll have a link to purchase Boston 1776, as well as links to episodes that cover Burgoyne’s Thespians and Boston’s first theater season, the evolution of the combat zone, the collapse of the Pickwick nightclub, allegedly caused by the boisterous steps of the Charleston dance, and the first secular public concert in the United States. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast at hubhistory.com. We still have profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but lately we’ve mostly been posting and interacting with listeners on Blue Sky, where you can find us by searching for hubhistory.com. If none of that is up your alley, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the contact us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. And if you do, drop us a line and we’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.