Boy Wonder Arrested as Ringleader when Reds Riot in Roxbury (episode 221)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] 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.
This is episode 2 21.
Hi, I’m jake! This week, I’m talking about a protest march by Roxbury Socialists supporting a textile workers strike in Lawrence,
The afternoon of May 1 1919 turned violent with police firing shots to disperse the crowd.
In the aftermath, two officers were killed in a mob form that hunted down and viciously beat many of the marchers as the smoke cleared, it became clear that one of the leaders of the march was a celebrity William James Sidis the boy wonder.
But before we talk about the boy wonder in the Roxbury riot, I just want to pause and thank the sponsors who helped me make hub history.
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[1:42] By 1919, may 1st have been associated with the american labor movement since the Haymarket massacre in Chicago over 30 years earlier,
With the success of the Communist Russian Revolution in 1917.
Both May Day, and the broader labor movement were viewed with suspicion in the US.
We’ve seen an episode 172 How police coordinated with right wing rioters to attack a leftist parade in Boston in the summer of 1917.
Those tensions only grew as the soviet union consolidated power and began attempting to spread the communist revolution around the world.
In April 1919, Boston’s telephone operators were on strike, but all eyes were on Lawrence, where textile workers have been out on strike for months.
A description from the Swarthmore database of nonviolent action describes how the strikers hope to replicate the success of the famous bread and roses strike.
In 1919, the United Textile workers in the Central Labor Union and a rush of union activity managed to shorten the work week from 54 hours to 48 hours.
The unions negotiated this reform by making a concession of an overall cut in wages which were already below the cost of living immigrant workers at textile mills. In Lawrence massachusetts welcome the change in hours but could not afford a decrease in wages.

[3:04] Aware of a successful strike involving immigrant workers in Lawrence.
Back in 1912, the mill workers decided to use the same tactic to combat the wage decrease,
On February 3 1919, between 17,000 and 30,000 immigrant workers walked out of the mills throughout Lawrence and began the 54 48 strike.
The strikers organized themselves among 20 different ethnic groups, with one leader per group.

[3:31] In addition, the strikers invited three pastors known collectively as the Boston Comradeship.
J Must, Cedric, Long and Harold Russell as spokespeople ethnic stores and businesses supported the strikers by accepting coupons in place of cash.
Meanwhile, the strikers boycotted stores that did not support the strike.

[3:52] Throughout March and april strikers and their supporters complained of police violence to the mayor and the governor, Calvin Coolidge, but they were ignored,
By May one the striking workers were broken growing desperate while the mill owners in turn were getting desperate for labor.
A few weeks later the United Textile workers would strike a deal with the owners implementing the 48 hour work week and a 15 raise.
But on May day tensions were high. Those tensions were reflected in supporters of both sides.
As noted in the database, a large portion of strikers as well as must held socialist ideals, attracting the sympathy of boston’s radical circles and organizations such as the amalgamated clothing workers of America.

[4:39] However, the press did not treat the socialist leanings of the strikers favorably.
Several newspapers declared the strike an attempt to start a bolshevik revolution in America, and the city administration used the threat of communism as an excuse to play spies and strike meetings.
Ed in Lawrence’s immigrant community, the newspapers weren’t the only ones attempting to paint all labour activists with the communist brush,
in an article about irish catholic, anti socialism in boston for the Journal of American ethnic History, Damien Murray wrote,
citing the Lawrence strike, boston’s catholic and irish american leaders warned of the dangers of bolshevism and encouraged irish americans to view their ethnic group as being in the front line against socialism.
In boston has May Day approached.
The pilot told readers that the Postwar economic dislocation presented socialist agitators with an opportunity to initiate a reign of lawlessness.
It encouraged returning soldiers to join the Knights of columbus, an organization that took a leading role in the fight against socialism.

[5:46] Meanwhile, john F Honey fitz Fitzgerald’s weekly newspaper, The Republic, insisted that massachusetts mill towns were inhabited by anarchists.
No one pushed for a stronger stance against socialism than David Goldstein.
In the days leading up to May Day, he characterized bolshevism as a tyrannical and atheistic movement,
demanded a prohibition on public displays of the red flag, the international Socialist symbol, and called for police measures to be directed against young people’s socialist leagues, which he accused of spreading disaffection,
as we’ve heard in past episodes.
Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan used to boast a much more heavily jewish population, including many recent immigrants from eastern europe and what had recently become the soviet Union.
As late as World War Two, jewish residents populated the Roxbury district heavily enough to be able to feel their own nightwatch to protect against anti Semitic violence.
As we learned in our recent episode about Nazi sympathizers in boston 1919 found a significant portion of that European Jewish community, sympathetic to some form of socialism,
with a handful even embracing the Communist International and the soviet cause.

