Riot Classics (episode 101)

For this week’s show, we’re revisiting three highlights from Boston’s long and storied history of rioting. We’ll include stories from past episodes covering the 1919 Boston police strike, 1747 impressment riots, and the 1837 Broad Street riot.

Broad Street Riot

• Mayor Samuel Eliot’s account of the riot
• An account from Mayor Eliot’s grandson, also named Samuel Eliot
• A contemporaneous account of the riot from the Salem Gazette
• About the Montgomery Guards, an Irish-American militia in Boston
• A late-19th century history of the Boston Fire Department gives a very biased version of events.
• The riot in context of immigration to Boston

The 1747 Impressment Riot

• Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence, by Jack Tager was very helpful in preparing this episode.
• The Knowles Atlantic Impressment Riots of the 1740s, by Denver Brunsman gives wider context.
• Samuel Gardner Drake’s History and Antiquities of Boston from its Settlement in 1630 to the Year 1770 summarizes the “dangerous tumult” of the riot.
• A letter from Governor Shirley about the riot.
• An engraving of a 1770 British press gang.

The 1919 Boston Police Strike

• A City in Terror: Calvin Coolidge and the 1919 Boston Police Strike, by Francis Russell
• The Given Day, a novelization of the Boston Police Strike by Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone