With New Year’s Eve comes the ball drop in Times Square at the stroke of midnight. But in the late 1800s, Boston dropped a ball every day to mark the stroke of noon, because telling the time was serious business. The time ball, along with telegraphic signals and fire alarm bells, announced the exact time to the public, at a time when the exact time was critical to navigation on the high seas and safety on the newfangled railroads. With ultra-precise clocks made by local jewelers and true astronomical time announced daily by the Harvard Observatory, Boston Standard Time became the de facto standard for a wide swath of the country long before time zones were officially proposed and adopted.
Abolitionism on Trial (episode 112)
Boston abolitionists rallied in response to the Fugitive Slave Act, ushering in an era of more active resistance that we chronicled in episodes 15-17. This week, we’re spotlighting the role that Theodore Parker, a radically liberal Unitarian minister, played in securing the safety of self-emancipated African Americans and inciting the city to oppose slavery with violence if necessary.
I Need Help Blooper
What happens when part of your podcast studio collapses on a host in the middle of recording? Find out in this blooper from episode 106.
When Boston Invented Playgrounds (episode 111)
In the late 19th century, a new revolution in play was born in Boston. In an era when urban children had few spaces to play except in the alleys and courtyards around their tenements, and child labor meant that many kids had no opportunities to play at all, an immigrant doctor inspired a Boston women’s group to take up the topic of play. From its humble beginnings in a single sandpile in the North End, the playground movement grew to a quasi-scientific pursuit, until it was finally adopted as a national goal. By the early 20th century, safe playgrounds with structured, supervised play were seen as vital to children’s moral and educational development.
Continue reading When Boston Invented Playgrounds (episode 111)
Trailblazers (episode 110)
This week we’re digging into our archives to bring you discussions of three Bostonian ladies who forged new paths for women. Katherine Nanny Naylor was granted the first divorce in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, allowing her to ditch an abusive husband and make her way as an entrepreneur. Annette Kellerman was a professional swimmer who popularized the one-piece swimming suit and made a (sometimes literal) splash in vaudeville and silent films. And Amelia Earhart took to the skies after humble beginnings as a social worker in a Boston settlement house.
Bohemian Boston’s Gay Grampa (episode 109)
Prescott Townsend was a classic Boston Brahmin. He was born into Boston’s elite in 1894, graduated from Harvard, and served in World War I. All signs pointed to a very conventional path through life, but Townsend’s trajectory would take him far from the arc followed by his contemporaries from the Cabot, Lowell, or Adams families. Instead, Prescott Townsend would be active in radical theater, experimental architecture, and, surprisingly late in his life, he would help found the American gay liberation movement and lead the first Pride parade in 1970.
Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr (episode 108)
Mary Dyer was an early Puritan settler of Boston. Born in England, Mary moved to Boston in 1635 and was soon drawn to the Quaker religion, in part because of the opportunities it afforded women to learn and lead. New laws forbade her from professing her faith publicly. Not one to back down, Mary was arrested and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony several times before finally being hanged on Boston Neck, becoming one of our city’s four Quaker martyrs. Today, a statue of Mary Dyer stands in front of the State House, just to the right of the Hooker entrance.
Harvard’s Thanksgiving Day Riot (episode 107)
When it comes to Boston history, it seems like there’s a riot for every possible season. It’s Thanksgiving season now, so this week we’re going to discuss a riot that took place at Harvard University… not during the tumultuous anti-war protests of the 1960s or 1970s, but on Thanksgiving day in 1787. There’s tantalizingly little in the historical record about what happened or how it started, but we know that some very famous historical figures were right in the middle of the action.
Continue reading Harvard’s Thanksgiving Day Riot (episode 107)
Miss Mack, from Wellesley to the WAVES (episode 106)
In honor of Veterans Day, we’re talking about the women who served in World War II in a Navy outfit called the WAVES. Specifically, their commanding officer, Mildred McAfee (later Mildred McAfee Horton). When the war started, she was president of Wellesley College, but before it was over, she would be the first woman to become a commissioned officer in the US Navy, commanding a force of nearly 100,000 people.
Continue reading Miss Mack, from Wellesley to the WAVES (episode 106)
The Girl in Pantaloons (episode 105)
Emma Snodgrass defied the gender roles of the 1850s, getting arrested multiple times in Boston for appearing in public unchaperoned and dressed as a man. Was she a troublemaker looking for thrills? Was she trying to pass as a man in order to find work and independence in a society with few opportunities for women? Or was she a trans person in an era that didn’t yet have words to describe that concept? Unfortunately, the historic record leaves us with just as many questions as answers.