Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:05] 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 94 The Prisoners of Peddocks Island Hi, I’m Jake.
Way back in Episode 51 we discussed the Confederate prisoners who are held at Fort Warren on Georges Island during the Civil War.
This week, I’ll be talking about a different island that house prisoners during a different war.
Our story will start with the only soccer riot in recorded Boston history, which broke out at Carson Beach in South Boston on July 16th 1944.
It will end up with Italian war prisoners confined it Fort Andrews on Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor.
Along the way, we’ll meet bootleggers, artillery men, Passamaquoddy, seal hunters, opium fiends and Portuguese American fishermen.
We’ll also be taking a virtual visit to one of my personal favorite places, and it’s one that’s on the brink of being sold off to a luxury hotel developers.
But before we talk about the prisoners of Peddocks Island, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and my upcoming historical event.

Boston Book Club

[1:19] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is east of Boston.
Notes from the Harbor Islands By Stephanie Schorow It’s Equal parts history book and travel guide, serving as a perfect introduction for the Boston Harbor Islands novice,
from former harbor islands like World’s End and Castle Island to popular tourist draws like Georges and Spectacle Islands to the windswept in little visited Brewster’s and Graves, Schorow takes the reader through the entire archipelago,
of 34 Boston Harbor Islands,
and this week’s main story about Italian prisoners on Peddocks Island.
You’ll hear me turned to Stephanie Schorow to fill in the details on other activities that were happening on the island in the early 20th century.
Along with prisoners, the Harbour Island became an out of sight, out of mind, home for unsavory activities in businesses like bordello, speakeasies and opium parties.
And it didn’t fit into the context of the main story this week. But there’s also a rich history of baseball being played on Peddocks Island in east of Boston. Schorow says Peddocks attracted those looking to skirt other laws.
The Boston Braves made an end run around the blue laws prohibiting baseball action in Boston on Sundays by playing on Peddocks.
Peddocks was also the site of hard fought battles between local baseball teams and many an old timers game.

[2:44] Before the blue laws were finally changed in 1929 up to 5000 fans would flock to a long lost ballpark on a narrow spit of land between two beaches on Peddocks toe watch.
The Boston Braves play along with these edgy topics, the publishers description says, you’ll learn about pirate treasure elusive Fox’s cross dressing ghosts, flying Santas,
and a strange era of spontaneously combusting garbage dumps.

[3:13] While most of the islands will remain closed this summer, ferry service to Spectacle Island has started up and will run through October 12.
Whether you’re a frequent visitor to the Harbor Islands or if you’re considering your first trip, it’s worth picking up east of Boston to help you plan your day.
And so you know, the many historic events that happened on each island and speaking of historical events are upcoming Event.

Upcoming Event

[3:37] This week is a second talk about Boston and film from the Massachusetts Historical Society, Emerson and the Brattle Theater.

[3:46] A few weeks ago, we featured a talk focusing on movies that typecast the Hub as a home for mobsters, cops, another tough talking Irish characters.
This week, Jim Vrabel, author of A People’s History of the New Boston, and Ned Hinkle of the Brattle Film Foundation will be presenting a more light hearted counterpart to that session.
They’ll go beyond the grit to present a more well rounded portrait of Boston.
Here’s how the NHS website describes this second event.
There are a remarkable number of gritty films set in Boston, yet that is not the only way the city’s depicted.
There are comedies, period pieces and films that depict the diversity of the city with much greater accuracy.
Next stop Wonderland paper chase and between the lines have not received the same attention from the academy, but they have devout followings and depict a different vision of Boston.
Our discussion will look at these other visions of the city and discuss short films and independent productions that offer a wider perspective of our city.

[4:50] As with most of these online events, there’s no admission fee, but you have to register in advance to get the connection details.
We’ll have the link you need to register as well as a link to East of Boston and this week’s show Notes at Hub history dot com slash 194.

[5:08] Before I start the show, I want to pause for a moment and say a big thank you to our patri on sponsors.
I’m still busy getting us moved back into our house after a months long renovation, so I haven’t been able to spend much time on podcast research over the past few weeks.
Luckily, I could dust off an episode draft that I wrote most of back in September 2018.
The drafters old enough that it still had a placeholder for our historic site of the week, which hasn’t been a regular part of the show in a couple of years.
When I started updating it to get ready to record this week, I realized that I could add several new details because I have access to the Boston Globe archives now.
That’s just one of many improvements that are supporters have enabled us to make. In the time since I first started working on this episode, our most generous listeners choose to sponsor the show for $2.5 dollars or even $10 a month.
They’ve allowed us to get access to the Globe archives, expanded J store access and to get listed in Spotify and start providing show transcripts.
If you’d like to help us, keep making hub history better, just go to Patreon dot com slash hub history or visit Hull history dot com and click on the Support US Link Hardy Thank you to all our new and returning sponsors,
and now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Main Topic: The Prisoners Of Peddocks Island

[6:29] Our story this week begins with a Sfar, as I can tell the only soccer riot in Boston history, which took place at Carson Beach in Southie in the summer of 1944.
An AP report from July 1944 says the First Service Command reported that the trouble started when a member of the Italian service unit climbed a low fence surrounding the camp to retrieve a soccer ball.
One of the Boston police detail keeping civilians away from the area apprehended. The Italian and the other prisoners inside the compound started throwing lumber and stones at the policemen.

[7:04] Italian service units were a newly organized form of labor unit and use in the latter years of World War Two.
While there are fighting with the axis, hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers were captured by allied units in North Africa. In Europe.
Many were kept in prison camps near where they had been captured, but tens of thousands were shipped to the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the US for imprisonment.

[7:28] After Mussolini was driven from power in the summer of 1943 his successor signed an armistice with the Allies on September 3rd.
One month later, the new government declared war on Germany, meaning it was no longer an enemy of the United States.

[7:44] The US government from then on would refer to Italy as a co belligerent.
This change of allegiance is called into question the status of the prisoners of war who are held in Allied nations.
At the time, there were 50,000 Italian POWs in the US Army.
Intelligence officers screen them for fascist sympathies in prior disciplinary problems, then offered them the option of joining Italian service units, which would provide labor and support of the American war effort.
Some 70% of Italian POWs chose to join these units.
Taking this following oath, I promise that I will work in behalf of the United States of America at any place on any duty accepting actual combat,
and then I will assist the United States to the best of my ability and the prosecution of its cause against the common enemy Germany.
I promise not to abuse the confidence in trust placed in me by the violation of any of the conditions governing any special privileges extended to me.
As a result of this promise, I promised to obey all orders or regulations issued by the American military authorities.
And I understand that if I do not do so, my privileges may be withdrawn and I’ll be subject to disciplinary action in accordance with the Articles of War of the United States of America, which have been read to me.

[9:06] The Italian service units were issued American fatigues with a white patch bearing the word Italy stitched on the shoulder where the American flag was usually found.
They were given jobs at military bases and war industry facilities, where they earned $24 a month.
Government documents indicate that they were not supposed to be kept in fence prison camps, but instead we’re meant to be housed in the same types of barracks is American soldiers with same rations and opportunities for recreation.
In reality, however, they were kept behind barbed wire and guarded by military police in compounds near where they worked.
One of these fenced compounds was Camp McKay, an Italian service unit camp on Columbia Point in Dorchester, about where the southern end of Moakley Park and the Bayside Expo Center are today.

[9:57] The residents of this compound work during the day at the Boston port of Embarkation and at the quartermasters depot at the South Boston Army base.
Pictures from the time show long rows of neat wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences.
A report for the House Military Affairs Committee describes the crescent shaped sweep of Carson Beach, then says,
can’t McKay parallels the southern tip of this crescent running east and west, and was formerly separated from it by a single fence about seven or eight feet high.
On warm days when the beach was crowded with weekend bay, there’s large numbers of people would line up along the fence to look at the Italians inside,
some motivated by idle curiosity and others of Italian descent, apparently regarding the prisoner’s more or less as heroes.
The mesh in the wire fencing was sufficiently open to permit the prisoners to put their hands through it, a circumstance which enable them to engage in moderate intimacies with bathing suited girls outside.
This continued until the Boston City police took charge of the situation in order to keep the public of a distance from the compound, Patrolman were stationed at intervals outside the enclosing fence.

[11:12] I’ve heard anecdotal accounts saying that along with petting with the bathing suit of girls outside the wire, has the Washington D. C Evening star called it.
There was also a healthy exchange between the prisoners and their neighbors.
Italian American residents of Boston would bring cigarettes, fresh bread, cured meats and other treats to pass into the compound, while members of the service units or pass out tomatoes and other produce. They grew inside the wire.
All that changed with one errant soccer ball on July 16th 1944.
The House Military Affairs Committee report describes the incident in more detail.
The Italian prisoners of war, who often played the game of soccer, conceived the idea of kicking the ball over the fence onto the beach, apparently for the purpose of having it returned by some civilian, thus continuing friendly interchanges in contempt of the police and the regulations,
the police then took steps to restrain civilians from returning the ball.
On July 16th 1 of the prisoners scaled the fence as an apparent gesture of defiance to retrieve the ball and was thereupon apprehended by the nearest policemen.
Immediately, several other Italian prisoners climbed the fence and attacked the policemen and others of his fellows who came to his aid enforce and with such violence that four of them required hospital attention.

[12:35] The men involved in the afraid were deprived of their statuses service unit co belligerence and transferred to prison camp says prisoners of war With the loss of all privileges.