[6:59] At the same time, there irish american neighbors were hearing a steady stream of anti socialist and irish nationalist propaganda from the pulpit, as Murray’s peace records.
Lower Roxbury lies next to boston’s south end neighborhood, where boston College was established in 18 63.
On Harris Nav, Boston College’s buildings lay about a half a mile from Dudley Street in Roxbury, where the Mayday 1919 riot took place.
In the weeks leading up to May one, Boston College Clergy warned local Catholics of the Bolshevik threat on ST Patrick’s day. The reverend john p meager delivered a pin generic at boston College’s church of the immaculate conception.
Recounting irish sacrifices for the church for the Middle Ages and irish american sacrifices during the recent war, Meagher said one would not find the Irishman of Bolshevik or an anarchist never a slacker nor a coward.
There’s no evidence of boston College clergy urging physical violence against socialists, but their attacks on socialism in the weeks before May 1st heightened the tension that existed in the immediate locality because of the presence of political radicals.

[8:11] In a lot of cases, Labor leaders in this era were unfairly portrayed as socialists or communists, despite just wanting a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work on May Day in 1919.
However, the group that met at the Roxbury Opera House, near what was then still doubly Square, were bona fide communists when they announced that they were planning to march from the theater to the new International Hall.
A few blocks away, they rallied under red flags and sang the international al the universal hymn of bolshevism.
The marchers quickly found themselves outnumbered by a hostile crowd as described by Murray.
On May 1 1919, socialists in Roxbury celebrated May Day with a mass meeting at the Deadly Street Opera House Police and eyewitnesses later claimed that the trouble began when they were assaulted by the marchers in the parade that followed the meeting,
and that the police only gained control in the resulting melee when mounted police and local citizens, many of whom were soldiers and sailors, came to their aid.
By contrast, Socialists alleged in court that they had walked individually or in small groups along Dudley Street, where they were taunted by crowds shouting down with the bolshevik E damn the bolshevik E.

[9:30] In the case of the 1917 riot, in Park Square, where the local Socialist Party headquarters was sacked, it was very clear that the leftist marchers had been attacked,
at first by a few street thugs and later in an effort coordinated between street toughs, police officers, sailors, armed soldiers and Justice Department agents.

[9:51] In the case of the May Day March responsibility for the violent riot that followed was not so clear cut.
The violence, however, did get bad and three people eventually lost their lives.
The next day’s boston globe describes the moment when the first shots rang out for nearly an hour.
The people in the zone bounded by Dudley Warren and Monroe streets and humbled Av were terrorized by a running fight between the rioters and policemen at humboldt, Gavin Munro street where the paraders made their last stand after being partially dispersed.
At several other points, a few salat of bullets cleared the thoroughfares, Everyone except those directly involved in the fight.
It was here that policeman Arthur Shea of station 10 was shot through the index finger of the right hand and Adolf.
But um er of station nine was shot in the left leg, withdrawn revolvers.
A squad of six policemen from Station nine and command of Sergeant Arthur Casey ordered the parade to halt at the corner of Warren and Waverly Streets.

[10:54] Up to this time, there was no serious disturbance while the paraders were proceeding through Warren Street five riot calls are received at headquarters and the commanding officers at the 19 police stations scattered through the city.
Each sent five policemen post haste to Roxbury, Henry J. Levitt, a dentist had just left his office when a stray bullet penetrated his right foot.
Earlier in the fighting, policeman Samuel Hutchins of Station nine was stabbed in the shoulder.

[11:25] That’s Sergeant Casey would pose for photographs with a few members of the reactionary mob who had fought the marchers, which ran in the globe with the caption calling them men who helped police when the riots started.

[11:39] Perhaps they were the gang Murray referred to in describing how poorly the afternoons fighting went for the marchers.
According to a Socialist spokesperson, the police projected themselves into the crowd withdrawn clubs, supported by onlookers on the sidewalks.
Socialists also claimed that both the police and non Socialists use sticks and clubs and that one officer told a bystander to get his gang together, Regardless of who started it.
A running fight lasting over an hour took place in Roxbury in which 113 people were arrested.
Two policemen and a civilian were shot and dozens were injured.
Two policemen later died, one from heart failure and another from a gunshot wound.

[12:24] Reporting in the May two globe outlines how the mob became so violent that simply being seen on the street wearing red could lead to a beating or worse.

[12:35] Throughout the Roxbury district last night, feeling ran so high against the rioters that everyone appearing on the street wearing red so conspicuously as to attract attention, was in danger.
People of Foreign birth, who apparently had nothing to do with the day’s disturbance, were pursued by crowds, and the extra police detailed the riot duty had their hands full preserving order. Until nearly midnight.

