Dissection Denied (episode 188)

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 1 88 Dissection denied. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week we’re talking about a notorious thief who played the Boston area in the years just before the Revolutionary War.
He stole everything from shirts to silver plate crisscrossing New England until he finally got caught.
Right here in Boston, we’ll be discussing His criminal background is supposed jailhouse religious conversion and the desperate race between some of the most prominent Bostonians to steal his body after his execution.
But before we talk about the life and death of levi ames, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

[0:56] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is Chain of Change.
Struggles for Black Community Development by mel King, published in 1981.
Hard on the heels of the civil rights movement and as Boston was just barely coming out, the other side of the bussing crisis chain of change looks both backwards and forwards.
It’s a comprehensive record of black Boston struggles in the decade, roughly bracketed between 1958 and 1968.
It’s a call to action for the 19 eighties, and it’s a personal history of mel King himself.
Now 93 years old, mel King was the child of immigrants from the West Indies.
He grew up in Boston reading William Monroe. Trotter’s Boston Guardian and attending the Church of All Nations in a long career is an activist.
He worked on street corners trying to keep kids from joining gangs as a community organizer, teacher and finally is a state representative for the South End in Lower Roxbury.
We’ve used the book is a source several times in the past, especially for Episode 77 about the tent city protests that he organized and for Episode 1 40 about the police riot in Grove Hall in 1967.
Mel. His wife, Joyce King, is also a formidable activist and organizer in her own right. They’ve been married for almost 70 years.

[2:21] I’ll leave you with a passage from the final chapter of Chain of Change that just possibly, maybe, could be relevant to the history we’ve all been living through in the past week.
The black community has a special responsibility. No other modern people has had to deal with the oppression of slavery, racism and, in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, the experience of being both black and American.
We are legally Americans. But the denial of access perpetuated by racism has given us insight into the potential and the perversion intrinsic to the American system.
We know both sides the intense hope and the intense frustration when hope is betrayed.
We know from this experience that we cannot leave our future to chance, and we certainly cannot surrender it to the custodians, historical and contemporary of American society.

[3:15] We’ll include a link to buy the book in this week’s show notes.

[3:20] And for our upcoming event this week, we have a companion toe. Last week’s event Last week we featured a BPL Baxter lecture about the role of women in shaping Puritanism in early Massachusetts.
This week we have a seminar about William Bradford, who signed the Mayflower Compact helped found Plymouth Colony and served as its governor for much of its 1st 3 decades.
During those decades, he wrote a journal that covers the history of the Pilgrim separatists as they fled England for the Netherlands and 16 08 then emigrated to the shores of New England in 16 20,
in honor of the 4/100 anniversary of the Pilgrim settlement of Massachusetts.
Dr. Francis J. Bremer of New England Beginnings created a new edition of the journal published by the New England Historical Genealogical Society and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
This Thursday, June 11th at 2 p.m. He and fellow editor Ken Man Chemo of the Yale Divinity School will host an online seminar about Bradford Plymouth, and what it took to create this landmark were,
If you’d like to attend this free online event, just make sure to register in advance to get the zoom meeting details.
We’ll have the links you need in this week’s show. Notes at hub history dot com slash 188.

[4:39] Listeners. I’m not asking for contributions to our patri on this week.
Instead, please give what you can to the Massachusetts bail find at mass bail fund dot org’s or to the state chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild at in lg mass dot org’s.
A lot of innocent, peaceful protesters have gotten arrested this past week, so people are going to need bail and lawyers.

[5:05] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[5:09] On the evening of October 21st 17 73 horse drawn cart pulled up at the gallows on Boston Neck.
There, the driver met the Suffolk County sheriff and took possession of a recently deceased human body.
He drove quickly to the waterfront, where a longboat was waiting, crewed by 12 associates known to observers as the Stillman Nights are members of Stillman’s gang.
The body was loaded into the boat.

[5:38] Meanwhile, two groups of shadowy figures were watching the bodies progress, each suspecting the other of having taken it.
When it became clear that the boat was headed across the South Beta Dorchester 0.4 members of one group Ah younger group calling itself the spunker Hours mounted horses and gave Chase,
however, because they were forced to follow the much longer land route out Boston neck through Roxbury through Dorchester and then out to the point, there was no sign of the body when they got there.
They searched burying grounds, churchyards and even salt marshes and other hiding places, but they found no trace of it.
A member of the group wrote Discontented.
We sat us down on the beach and grown, then rode the brackets on the neck and endeavoured to knock him up to give us a dish of coffee. But failing.
We backed about to the punch bowl, where after long labours, we raised the house and got her desires. Gratified.
Got home about four o’clock in the morning.
Hadn’t much sleep, of course. So we’re very lame and cross today.

