What started as a simple holdup in a bar in Jamaica Plain in 1908 soon turned into a bloody battle, as a small group of radical anarchists engaged hundreds of Boston Police officers in a series of running gun fights across the neighborhood. The shootouts and a bloody siege at Forest Hills Cemetery left a total of 10 wounded and three dead. Most of the suspects escaped, only to be killed years later by British soldiers on the streets of London under the command of Winston Churchill himself. Listen now!
Battle of Jamaica Plain
We owe tremendous debt to Mark Bulger’s 2007 article on this subject for the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. He tracked down the sources and arranged the narrative that we shamelessly cribbed from for our podcast.
- See how the battle made headlines around the country.
- Read about the origins of the term “yeggmen.”
- See a badly OCR’ed article about the 1914 discovery that the perps had been killed in London.
- Watch British Pathé newsreel footage of the Siege of Sidney Street.
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Mashable collected photos of the London siege, including Winston Churchill on the scene.
Featured Historic Site
The Loring Greenough House is located on South Street in Jamaica Plain’s Monument Square. The house was built in 1760 as the seat of Commodore Joshua Loring’s country estate. Loring was a Boston native who had risen to prominence as a capable naval officer in King George’s War, then served with distinction in the French and Indian War before being wounded and retiring. In his retirement, the commodore was appointed to General Thomas Gage’s governor’s council in the waning days of the province’s royal government. As rebellious patriots took over government of the entire province outside Boston in the summer and fall of 1774, the threat of mob violence forced Loring to take refuge in the city.
During the siege of Boston, the home was used as a hospital for Patriots wounded in the battle of Bunker Hill, then served briefly as General Nathanael Greene’s headquarters. When British forces evacuated in March 1776, Joseph Loring and his family went with them to Halifax before settling in England. They never saw their country home, or their home country, again. After the war, the home was sold and resold, ending up in the hands of wealthy widow Ann Doane. Ann soon married David Stoddard Greenough, adding his last name to her own and that of the house.
Ann and David’s son in law began subdividing the estate in 1836, though a total of five generations of Greenoughs lived on the land through 1924. By that time, only two acres remained of the farm that was once at least 60 acres. When the last Greenough heirs announced that they planned to sell off their ancestral home, it looked like it would be demolished to make room for more profitable housing. In stepped the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club, which was a ladies’ social club then and is now a community group open to anyone. They bought the house and grounds, and have maintained them ever since.
Visitors are welcome to explore the grounds during daylight hours. House tours are offered from 1 to 3 pm on Sundays from April to November. On Thursday afternoons in the summer, there are food trucks, a farmers market, and musicians. And on Saturday, May 12, there will be a celebration of the opening of the summer kitchen.
Upcoming Event
The Jamaica Plain Historical Society will be offering a tour of the Monument Square neighborhood this Saturday, May 12, 2018. Monument Square is the area surrounding our featured historic site, and it’s the area where one of the gun battles we discuss in this podcast broke out. Here’s how the JPHS describes the tour:
Tour a residential area that includes a National Historic District. View architecture that spans three centuries; the oldest community theater company in the United States; and an elegant 18th-century mansion that once served as the country’s first military hospital. Learn about the monument that commemorates fallen Civil War soldiers from West Roxbury and about Pauline Agassiz Shaw who established the class that became the model for continuous free kindergarten education. We will visit a house dating to 1716 that once served as a tavern, the Eliot School dating back to 1689, the home of the first woman to graduate from MIT and the First Church Burial Ground.
The tour is free, and reservations are not required. Meet your guide at 11am in front of the Loring Greenough House at 12 South Street.