[12:58] One of the many innocent victims of the after clap of the rioting was William Lipsky, who was struck down in a fight in which he otherwise had no part at 6:30,
And remained unconscious from a blow in the head until 9:30 at the Office of Dr Edelstein.
He was then removed to the city hospital Murray’s article corroborates and Trust from the Globe’s reporting.
For several hours after the street battle, gangs of soldiers and sailors roamed the streets of Roxbury, seeking out socialists.
One unfortunate victim, Hyman Stern, was chased into a local store by a crowd of soldiers and sailors.
Later in court, witnesses testified that he was dragged outside by the crowd and beaten with clubs and sticks according to Stern.
He was arrested and then beaten in the truck by police while the crowd chanted bolshevik bolshevik That evening at station nine, where the walls and booking desk were splashed with the prisoners blood.
A Globe reporter witnessed police officers trying to bring a group of prisoners into the station.
They had to make their way through soldiers and sailors shouting, Kill them, kill them.
The Globe reporter wrote that One thin little emaciated prisoner, his shirt front, saturated with blood, was nearly felled by a club in the hands of a sailor as the victim was being half carried up the steps into station nine by his captors.

[14:26] With the benefit of hindsight. It’s a little bit funny to read how enthusiastically the police participated in violence against a march that was supposed to be in support of the Lawrence strike.
After all, Just a few months later, in september the boston Police would also walk off the job in an unprecedented police strike.

[14:47] The May two globe shed some light on who was arrested during the parade and in the fighting that followed it, including a woman who we featured before on the show for her role in a different radical protest.

[15:00] Nearly half the paraders were women and during the clash with the police, which first occurred at the corner of Warren and Waverly streets, they fought with such hysterical abandon that when they were bundled into patrol wagons, most of them were on the point of complete collapse.
One woman was reported to be in such condition that she will shortly need the attention of a physician, Martha H.
Foley of West Park Street. Dorchester, who has booked at station nine on the charge of inciting a riot, Is one of the 22 militant suffragists arrested in front of the state house on February 24 during President Wilson’s visit to Boston.
See episode 1 73 for more on that incident, Huddled together in quarters where there are only three cells.
The 18 women in custody at station nine presented a sorry spectacle last night, but they were in high spirits and responded as well as they could.
Most of them have broken english to militant suffragist songs led by Miss Foley.

[15:59] On the first day of her trial on May seven suffered just fully poked holes in some of the prosecution’s allegations.
The Globe reported that she testified about taking cover in a doorway after police attacked the marchers with billy clubs.
From there, she could see the crowd break up and run from the blows raining down upon them, she said she saw an officer draw his revolver as the crowd ran away.
And then, under cross examination, she denied that she had struck out and kicked officers as testified to by Sergeant Casey.
She also denied having heard women shouting to the men to kill the police or urging them to action.

[16:40] Miss Foley stated that the police failed to warn the crowd of soldiers, sailors, and civilians that they should not harm the paraders, and she testified that she saw a sailor strike a parade her on the head with a large piece of wood.

[16:55] Two days after the Parade District Attorney, Joseph Pelletier warned about the red menace that he believed was lurking among the immigrant population in boston.
The bolsheviks are right here in our midst in very large numbers.
It’s no longer a Russian word, that means something horrible and far away Russia.
It is an actual present condition right here in boston at about that same time.
The delay was also asking for increased powers for boston’s police captain’s, enabling them,
to disperse gatherings of this kind and command assistance of all persons present to suppress riot or unlawful assembly or suppress persons engaged there in,
the law authorizes the mayor, selectman, Sheriff for deputy Sheriff, to act in the name of the state to suppress a riot.

[17:46] As soon as the day after the riot marchers were being tried in Roxbury District Court With the evening edition of the globe on May two reporting on the outcome for five men charged with participating in a fray.
Three of the defendants were found not guilty and discharged. Two were found guilty and sentenced to serve two months in the house of corrections.
Two more marchers were convicted of assault and battery and a soldier who was charged with assault on um archer had his case continued without finding.

[18:17] After lunch court adjourned and much of the rest of the day was spent trying to process in a rain upwards of 100 prisoners who’ve been in lockup at police stations 9, 10 and 16 since the night before.
Below the fold on page seven, there’s a brief mention of one specific protester who was arrested during the parade.
Among the prisoners is William Sidis son of the professor Boris scientists, formerly of Harvard College Young scientists who appeared to be little worried by the developments of yesterday, gave his address as Portsmouth New Hampshire.
He had been professor of mathematics in a texas college, became to boston a short time ago to study law,
By the next morning that mentioned, it moved from page 7 to the headlines on the front page Sidis Harvard Boy wonder in dock said to have borne red flag,
and on the inside pages that headlines explained The outstanding feature of the court proceedings came in the middle of the afternoon,
when Williams Sidis age 21, the boy phenomenon who has graduated from Harvard while in his teens was charged with rioting.

[19:30] Justice Hayden called Sergeant Dennis Casey of the deadly street station to the bench and inquired of him if he could identify Sidis as one of the marchers.
Sergeant Casey stated he could recognizing him, he said as one of those who held a red flag aloft in the vanguard of the parade.
On May 5th. A bystander tied Sidis’ his role as the standard bearer. Too shocking behavior.
The boston globe described his testimony. He said he saw a great commotion and one man had been passed a small american flag by somebody flung it on the ground, trampled on it and said to hell with the american flag.
Though no name was attached to this outburst and testimony, The press would pin these comments on Sidis in the next few days.
In the days that followed, the total number of arrests at the May Day parade was tallied at 113,
a police captain named lee would die of sudden cardiac arrest The morning after the parade, another officer who was shot succumbed a few days later and a patrolman who was stabbed during the parade remained in serious condition.