[6:43] So the spunker is gave up and went out for late night drinks at the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline Village Justus. The second group, Theo Older Jefferies Group, arrived in Dorchester to conduct their own fruitless search.
So who were these shadowy figures from the context? It sounds like competing gangs of depraved grave robbers.
Well, that’s true. They were grave robbers, but they were also some of the most respected doctors and future doctors of their era.
At the time, there was really only one way for doctors and medical students to further their understanding of the human anatomy dissection.
And there weren’t many ways to obtain a cadaver for dissection and a biography of his father, Dr John warren, Dr Edward warren.
They were a very medical family, notes Dr. Warren was indeed well qualified for the practice of his profession.
His love of anatomy had overcome the difficulties which at this period particularly interfered with study of that branch of medical science, the most important foundation, especially for surgery.
There were no lectures given it had been necessary for him to obtain this knowledge by his own diligent exertions, his own personal risk and the aid of those whose Artur he had excited.

[8:03] Among those whose Artur he had excited where fellow medical students William eustis, David Townsend, Jonathan norwood, Samuel Adams Jr and possibly future Minister Ebeneezer Allen,
John warren studied medicine under his older brother, Patriot Major General Joseph warren, and he’d go on to a distinguished career is a military surgeon in the Continental Army.
William eustis would also serve as a continental surgeon before going into politics as governor of Massachusetts, member of Congress, ambassador to the Netherlands and secretary of war.
When they were students, these future luminaries formed an anatomical society for formal study. As the younger warren continues.

[8:50] My father was the principal agent in getting up the anatomical society in college, and he was the principal lecturer,
that the members of the society were pretty active and that their zeal was too great to confine themselves, always to comparative anatomy may be inferred from illusions to the spunker Club,
eustis Adams norwood In town, Seuin seemed to have been very active.

[9:14] The spunker is Club was an informal subset of the Anatomical club, which was more focused on obtaining knowledge by their own diligent exertions.
They were resurrection men. Or, to put it plainly, they dug up freshly buried graves, stole the bodies and dissected them.

[9:33] Grave robbing, whether for scientific purposes or otherwise, was not considered legal in Massachusetts.
In 17 73 in 16 92 the colony had formally adopted a witchcraft law written in Old England under King James, the first in 16 04 which said,
If any person shall take up any dead man, woman or child out of his her or their grave,
or any other place where the dead body restive or the skin bone or any other part of any dead person to be employed in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charmer, enchantment.
Such person shall suffer pains of death as a felon, and she’ll lose the benefit of clergy and sanctuary.

[10:15] The Massachusetts version was repealed in 16 95 and it’s debatable whether the original 16 04 version was enforceable over 170 years later on the far side of the Atlantic.
However, even lacking specific legislation against it, body snatching was considered illegal until legislation was passed in the 19th century, explicitly allowing it,
in 18 15 the Legislature passed an act protecting the supporters of the dead, which provided a year in jail and a fine of up to $1000 for anyone who,
shall knowingly and willfully dig up, remove or carry away or eight or assist in digging up, removing or carrying away in a human body or there remains thereof,
provided, however, that nothing in this act shall be so construed as to affect the power or authority in the courts of the United States, or of this Commonwealth or any person acting under the authority of the same,
in removing or disposing of the bodies of persons executed pursuant to any sentence of such court.

[11:16] The 18 31 Anatomy Act made allowances for medical education well at the same time, increasing the penalty for grave robbing to 10 days solitary confinement followed by a year of confinement at hard labor.
Dr. John Collins warren, the son of spunker John warren and founder of Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote a clause into the 18 31 law that said,
It shall be lawful for the Board of Health Overseers of the poor and selectman of any town in the Commonwealth and for the directors of the House of Industry, overseers of the poor and mayor and aldermen of the City of Boston,
to surrender the dead bodies of such persons except town poppers,
as may be required to be buried at the public expense toe.
Any regular physician lillie licensed according to the laws of this commonwealth, Toby by said physician used for the advancement of anatomical science and further, it stated,
it shall be lawful for any physician duly licensed according to the laws of the Commonwealth or for any medical student under the authority of any such physician,
toe have in his possession to use and to employ human dead bodies or the parts thereof for the purposes of anatomical inquiry or instruction.

