Boston’s history with gangsters and goons goes far beyond the legacy of Whitey Bulger. This week we’re featuring three stories from our back catalog about very different aspects of organized crime in Boston. We’ll be discussing Charles “King” Solomon’s reign in the South End, the Tong War’s place in Chinatown history, and the Brinks Robbery in the North End, known as the crime of the century.
New (faulty) toys
After 18 months of podcasting, we decided to reward ourselves with new microphones. I ended up spending hours – literally hours – trying to figure out why my voice sounded like a demon from the depths of hell with the new gear. Only after trying all kinds of hardware and software tweaks did I think to plug in the second mic… which worked fine. Turns out one of our mics was faulty. You can hear the difference below.
Tent City (Episode 77)
50 years ago this week, residents of one Boston neighborhood carried out an act of civil disobedience, bringing attention to the city’s need for affordable housing. A group of mostly African American residents occupied an empty lot where rowhouses once stood. It was Boston’s 1968 Tent City protest, and it helped change how the city approaches development and urban planning.
Paul Revere’s Not-So-Famous Rides (Ep76)
In honor of Patriots Day and the anniversary of Paul Revere’s famous ride, we are focusing on some of Paul Revere’s less famous rides this week. When Paul Revere set out to warn the Provincial Congress that the British Regulars were coming in April of 1775, it wasn’t his first gig as an express rider for the patriots. For almost three years, he had been carrying messages from the Boston Committee of Correspondence on horseback to patriots in New York, Philadelphia, New Hampshire, and beyond. It’s just that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow didn’t write poems about the other rides.
Pope’s Night, Remastered (Ep75)
This week, we’re revisiting the bizarre holiday known as Pope’s Night that was celebrated in early Boston. Having evolved out of the British observation of Guy Fawkes Day, Boston took the event to extremes. The virulently anti-Catholic colonists in our town held festive bonfires, parades, and plenty of drinking. Almost every year, the celebration would lead to massive street fights and riots that sometimes turned deadly, all to commemorate a thwarted plot against the British Parliament. Pope’s Night was the subject of our very first podcast, and we’re happy to revisit it here with better research, more practiced storytelling, and hopefully better audio quality.
Original Sin: The Roots of Slavery in Boston (Ep74)
The Boston slave trade began when a ship arrived in the harbor in the summer of 1638 carrying a cargo of enslaved Africans, but there was already a history of slave ownership in the new colony. After this early experience, Massachusetts would continue to be a slave owning colony for almost 150 years. In this week’s episode, we discuss the origins of African slavery in Massachusetts and compare the experience of enslaved Africans to other forms of unfree labor in Boston, such as enslaved Native Americans, Scottish prisoners of war, and indentured servants.
Warning: This week’s episode uses some of the racialized language of our 17th and 18th century sources, and it describes an act of sexual violence.
Continue reading Original Sin: The Roots of Slavery in Boston (Ep74)
The Great Molasses Flood, Remastered (Ep73)
This week we’re revisiting Boston’s great Molasses Flood, the subject of one of our earliest podcasts. We’re giving you an update, now that our technology, research, and storytelling skills have improved. Stay tuned for tales of rum, anarchists, and the speed of molasses in January. It’s not slow!
Continue reading The Great Molasses Flood, Remastered (Ep73)
Rat Day (Ep72)
The Boston Women’s Municipal League was a civic organization made up of mostly middle and upper class women, at a time when most women didn’t work outside the home. In 1915, they declared war on rats. Over the next few years, Women’s Municipal League published literature on eradicating rats, carried out an extensive education campaign, and in 1917 hosted a city-wide Rat Day with cash prizes for the citizens who killed the most rats.
A Stable Base Blooper
When we record, we both put moving pads, those heavily quilted blue blankets that professional movers use to protect your furniture, over our heads to isolate us from outside noise. Well, this is what happens when I find out that part of mine is closed in the freezer door, and then I can’t get my microphone stand to stand up. You’ll hear a bit of this rustling and banging in the last minute or so of next week’s episode. My apologies in advance.
Warning: Mildly NSFW language
The Curious Case of Phineas Gage (Ep71)
In 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage suffered an unusual injury, in which a three foot tamping iron was blown through his skull, making him on of the greatest medical curiosities of all time. We’ll discuss his time in Boston, his life post-injury, and the impact of his case on modern neuroscience.
Content warning: The details of Gage’s accident and injury are a little gory.