[20:41] The arraignments and trials dragged on for weeks and then for months.
District Attorney Joseph C. Pelletier pushed for the harshest possible sentences.
The men who are found guilty need expect no mercy or leniency for the district attorney.
I will do all in my power to persuade the court to impose the maximum sentence on everyone convicted.
Meanwhile, one of the defense attorneys publicly questioned Judge Albert Hayden’s objectivity.
On May nine, the globe reported Attorney Edward F.
Shanley, appearing for many of the defendants, made a motion that the case be tried before another judge,
Mr Shanley, told the court that during the past few days he’d been of the opinion that the court had prejudged the cases against the alleged rioters and that in view of this, he believed it would be a good idea to have another justice here the case.

[21:37] Judge Albert of Hayden, who’s been on the bench since the trials began a week ago, inform the attorney shanley that he was able to provide over these cases as well as any other justice.

[21:50] A few days later, Judge Hayden appeared to retaliate by removing shanley’s ability to examine witnesses during the trial.
Instead, only hearing questioning from his co counsel thomas Connolly.

[22:02] Yet a few more days later, the commonwealth Supreme Judicial Court dismissed the first petitions for appeal that resulted from the Roxbury riot.

[22:12] Finally, on May 14, William James sides took the stand with the globe reporting that he testified, asked by Judge Hayden if he advocated the control of the industries of the country by force.
Sidis applied to countenance force only when necessary.

[22:29] Judge Hayden next asked if he believed in what the american flag stands for and scientists replied that he did to a certain degree, in the sense of the declaration of Independence.

[22:41] Why did you not carry the american flag? Asked the judge, and to this site has replied, I had one in my pocket Sidis said he believed there would have been no trouble if the marchers had not been interfered with by the police and the hoodlums,
he declared the red flag could not be insulted.
Attorney Connolly held up the red banner and asked site as if he cared if the flag was trampled on or spat on to this Sidis answered.
It’s only a piece of red silk.

[23:13] On the same day the boston herald carried a more detailed transcript of the DA’s questioning and Sidis’ testimony.

[23:22] What did the chairman at the Opera House say to those assembled?
He said that there was going to be a meeting at New International Hall and that we should all go.
So I went with the crowd to the new hall.
It

[23:47] Where were you? When the paraders left the hall at the beginning, I was in the rear of the line and at different parts of the line at different times when we reached walnut Avenue, Warren Street I was in the rear.
Were you carrying a red flag? I was carrying a red flag three ft by three ft.
It was a piece of red silk tacked to a piece of stick.
Do you remember witness Sullivan?
He yelled to me to take down the flag? I made no reply.

[24:19] Are you a socialist? Yes. Do you believe in the soviet form of government? I do.
Will you state briefly what the soviet form of government is? That will be a rather difficult thing to do.
Could you give us honour a description in 100 words.
The soviet form of government is the present revolutionary form in Russia. The word soviet is the Russian word for council.
The general principle is that those who do socially useful work are to control the government and industries of the country, as officials in government do in general?
The fundamental principle is that everybody is supposed to work.
Do you understand that they intend to get control through industries in which they work? So I understand by force if necessary.
I understand every government employs a certain power to suppress opposition.
That doesn’t answer the question, you said before, that the people want control of the industries of the country. I want to know whether you advocate by force, the control of the industries of the country or by the use of the ballot.
I countenance the use of force only in cases where it should be necessary.
And I based my statement on a comparison with the Declaration of Independence of the United States Government, which states clearly that the people shall only be governed with the consent of the governed.

[25:46] Do you believe in a god? No.
Here Sidis said that the kind of a God that he did not believe in was the big boss of the christians, adding that he believed in something that was way apart from a human being.

[26:03] Asked by his attorney of the soviet ideals necessarily implied violence.
He replied in the negative, stating that there should not be any violence on the road to that goal.
At the end of the day, William James was convicted. The new york Times reported on his sentence.
William James Sidis, 21 years old, was sentenced in the Roxbury Municipal Court today to six months in the House of correction for rioting and one year first called upon a police officer and then made a radical demonstration in the Roxbury district.

[26:37] As we have learned in past episodes. It was certainly not unusual for boston police and prosecutors to find a pretext to lock up left wing radicals in the years surrounding World War wine,
we’ve heard about the pro draft an anti socialist riot in Park Square in 1917, about the plight of the Suffragists,
and about the conductor of the boston Symphony who was arrested and eventually deported for not playing the star spangled banner before concerts.

[27:05] So a 21 year old activist who admitted to being an atheist, ical pro soviet socialist and got convicted of rioting certainly doesn’t seem very noteworthy.
Except for one thing, William James Sidis was widely held to be the smartest man in the world at the time, perhaps even the smartest of all time In a 2011 piece.
The writers for NPRs, all things considered said His IQ was estimated to be 50-100 points higher than Albert Einstein’s.
He could read the New York Times before he was two At age six. His language repertoire included English, Latin, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian.
Young William’s parents had emigrated from Ukraine separately in the 1880s to escape anti Semitic programs.
His father Boris completed his bachelor’s Master’s PhD and MD degrees at Harvard after being released from a Russian prison for violating the empire’s legal restrictions on what jews were allowed to do.

[28:14] William’s mother, Sarah received her MD at the BU School of Medicine after studying for the entrance exams at night, while working as a seamstress in a sweatshop during the day,
Boris Sidis was a friend and follower of the philosopher William James and he named his son William James Sidis in his honor.

[28:33] Boris also had a strong belief in the power of suggestion writing an academic treatise on its utility in the field of psychology.
Now, these two doctors had an infant human of their own to test out their theories on, though there would later be rumors of extreme, even psychologically abusive methods.
Sarah Sidis would always claim that she started out by buying a set of alphabet blocks and simply spending time rolling around on the floor with her infant son, spelling out words until he could do it himself.
She later wrote Before he was two. He would go gravely to the bookcase and pick out any book that a visitor asked for.
This so amused and pleased them that he soon took pleasure in opening the books and reading from them to his father and guests.
This so amused and pleased them that he soon took pleasure in opening the books and reading from them to his father and guests.
And by the time he was three, he read well when he asked me something that I didn’t know, I would stop anything I was doing and say, let’s look it up.
He would take down the child’s encyclopedia. I had bought him and we’d look it up together after we had done this a few times. You asked me a question one day, then triumphantly said, But you will say, let’s look it up and I can look it up myself.

[29:55] That’s the last lesson I gave Billy during the day. You would go occasionally to his room and closed the door and read.
He never studied what teaching he had during those first four years I gave him the methods I used were Boris’s methods.
The methods Boris used were nothing more or less than those of Socrates.
The whole secret of Billy’s education was that we planted in him early.
A love of learning, Boris said, and wrote flatly.
Time after time this boy’s progress and education was made because of the environment in which he has been reared, not because he has a quote genius.

[30:38] In 2015, David Be Green described the young students quick progress By age three. Having taught himself to type, he wrote Macy’s a letter ordering toys.
By eight, he had mastered Latin Greek, German, Russian, hebrew Turkish French Armenian and also invented his own virtual language, which he called vendor good.
Before long Boris and Sarah Sidis believe that their son was ready to go off to Harvard, but Harvard wasn’t so sure.

[31:13] Young William applied to the elite university at the ripe old age of nine, but his application was rejected, not because he didn’t meet the schools criteria for admission, but because he was considered too immature.
A September 1908 article in the New York Times points out that by the time he was 10 years old, William Sidis was beyond precocious,
William J Sidis a 10 year old Brooklyn boy who was withdrawn from the Brooklyn high School because he was already further advanced than the school course called for, has just passed successfully the entrance examination for the massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The average age of the student entering the institute is 21 and many students are college graduates.

[32:01] He spent the next year commuting from Brooklyn to Tufts every day, chaperoned by his mother At Tufts. He continued studying mathematics, then re applied to Harvard at age 11.
This time he was accepted, Harvard President Lawrence Lowell had publicly commented that he wanted to try admitting younger freshman, saying,
the present age of entrance here appears to be due less to the difficulty of preparing for the examination earlier than to the nature of the life the freshman leads.
Lowell was seen as a progressive in his own time, though history has not smiled on his policies that limited jewish enrollment.
His attempt to segregate the residence halls and his secret court that purged the campus of gay students.

[32:48] Hearing locals call for younger students, Boris had William reapply, and when he was accepted, the new york Times reported,
that he is no prodigy, but a normal boy, trained from his earliest years to think vigorously, is the contention of his father,
who has applied practically in the upbringing of his son certain laws of the mind which he has observed in common with Professor William James, after whom the boy’s name.

[33:15] During his first semester at Harvard. The young Sidis would prove that he had the intellect, not only to learn at the august university, but even to teach there later.
New yorker retrospective on Sidis’ life recalled one snowy january evening in 1910, about,
100 professors and advanced students of mathematics from Harvard University gathered in a lecture hall in Cambridge to listen to a speaker by the name of William James Sidis.

[33:44] He had never addressed an audience before, he was abashed and a little awkward at the start.
His listeners had to attend closely, for he spoke in a small voice that did not carry well, and he punctuated his talk with nervous shrill laughter,
thatch of fair hair fell far over his forehead, and keen blue eyes peered out from what one of those present later described as a pixie like face.
The speaker wore black velvet knickers. He was 11 years old as the boy warmed to his subject, his shyness melted and there fell upon his listeners ears. The most remarkable words they’d ever heard from the lips of a child.
William James Sidis had chosen for the subject of his lecture. Four dimensional bodies.
Even in this selective group of Aphrodite gentlemen, there were those who are unable to follow all the processes of the little boy’s thoughts To such laymen as were present.
The 4th dimension as it was demonstrated that night must indeed have perfectly fitted. It’s colloquial definition, a speculative realm of incomprehensibly involved relationships.