[12:35] The younger John Collins warren had his own experience as 1/19 century spunker. You can learn about that in our episode 30.
However, just because human dissection wasn’t legal in early Massachusetts doesn’t mean that it never happened.
In 16 75 Reverend John Elliott complained that Harvard needed to add an additional course of study in medicine.
Our young students in physique have only theoretical knowledge and are forced to fall to practice before ever they saw on anatomy made or duly trained up in making experiments,
for we never had but one anatomy in the country, which Mr Giles Furman, now in England, did make and read upon very well.

[13:18] Furman had lectured at Harvard in 16 47 but it’s not clear whether he actually carried out a dissection.
If you did, it was certainly extralegal.

[13:30] Over a century later, in 17 80 Dr John warren was comfortable giving a private course of deceptions to medical students in Boston without keeping it strictly secret.
Between those dates, a lot of unclaimed bodies went missing in the dark of night in 17 73 the spunker is were searching for a body that they could present to Doctor Benjamin Church for an anatomy lesson.
Dr. Church was a Harvard graduate, but he’d studied medicine in London, where he had access to more educational opportunities.
He returned to Boston after studies were complete and developed a reputation as a skilled surgeon, even performing eye surgery.
Dr. Church have been present at the Boston massacre in 17 70 where he treated some of the wounded on the scene and performed an autopsy on Christmas addicts.
Earlier, in 17 73 he had been tapped to give the third annual Boston Massacre oration, marking him as a gifted orator and a Patriot leader.
The following year had become a member of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, and after the outbreak of war in 17 75 he was caught maintaining a secret correspondence with British General Thomas Gage.
He was imprisoned for most of the next three years and disappeared in a presumed shipwreck after being banished from Massachusetts forever.

[14:53] In the fall of 17 73 churches. Betrayal was still far in the future.
He was one of the best surgeons in the province. So students like William eustis, David Townsend, Sam Adams Jr and Jonathan norwood were eager to study anatomy with him.
All they needed was a body.

[15:13] In his biography of his father, John warren Edward Rights.
At this period, the governor had the disposal of the body of the criminal. After execution, he might order its delivery to the man’s friends, to anyone to whom he himself assigned it, or to a surgeon, as he thought proper.
The prisoner with the governor’s ascent might make his own arrangements, even for the sale of his body if he was so disposed, either for the benefit of his family or for his own brief enjoyment.
In this case, however, the prisoner had not arranged a sale of his body, nor the governor ordered it to be delivered to the surgeons.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying. As a letter from William eustis points out, you must know that Jeffrey’s, as we had heard, had applied to the governor for a warrant toe have this body.
The governor told him if he had come 1/4 of an hour sooner, he would have given it.
But he had just given it to one of ames, his friends alias Stillman’s gang.

[16:17] This points to the rival group of physicians who are also trying to find the condemned man’s body that night.
Doctors John Jeffries, John Clark and James Lloyd were a bit older than the spunker is group, and they were already established physicians.
Lloyd and Jeffries were both notorious loyalists, and John Jeffries would end up fleeing the England for decades after Boston’s evacuation day in 17 76 not returning until 17 90.
It’s not clear whether this group wanted to be able to demonstrate anatomy to their own medical trainees or whether they just wanted to brush up on their skills.
Either way, they tried going through the proper channels, failed and then tried to do things. The spunker zwei executions were the only legal source of cadavers.
So the spunker is weren’t about to let something as trivial is the condemned man’s last wish. Is the law or the governor’s orders get in the way of a good dissection?
Writing about his father, Edward warren says, In cases of this kind, where the necessities of society are in conflict with the law and with public opinion,
the crime consists like theft among the Spartan boys, not in the deed but in permitting its discovery.
So their plan was to wait until the body was buried by the Stillman nights, then dig it up in secret.

[17:40] That still nanites were a group hired or otherwise engaged by Baptist Minister Samuel Stillman.
He counseled the condemned man while he was in jail believe that he experienced a true religious conversion and died penitent.
When the condemned begged him to keep his corpse out of the hands, the anatomy ists, Stillman promised to do his best and succeeded.

[18:05] And just whose body were these respected doctors, medical students and future leaders of America fighting over?
Well, I’ll let him introduce himself.
I, levi ames, age 21 years, was born in Groton, in New England, of a credible family.
My father’s name was Jacob ames, who died when I was but two years old.
I am the first of the family who was ever disgraced my prevailing sin and that for which I am soon to suffer Death was thieving to practice, which I began early and pursued it constantly.

[18:44] The first time young ames appears in the historic record is an advertisement placed by Martin Bicker in the August 23rd 17 73 edition of The Boston Post.
Boy, it said, whereas on Thursday night last, some wicked person or persons entered the House of the subscriber at Boston and took from thence a beaver hat almost new,
and broke open, a desk took from thence a number of Guinea’s dollars crowns and small change to the amount of £60 lawful money.
On the Saturday succeeding, a person who calls himself levi ames was detected and examined before one of His Majesty’s justices of the Peace for the County of Suffolk.
Part of the money was found upon him as by his own confession.

[19:31] During his interrogation, ames implicated Joseph Atwood, who be arrested in Portsmouth as an accomplice in the burglary.
He also appears to have truly unburdened is conscience because between his initial interrogation and a first person life last words and dying speech the road after conviction,
levi ames confessed to a laundry list of crimes beginning when he was but a young lad.
My first thefts were small. I began this awful practice by stealing a couple of eggs than a jack knife.
After that, some chalk, he says, that he was caught and punished for these early crimes but was never able to return to the straight and narrow path.
Having been driven to her wits end levi ames Mother eventually arranged an apprenticeship for him.
However, he didn’t stick around for long.
Having got from Under my mother’s I, I still went on in my old way of stealing.
I ran away from my master, which opened a wide door to temptation and helped on my ruin for being indolent and temper and having no honest way of supporting myself.
I robbed others of their property.

[20:44] At this point, is personal. Confession turns into something of a combined police blotter and travelogue, with ames remembering 10 years of thefts in great detail across much of New England,
he recalled thefts of gun silverware, valuable cloth, cash and find clothing.
About the only items he couldn’t give a detailed accounting of where and from whom they were stolen were sundry articles taken off of lines, hedges, fences, bushes, apple trees, grass, etcetera.

[21:17] On his Blawg historical nursery, Alexander Caine sums up this successful period in ames Criminal career.
One of the earliest recorded incidents involving ames occurred when he was just 16 years old.
The young man let loose a herd of cattle and used the distraction to rob his neighbors house.
Shortly thereafter, he broke into a Marlboro minister’s home and stole his personal belongings and food.
He also robbed a selectman in Wall Fam.

[21:48] Ames became so good at House breaks that by the late 17 sixties and early 17 seventies he was successfully robbing homes in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
He was successfully robbing homes in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
He even teamed up with Tom Cook and notorious New England thief, who called himself the Leveller.
Occasionally, ames got caught. Pursuant to 18th century law, the illegal breaking and entering into a home was a capital offense punishable by death.
However, ames avoided the death sentence following his first capture that was merely confined to a Cambridge jail.
In his confession, levi ames even claims to have stolen a silver spoon from the jailer while in the Cambridge jail came continues following a second apprehension.
He was branded on the forehead with the letter B.
Nevertheless, ames reputation as a skilled thief continued. In fact, he was so well known in various illicit circles that a Mr Merriam recruited ames to rob his father in law, Mr Simon’s of Lexington.
Miriam provided detailed instructions on how to enter the home and where to locate hard currency and valuables.
According to ames, I supposed he gave me this information through envy against his father in law, through whose means he was then confined for debt.

[23:15] If this confession is startlingly complete, it may be because ames wrote it with one eye on a pardon or commutation of the sentence, Stephen Wealth explains in an article.
In Crime, History and societies, scholars have often envisions such narratives as an instrument of the authorities for communicating a message of civil order.
Nevertheless, felons commonly seized upon the genres a means to tell their own story. Ames was no exception.
His narrative must be read like a pardon petition. It’s self serving. Lee emphasised his best moments repenting stolen goods, his stance against violence and ames claims to repentance.
Shortly before his last arrest, ames claimed he felt the burden of his criminal life.
I passed the gallows on Boston neck with some stolen goods under my arm. When my conscience terribly smote me.
I thought I should surely die there if I did not leave off this course of life.

[24:17] The execution narrative was a platform for ames to make his final please.
Ames, who retained some control over his own narrative, reinvent into his criminal self with the hope of a last minute reprieve at trial. Ames in that would each blamed the other for burgling Martin Vickers House.
But in the end, ames was on his third strike, and he took the brunt of the blame.
The jury found Atwood guilty of theft but not of burglary, since he hadn’t entered Bickers House.
On September 10th Chief Justice Peter Oliver sentenced Atwood to 20 lashes at the public whipping post.
Like the supposed pirate Rachel Wall, whose trial for highway robbery recovered in episode 1 47 Joseph Atwood was indentured to his victim for a period of 10 years in lieu of paying damages.
That same day, Judge Oliver Reticence to levi ames.
You are to return to the place from which you came and be hanged by the neck with a rope until you are dead. Dead, dead.
May the Lord have mercy on your soul.

[25:31] Ames have been tried under a new law passed in 17 70 that provided the death penalty for burglary. It said.
If any person or persons shall in the night time break in inter any dwelling house with intent to kill, rob, steal, commit rape or to do or perpetrate any felony, the personal person so offending and being there of convicted,
shall suffer the pains of death without benefit of clergy.

[25:59] However, Buster was still reeling from one of its most recent death penalty cases back in 17 70 during the protests intentions that led up to the Boston Massacre.
Customs collector Ebony’s Air Richardson shot an 11 year old boy.
The editors of the Adams papers put together a very helpful summary of what happened that fateful day. It begins.
The occasion arrived on the 22nd of February 17 70 a Thursday, which, like all Thursday’s, was by Boston custom a market day in a school holiday.
Plenty of idle schoolboys as well as numerous upcountry farmers, stood available to bolster the already powerful Boston mob.
The target of the mob that Thursday was the shop of known loyalist theophilius lillie lillie was selling goods imported from old England in violation of the non importation agreement.
This enraged the WIG faction and incited the mob.
The Adams editors continue for some time. The technique used against men like lillie had been the exhibition, a signer placard planted before the offending shop carrying language whose general import Waas don’t buy from the trader.

[27:16] This was usually coupled with the 18th century equivalent of a picket line.
A crowd of schoolboys on the day in question, a gang of boys.
The witnesses at the trial varied in their estimates. One said It’s fewer, 60.
Another said as many as 300 paraded the lilies and placed before his door a large wooden head bearing characters of the four leading importers and a hand which pointed toward the house.

[27:45] They say that Richardson, seeing this, became enraged. He tried to get other merchants to tear down the sign and when as faras borrowing a horse and cart that were standing nearby and using it in an attempt to knock the sign over.
As his temper boiled over, he got into a shouting match with wig leaders, insulting them and swearing at Um, the mob chased Richardson to his nearby house and began throwing rocks, breaking out all his windows.
As the mob began trying to batter down his doors. He got a gun, loaded it with goose shot, essentially equivalent to today’s buckshot, and fired it into the crowd indiscriminately.
Two boys were hit. An 11 year old, Christopher Seider, was killed.
A representative of the colonies royal government had murdered an unarmed child.
The Atoms paper’s editors describe the near lynching that occurred next.

[28:43] Immediately, a bell was set ringing and, according to the evening post account, a crowd surrounded the house front and rear.
The mob completed the breaking and entering subdued Richardson and hustled him outside.
The first thought was toe hanging up at once, and a halter was brought in a sign post picked up on.
But one who is supposed to have start up the tumultuous proceedings took great pains and prevented it.
The men were dragged through the town, cruelly abused by the mob and put before justice of the Peace John Roddick, who ordered them onto Faneuil Hall.
We’re in the presence of 1000 people. He, along with justices of the Peace Richard Dana, Samuel Pemberton and Edmund Quincy, examined them and had them committed to jail.

[29:31] After the examination, when the sheriff was carrying them to the jail, several attempts were made to get a rope around Richardson’s neck.
It should be noted that the boy did not die until that evening, so that at the time of his commitment near lynching, Richardson could not, by any reasoning, be guilty of murder.
I won’t dwell on young ciders funeral because we discussed it recently with not shyly of revolutionary spaces in Episode 1 74 Suffice it to say that it was one of the largest public gatherings and protests that Boston has ever seen,
and it would only be overshadowed by the public funeral for the victims of the Boston Massacre just a few weeks later.

[30:15] By the time Ebony’s air Richardson’s trial commenced in April, the perpetrators of the massacre were in neighboring cells in the old Boston jail on Queen Street.
After a long, contentious and sometimes rowdy trial, Richardson was convicted of murder.
After the verdict came back, the court bickered over how sentencing should work until September, when the customs collector was sentenced to death.
Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson almost immediately wrote to London, asking for a royal pardon for Richardson But due to a long series of technical glitches, a valid pardon was a long time coming.
Richardson remained in jail until March 17 72 two full years after the crime had been convicted off.
Finally, the Adams editor say, Richardson was taken hastily into court and brought to the bar where, on his knees.
He pleaded his pardon, recognized in the sum of $500 to appear again and plead the pardon whenever the court should require him an empty formality and then fled with precipitation and cross the ferry before the inhabitants were informed of it.
The rabble heard of it and pursued him to execute their own law upon him, but he happily escaped.