[34:54] When it was all over. The distinguished professor, Daniel F. Comstock of mitt was moved to predict the reporters who had listened and profound bewilderment.
The young scientists would grow up to be the greatest mathematician, famous leader in the world of science.

[35:11] Sidis thrived at Harvard at first, but he was also under a huge amount of pressure from its parents, professors, peers and the press.
One of his father’s guiding principles have been a law of reserve energy laid out by William James.
It’s speculated that much as a sufficiently trained athlete can push through fatigue and find a second wind, a trained and motivated academic can push through distress and find nearly limitless reserves of mental energy.
For much of his short life, William Sidis had seemed to be the living proof of his namesake’s theory, but just days after his lecture on four dimensional math, the new york Times reported.

[35:54] From boston comes the news sure to excite a loud chorus of I told you so.
That young Sidis the marvelous boy of Harvard, the astonishing product of a new and better system of education, has broken down from the overwork and is now in a state of nervous prostration, seriously alarming to his family and friends.
It is not yet time to reach a conclusion. Young scientists breakdown maybe do less to the,
ardor of his studying or the extent of his precocious attainments than to the morbid excitements and excessive attention to which he probably has been subjected ever since he leapt into fame as a result of his lecture on fourth dimensional geometry.
It is not improbable that these people have pestered the child into a condition of psychos.
Thenia that had nothing at all to do with his work, and that the mistake was not in teaching or letting them learn too much, but in not protecting them from the wearisome exclamations and aberrations of injudicious observers.

[36:53] Young William left Harvard for a time and received treatment at his father’s sanatorium in Portsmouth. New Hampshire When he returned to the university.
The 1937 New Yorker Profile Reports said this was a changed man when finally he came back to Harvard, he was retiring and shy.
He could not be persuaded to lecture again.
He began to show a market distrust of people, a fear of responsibility and a general mala adjustment to his abnormal life.
He did not mingle much with students and he ran from newspaperman, But they cornered him of course. On the day of his graduation as a Bachelor of Arts in 1914, He was 16 years old.
He wore long trousers then and he faced the reporters who descended on the yard with less of a feeling of embarrassment than he had as a knicker child.
But definite phobias had developed in our I want to live the perfect life, William told the newspaperman, the only way to live the perfect life is to live it in seclusion.
I’ve always hated crowds for crowds, it was not hard to read people.

[38:06] The press attention continued after graduation In 1953, 1 of his schoolmates remembered how the papers covered Williams Sidis in his career to the Boston Globe, saying in his childhood Sidis received more than his share of publicity.
The papers had a field day when site has received a job at the New Rice Institute in Houston texas under the sponsorship of his friend Evans, he failed to show the maturity intact needed to make good at this impossible task.

[38:36] 1916, after being fired from his position, teaching geometry and freshman math at Rice, William James Sidis returned to Cambridge.
He enrolled at Harvard Law, where he continued until March 19 1919, when he withdrew in good standing during his final year.
A month and a half later, he was arrested at the head of a protest march in Roxbury.

[39:03] After his initial conviction, William Sidis appealed remaining free on bond while awaiting a second trial.
He works as a private tutor, placing an ad in each week’s boston globe.
That said, former college teacher desires to give private lessons in mathematics, logic or french rates reasonable for further information.
Right to W. J. Sidis Harvard’s boy Prodigy, son of dr Boris. Sidis 8 85 Washington street boston.
Meanwhile, his father Boris was working hard to make sure that the second trial never happened.
He came to an understanding with the district attorney. The D.
A. Would not press the charges against William as long as he was committed to Boris’s sanatorium in New Hampshire, and as long as William didn’t come back to massachusetts.

[39:56] He finally wrote a memorandum stating defendant was infant prodigy at Harvard is mentally abnormal and has been confined in a sanatorium for some months,
is in no condition to stand trial, and his condition mentally is disturbed because of fear of arrest.
In this case, I shall no further prosecute.

[40:18] That followed A dark period in William James Sidis’ life writing about himself in the third person, Sidis recalled what his treatment was like at the Portsmouth sanatorium, The sentence was appealed.
Such procedure is normal in massachusetts District Court,
but before the appeal could come to trial, he was kidnapped by his parents by arrangement with the district attorney and was taken to a sanatorium operated by the,
He was kept there a full year from October 1919 to October 1920 and kept under various kinds of mental torture, consisting of being scolded in Baghdad.
Everything that did or did not happen was grounds for a tongue lashing protracted over many hours for an average of 6-8 hours a day.
Sometimes this scolding was administered while he was loaded with sleeping medicine or after being waked up out of a sound sleep.

[41:13] And the threat of being transferred to a regular insane asylum was held up in front of him constantly with detailed descriptions of the tortures practiced there, as well as of the simple legal process by which he could be committed to such a place.
He was unlawfully in the sanatorium but could not escape. While the watch was being kept for the criminal case was kept pending against him and it was on the court records that he had jumped bail, being kidnapped.
He could not appear for trial, or even though the trial had been called Many years later, one of his Harvard classmates were called. In 1953 Sidis broke down after this episode.
He developed a resentment against his family, so bitter that he would not even attend the funeral of his father and a resentment against all mathematics science and learning.
Indeed, he developed a hatred for anything that might put him in a position of responsibility and given the need to make decisions,
From at least 1921 onwards, he floated around east coast cities working at any low level job as a clerk or computer that allowed him to remain anonymous.
When he wasn’t at work, he was busy writing books on native american contributions to american democracy, the history and classification of streetcar transfers, a travel guide to the White Mountains,
and a theory of thermodynamics that first postulated the existence of black holes in dark matter.

[42:39] A researcher catalogued four books for pamphlets, 13 articles for periodicals of a total of 36 issues and 89 weekly magazine columns.
The columns were called meet boston and they chronicled history and trivia about the city under the pen name Jacob Marmor.
There’s evidence in his papers of six more unpublished book manuscripts and since he wrote under at least five pseudonyms, researchers believe that there may be many more published works that he never acknowledged,
any time the press caught up with him and these anonymous office jobs who would soon pack up and move on.

[43:18] 1937 New Yorker Profile I’ve been quoting from said,
apparently drifted from city to city, working as a clerk and some other minor capacity for a salary only large enough for him to subsist.
On 1924, he was dragged back into the news when a reporter found him working in an office on Wall Street at $23 a week.
He was dismayed at being discovered. He said that all he wanted was to make just enough to live on and to work at something that required a minimum of mental effort.
The last few reporters who went down to his office to interview him, didn’t get to see him. He had quit his job and disappeared again.

[44:01] Baker’s. Dozens years later, the New Yorker caught up with Sidis in Boston in 1937.

[44:08] The articles attributed to Jared L. Manly though that turns out to be a pseudonym of James thurber, a regular cartoonist and columnist for the magazine.
To get Williams Sidis to talk. However, the magazine used a secret weapon.
A woman, William. James Sidis lives today at the age of 39 in a hall bedroom of Boston’s shabby south end for a picture of him and his activities.
This record is indebted to a young woman who recently succeeded in interviewing him. There, she found him in a small room papered with the design of huge pinkish flowers, considerably discolored.
There was a large untidy bed and an enormous wardrobe trunk standing half open.
A map of the United States Hung on one Wall.
On a table beside the door was a pack of streetcar transfers, neatly held together with an elastic on a dresser.
Were two photographs, one surprisingly enough of Sidis as the boy genius, the other a sweet faced girl with shell rimmed glasses and an elaborate Marcel wave.
There was also a desk with a tiny ancient typewriter, world almanac, a dictionary, a few reference books, and a library book, which the young man’s visitor at one point picked up ogi, said Scientists.
That’s just one of those crooks stories.

[45:37] He directed her attention to the little typewriter. You can pick it up with one finger, he said, and did so.

[45:45] Williams site is at age 39 is a large, heavy man with a prominent jaw, a thick ish neck and a reddish moustache.
His light hair falls down over his brow as it did the 90 lecture to the professors in Cambridge.
His eyes have an expression which varies from the ingenious to the wary.
When he’s wary he has a kind of incongruous dignity which breaks down suddenly into the gleeful abandon of a child on holiday.
He seems to have difficulty in finding the right words to express himself, but when he does he speaks rapidly, nodding his head jerk lee to emphasize his points, gesturing with his left hand, uttering occasionally a curious, gasping laugh.
He seems to get a great and ironic enjoyment out of leading a life of wandering irresponsibility.
After a childhood of scrupulous regimentation, his visitor found in him a certain childlike charm.
The article notes that he’s working at the time as a clerk in a business house, but he acknowledges that he is frequently forced to switch jobs,
whenever his coworkers find out that he was once a famous child prodigy, he says that he can’t tolerate the position after that.

[46:59] He also insists on jobs with little responsibility and no technical or mathematical thought.
Even when he accepted a position with the Street Railway, a seemingly perfect fit for a devoted collector of streetcar transfers,
he lasted just one hour before breaking down in tears on top of a pile of blueprints, charts and statistical tables.

[47:22] The article concludes His visitor was emboldened at last to bring up the prediction made by Professor Comstock of Mitt back in 1910,
that the little boy who lectured that year on the fourth dimension to a gathering of learned men, would grow up to be a great mathematician, a famous leader in the world of science.
It’s strange, said William James Sidis with a grin, but you know, I was born on april fool’s Day.

[47:50] Apparently mr Sidis wasn’t pleased with how the new yorker article turned out and he decided to sue as law. Professor Samantha Barbas put it humiliated and outrage.
Site is sued under the tort of invasion of privacy by public disclosure of private facts.
The original Warren and BRANDEIS conception of the right to privacy, which permits damages to be awarded for the dignitary harms caused by the publication of true but embarrassing private information.