[31:31] A year later, Boston would be forced to decide how this young burglar, levi ames, will be punished.
And if a notorious customs officer could be pardoned for murdering a child, Was Boston really prepared to execute a young man barely older than Christopher Seider had been for mere burglary.
In an article in Crime, History and Societies, Steven Wolf explains, Richardson was emblematic of the kind of scoundrel who would do anything for his master.
He waas in the late 18th century idiom, a creature of the customs commissioners willing to lie in form or even murder at their bidding.
But ames represented another bet noir of colonial Americans, the master list man who wandered freely without norms imposed by social superiors.

[32:22] In his book, Laws Imagined Republic, Steven Woolfe also notes that so many people had opinions about levi ames trial and execution that it created a publishing boom in Boston.
The execution of levi ames turned into something of a cottage industry for Boston printers.
During the course of the next month and 1/2 a flurry of poems, broadsides, dying speeches and execution narratives and sermons would be published.
What this collection of works reveals is the diversity of tropes that might be applied to a single criminal life.
The execution sermons of Minister Samuel Stillman, Andrew Elliot and Samuel Mather not surprisingly, drew upon Protestant motifs.
According to Stillman, ames was Absalom, the beloved son who went astray.
Elliott describe Christ on the cross with the thieves.
For mother God was a physician prepared to heal ames upon his deathbed, ames was promised mercy if he repented.
Judgment if he did. Not All Heaven is purchased by his cross for such file souls is nine intoning execution broadside full of religious imagery.
You leave this earth. It is no loss if you in heaven may shine.

[33:43] Mixing Christian morals with civil authority, Stillman used the execution sermon as a forum to denounce.
Day is, um, excessive drinking, gambling and seduce er’s who threaten the honor of women.

[33:57] The number and variety of execution texts about ames seem astonishing.
After all, ames was not very different from many other petty criminals who played the colonies during the 17 sixties and 17 seventies.
He did not perform any spectacular escapes, lead a gang of felons or even commit murder.
Why, then, was ames, the subject of so many works.
The answer once again leads back to Ebony’s or Richardson and political agitation. In Boston, Sentencing ames to death for burglary contrasted with the failure to punish Richardson for the more serious crime of murder.
Predictably, at least from our view in 2020 opinion split along partisan lines, Wilf goes on to explain how opinions on Richardson and ames paralleled the growing split between Whigs and Tories.
There was sending the province spiraling down a path to war.

[34:54] Just a few months later, an inflammatory broadside entitled Theft and Murder conjured up the site of ames hanging on the scaffold while Richardson went free.
Come you Spectators and behold and view a doleful seen today.
My tender fainting heart grows cold, and I am filled with sore dismay.
Behold a man condemned to die for stealing his neighbor’s goods but murdered off for vengeance Cry.
But where’s the Avenger of the blood?
Must thieves who take men’s good away be put to death? Ask the anonymous author of this broadside, while fierce bloodhounds who do their fellow creatures slay are saved from death.
This cruel sounds, theft and murder demanded a pardon for ames.
A newspaper article signed by Brutus compared England’s robbery of the colonies with ames is small scale pilfering.
He that riots on the plunder of his country deserves the gallows mawr than he that robs an individual.

[35:58] Such Patriot arguments would not go unanswered. Two other verse broadsides were printed defending capital punishment for property crimes.
A burglar not only stole possessions but peace of mind and addressed to the inhabitants of Boston, appealed to the fears of the city’s hardworking citizens.
Industrious man or come with sleep retires, thanks to enjoy what he desires.
The time that nature ordained for rest, when all the living may with sleep be blessed.
Yet even as the working man rests burglars like ames Air plotting their thefts.
Then at this hour, when all in Sleeper lost but crafty thieves who live and others cost.

[36:47] All this pamphleteering came much too late for levi ames himself.
His execution date was set for October 14th then delayed by a week to allow the ministers of Boston to counsel him.
So much for that 17 70 burglary law that prescribed death without benefit of clergy.

[37:07] In his life. Last words. In dying speech, ames described how he spent his first days as a condemned man.
At first I had secret hopes of escape blasted by some means get out of prison.
When I saw it was impossible, I endeavored to reconcile myself as well as I could.
My conscience made me uneasy. I thought I had been so wicked that I should certainly go to hell.
And when I considered how short my time Waas, I knew I could not do good works to go to heaven to hell then I was sure I should go.
And I seem to have such an awful sight of hell in the grave. And I was very much terrified indeed. I then took to drinking strong liquor in order to drown my sorrow. But this would not do.
I left that off and took to reading my Bible.

[37:56] Reverend Samuel Stillman of the Second Baptist Church visited ames during this unsettled time, saying, having received a message from him acquitting me that he desired a visit.
I went to see him and found him seemingly stupid with but little to say.
Nor did he appear to me to be so affected with this condition as a condemned malefactor, as one would reasonably have expected.
He owned that he was a great center and deserve to be cast off, but did not appear to have any proper views of his sinful nature in life.

[38:32] Within a few weeks, though, ames said that he had a revelation.
But God’s name be blessed forever. That on Friday evening, the eighth of October, I turned over a little book which was put into my hands, in which I saw Ezekiel Chapter 36 versus 26 27.
A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put upon you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will pour out my spirit upon you, etcetera.
This at once surprised me. I knew that I wanted this new heart. I could not help looking on. This is God’s gracious promise to me.
And I thought that as I knew God could not lie. If I would not believe this, I would believe nothing.
My mind, it once felt easy. I now saw that I had send against God all my life with as much envy as ever. I killed a snake, which I always hated.

[39:31] Reverend Stillman returned to a cell, converse with him and came away believing that the young man’s religious conversion was genuine.
In the short time before his scheduled execution, ames attended church with Stillman with Samuel Mother and with Andrew Elliot, all of whom would print and sell copies of the execution sermons they delivered that day.
Levi ames himself penned words of advice for those wishing to avoid his fate.
Most of it focused on avoiding sin keeping the Sabbath and the importance of obeying parents.
But one paragraph offers hilariously practical home security tips for the 18th century Boston homeowner.
Keep your doors and windows shut on evenings and secured well to prevent temptation, and by no means you small locks on the outside.
One of which I have twisted with ease when tempted to steal.
Also not to leave Lenin or close out at night, which have often proved a snare to me travelers. I advised to secure their saddlebags, boots, etcetera, and the chambers were they lodge.

[40:35] Reverend Samuel Stillman was reluctant to accompany levi ames to the gallows and to counsel him as his execution approached.
But he accepted the duty at ames request.
He said that on October 21st about two o’clock, he came out of the prison yard, attended with all the awful formalities of execution,
his arms pinioned and the halter about his neck, following the cart in which words coffin and the ladder.
Gladly, I would have been excused from this painful office, but the youths importune ity and a sense of duty forbid me to decline it.

[41:12] He had visited ames in the jail many times already, even earlier that morning. But now it was time for the last walk.
The jail was on Queen Street, while the Gallo stood on the fallow ground of Boston neck.
Levi ames would have to walk there behind the cart with a noose around his neck in his own coffin and view the whole way.
It’s the modern equivalent of walking from the old Statehouse to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End, offering plenty of time to ponder one’s impending death on the way to the gallows, Stillman reports,
he discovered no anxiety about his body or the death.
He was to die all the way to the gallows, except once which I think was occasioned by the falling of the end of the halter from under his arm.
He catched it up and said, Did I ever think that I should have such a thing about my neck?
To which I replied, ames, how could you expect anything else from your manner of life?
Did you not tell me that you once past the gallows with stolen goods under your arm and thought then that you should die there if you did not leave off stealing.
Oh, yes, I did. True, true.

[42:26] Reference. Stillman’s last minute council of the condemned band impressed even Samuel Mather Air to the stern Puritan traditions of his father. Cotton and his grandfather increase Mather in his account of the execution Reverend Mather took time to note.
Ames was attended the place of execution by the Reverend Samuel Stillman, one of the Baptist ministers in this town.
So great affection and concern that he show for the future welfare of this unfortunate young creature,
that while he was accompanying him to the fetal tree with tears in his eyes, he clasped this young convert around his waist and seemed to take the greatest satisfaction and conversing with him about the things that concerned his everlasting happiness,
to sum up the whole, in a few words, his whole department, in his agreeable moment spit nous travel seemed to bespeak Come ye blessed of my father, Inherit the kingdom prepared for you.

[43:20] Throughout its journey to the scaffold, ames continued to bend. Reverend Stillman’s here, testifying about his recent conversion experience.
Before long, though, they drew near to the place of execution and still been watched discharge closely for a reaction.
By this time we came in sight of the gallows I design Italy took no notice of it, but watch the prisoner to see how he would behave, expecting that the sight of it would give him a shock.
But he looked up and said, There is the gallows and I shall soon know Dear sir, more than you, I asked him how his mind was at the near approach of dissolution.
I feel composed, said he.