[48:20] He filed a libel suit in the Southern district of new york and the case would eventually be decided by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Their ruling established sweeping protections for public interest and public figures interpreted broadly.
The 1940 decision reads in part, despite eminent opinion to the contrary, we are not yet disposed to afford to all the intimate details of private life, an absolute immunity from the prying of the press.
Everyone will agree that at some point the public interest in obtaining information becomes dominant over the individual’s desire for privacy.
Warren and BRANDEIS were willing to lift the veil somewhat the case of public officers.
We would go further. There were not yet prepared to say how far, at least we would permit limited scrutiny of the private life of any person who has achieved or has had thrust upon him the questionable and indefinable status of a public figure.

[49:20] William James Sidis was once a public figure as a child Prodigy, he excited both admiration and curiosity of him.
Great deeds were expected In 1910.
He was a person about whom the newspapers might display a legitimate intellectual interest in the sense meant by Warren and BRANDEIS, as distinguished from a trivial and unseemly curiosity.

[49:47] But the precise motives of the press we regard as unimportant, and even if Sidis had loathed public attention at the time, we think his uncommon achievements, and his personality would have made the attention permissible since then.
Sidis has cloaked himself in obscurity, but his subsequent history containing, as it did, the answer to the question of whether or not he had fulfilled his early promise was still a matter of public concern.
The article in the new yorker sketched the life of an unusual personality, and it possessed considerable popular news interest.
We express no comment on whether or not the newsworthiness in the matter printed will always constitute a complete defense,
revelations maybe so intimate and so unwarranted in view of the victims position as to outrage the community’s notions of decency.
But when focused on public characters, truthful comments upon dress, speech habits and the ordinary aspects of personality well, usually not transgress this line regrettably or not.
The misfortunes and frailties of neighbors and public figures are subjects of considerable interest in discussion to the rest of the population.
And when such of the mores of the community, it would be unwise for a court to bar their expression in the newspapers, books and magazines of the day.

[51:09] Professor Barbara says the legacy of William James Sidis and the Sidis case has been kept alive in privacy case law, popular culture and the ongoing paradox of privacy.
The public’s pension for protesting the media’s invasions of privacy,
while at the same time enjoying peering into other people’s private lives while the public can be callous when it comes to invading the privacy of public figures, especially entertainment stars.
It continues to demonstrate a genuine sympathy for scientists like figures, tragic, vulnerable individuals exploited by the media’s hunger for the intimate details of personal life and to protest when it thinks the media have gone too far.

[51:54] The article that Sidis believed went too far, came out almost 20 years after his brush with Boston’s legal system after the Roxbury March.
When asked, he seemed almost bemused about the fuss When the May Day demonstration of 1919 was brought up by the young woman, he looked at the portrait of the girl in his dresser and said she was in it.
She was one of the rebel forces.
He nodded his head vigorously as if pleased with that phrase, was the flag bearer. He went on, and do you know what the flag was?
Just a piece of red silk?
He gave his curious laugh. Red silk, he repeated.

[52:37] On july 14th 1944. Sidis’ rooming house landlord called the Brookline police. After finding the unemployed clerk in a coma in his room, She told the press that he had been ill for four days.
He was admitted to the Brigham and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage three days later, with his globe obituary reading, Seeking refuge from endless columns of newspaper.
Feature stories in the obscurity of $15 a week. Clerkships, William, James Sidis yesterday produced headlines once again and for the last time when he died at the age of 46, a destitute patient and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

[53:19] In a small active vindication for a man who had spent his entire adult life closely guarding his privacy and managing his public persona.
A friend wrote to the Globe a few days later to say This is about bill Sidis who died July 17.
His numerous friends do not like the false newspaper picture of him as a popper and anti social recluse.
Bill Sidis held a clerical position until two weeks ago.
For two weeks. He had received unemployment compensation for the first time in his life.
On the day of his death, he was to start on a new job for which he had already been hired.
Bill Sidis paid his way. He was no burden on society.
He knew dozens of stories from boston’s history and told them with relish.
Sidis, had plenty of loyal friends, all of them found his ideas stimulating and his personality likable.
Bill Sidis was a quiet man who enjoyed the normal things of life.
His friends respected him and enjoyed his company. I’m glad to have been one of his friends Shirley s smith.

[54:29] To learn more about the Roxbury riot and the boy Wonder. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 221.
I have links to Damien Murray’s article about irish catholic, anti socialism in boston, in the journal of american ethnic history,
coverage of the May Day March and riot from the boston globe And a treasure trove of sources about William James Sidis, including the 1937 New Yorker profile that helped redefine privacy rights in America.

[55:00] If you’re feeling ambitious, I’ll also link to online editions of William James Sidis that in front of the existence of black holes in dark matter, as well as to his father Boris book on the psychological principle of suggestion.

[55:15] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast at hub history dot com.
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Music

Jake:
[55:48] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.