[44:05] There was quite a crowd around the gallows in Boston neck as merchant John Roe recorded in his diary October 21st levi ames was hanging this afternoon.
Many 1000 Spectators attended the execution.

[44:21] As many as seven or 8000 Bostonians and visitors from the countryside had come in to watch the execution pressed in to get a closer look at the condemned, and the roar of the crowd prevented any further private conversation between ames and Stillman.
Arriving at the gallows, ames resorted to climb up into the cart and stand on his coffin while his death warrant was red.
When that was done, ames sat down in his coffin and spoke Seymour with Stillman.
Stillman asked how he felt, and ames said he was doing badly. But he had some hope of redemption through the blood of Jesus.
They prayed together again. And then, Stillman says, he took an affectionate leave of him and retired a few steps from him, leaving him to the exercise of his own thoughts.

[45:10] Alone. Now, levi ames paused and latest head on his coffin for a few minutes, the knelt down beside it and prayed silently As the hour of his execution approached.
Ames was made to stand up on his coffin in the back of the card, and the noose, or halter that had been carrying since he left the jail was made fast to the gallows.
Reverend Stillman’s description of ames final minutes continues when it now being within 15 minutes of the time, fixed for his execution, he was ordered to stand upon his coffin.
He obeyed at once, being now tied up in waiting the last minute he addressed the people in a few words.
Look at me. A site enough to melt the heart of stone.
I’m going to die today for my wickedness. But the death I’m to die is nothing compared with the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, for they pierced his hands and his side with a spear.
Oh, take warning by me if you were my own brother, and near to me is my own soul.
I could only tell you to beware of stealing, swearing, drinking, etcetera.

[46:17] He then prayed aloud for almost 10 minutes, stopping when he had about five minutes left to live.
Stillman said he desired to know when the time was out and, looking wistfully at the sun, said,
That son is almost down, But before it sets, I shall be in eternity where I never waas and pulling the cap over his eyes again, he cried out,
Lord Jesus into thy hands. I commend my spirit.

[46:46] As these words left his lips, the cart was driven out from under him and young levi ames was left dancing in mid air.
Samuel Mather noted the prisoner was turned off just a four o’clock and seemed to die a true penitence without scarce a struggle, while Samuel Stillman said that he died with great ease.

[47:12] After the crowds slowly drifted away, the sheriff cut the body down from the gallows, and the sorted chase between Reverend Stillman’s boatman and the riders from the spunker is club began,
in a post script of his letter describing how they followed the boat to Dorchester with no success.
Future congressman, diplomat and Governor William eustis notes, By the way, we have since heard that Stillman’s gang wrote him back from the point up to the town and after laying him out in mode and figure buried him, God knows where.

[47:45] So, whatever became of this much sought after body, historian JL. Bell believes he has theano, sir and a 2018 block post, he says.
So what happened to the corpse? The printer, John Boyle, left us an answer.
His body was carried to Groton after his execution to be buried with his relations.
Levi ames. His corpse was buried among his ground relatives in 17 73. There was no marker.

[48:14] If at the end of this sojourn, you’re left worried that the Harvard Anatomy Club wouldn’t have a cadaver for their tutor, Benjamin Church to cut up, you’ll be glad to hear that That wasn’t the case.
In his letter, William eustis notes, We have a body from another place. So church shan’t be disappointed.

[48:34] To learn more about levi ames and the grave robbing doctors of 18th century Boston, check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 188 We’ll have links to two broadsides published in Boston after ames execution.
That said, his terrible fate in terrible verse.
We’ll also have the execution sermons preached by reverends Samuel Mather and Samuel Stillman, including The Life Last Words and Dying Speech of levi ames, as well as the biography of Dr John warren by a son, Dr Edward warren.
And of course, we’ll have links to information about our upcoming event and mel Kings Chain of Change, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to leave us some feedback, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you could go toe hub history dot 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.
We’re in all your favorite podcast APS, including Spotify, Google podcast, stitcher, Pocket casts and many more stream the show every Sunday night at eight PM on Boston free radio dot com.
You can also listen on your favorite smart speaker. If you have an Amazon echo, just say, Alexa, play the Hub history podcast.
Or, if you have a Google home, you can say.

Music

Jake:
[50:11] Apple podcasts is still the most popular podcast app. If that’s how you subscribe, please consider rating and reviewing the show.
If you do, drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[50:26] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.