[12:47] The riot on July 16th was the culmination of a week of escalating friction between the Italian prisoners and their hosts in South Boston.
On July 9th and 10th 6 Italians were arrested after breaking out of the camp.
On July 13th a lopsided fight broke out as describing the Globe a brief free for all involving an Italian service unit member.
Scores of Baylor’s at Carson Beach and guards at Camp McKay resulted last night when an American sailor threw a stone into the prisoner of war compounds, knocking a prisoner unconscious.
The Malay gathered force when a prisoner leaped over the fence to attack the Sailor Bay there, sided with the semen while guards sought to protect the prisoner and keep others from joining him.
The trouble was quelled in four minutes.

[13:38] After another stone was thrown at someone in the camp On the evening of July 15th police were called in time to prevent a repeat performance by the time of full scale riot broke out on July 16.
Military authorities were sick of these discipline problems.
About 50 Italians were stripped of their status, is members of the Italian service unit, and were sent to harsher imprisonment at POW camps.
Most were likely sent to Fort Devins in central Mass, which already housed German P. O W’s, though some were sent to camp Miles Standish and Tartan, and sources say that some were sent to camps limit west.

[14:17] Can’t. McKay was surrounded by a 2nd 8 foot high fence constructed about 75 feet outside the original fence to help keep the remaining Italian prisoners separate from beachgoers.
That arrangement didn’t last long. On July 28th the rest of the I S U was pulled out of Camp McKay and sent to Fort Andrews. I’m Peddocks Island.
Can’t McKay would then be used to house segregated units of African American soldiers, another group that officials wanted to keep separate from the rest of Boston.

[14:52] But what was this island fort, where the Italian service units were taken?
By the time of World War two, Ford Andrews was past its prime.
An aging outpost on Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor, Peddocks is one of the largest of the 34 Boston Harbor Islands with the longest shoreline.
The island is naturally both close to land and isolated, lying just a few 100 yards from Pemberton Point Hole.
It’s close enough that if you stand on the bluffs on Peddocks Island, you can hear classes change a whole high.
But it separated from hold by the rushing tides in narrow, dangerous Hull gut.

[15:32] An archaeological survey revealed a number of Native American burial sites on the island, including the oldest human remains ever found in Massachusetts, dated to 4100 years ago.

[15:45] All the evidence indicates that it’s been inhabited for thousands of years.
The earliest record we confined from European sources comes from Thomas Morton, whose freewheeling anything goes 16 24 settlement at Mount Wallison and today’s Quincy Predated Parrot in Boston.
And annoyed is Pilgrim Neighbors and Plymouth.
In his 16 37 book, A New English Canaan, Morton describes the fate of a French trading voyage to Boston Harbor that took place in roughly 16 16 it fortunes some few years before the English came to inhabit it.
New Plymouth in New England that upon some distaste given in the Massachusetts Bay by the Frenchman, then trading there with the natives for Beaver, they set upon the minute such advantage.
They killed many of thumb burn their ship, then riding at anchor by an island. They’re now called Peddocks Island in memory of Leonard Peddocks that landed there, where many wild anckies haunted that time, which he thought had been tame.
Distributing them into five say gyms, which were lords with several territories adjoining.
They did keep them so long as they lived only the sport themselves at, um and made these five Frenchmen fetch them wood and water, which is the general work that they require of a servant.

[17:03] In the earliest record of Europeans at Peddocks Island, the French traders gave the locals enough of an offense that they killed most of the party, burn the ship and then enslave the few survivors.
Leonard Peddocks would come later in. About 16 22 is part of the failed Wessaugussett Colony in today’s Weymouth.

[17:23] Reading that account, I wondered what Yankees were perhaps another name for Turkey’s or deer or another local game animal after searching around. The only reference beyond Morton’s book seems to be of all things.
In 18 13. Letter from Our Boy John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Adams repeats Thomas Morton’s account of the attack of Peddocks Island and about anckies.
He says, Your research is in natural history. May enable you to say what are anckies unless they be wild geese?
I know no more about them than I do about Yankees, so I don’t feel too bad about not knowing what anckies are were in the company of two presidents.

[18:08] After a disease in a series of 17th century wars with the English decimated local Native American communities.
Peddocks Island and most of the Boston Harbor Islands was used mostly for agriculture until the late 18th century.
Though Peddocks was spared the 17 75 skirmishes seen on other harbor islands between British foraging parties and provincial militias that we described in Episode 1 86 it did briefly see action during our Revolution in April of 17 76.
The Massachusetts Council was annoyed that even after British troops had evacuated Boston, they’re Navy still controlled our harbor.
The council questioned whether 1000 men might not be employed to the best advantage by taking posted Long Island, Peddocks Island and Nantasket,
they being furnished with suitable cannon ammunition, tensor barracks provision boats, etcetera.
In June of 17 76 a version of that plan was put into action to drive the British Navy out.
A contemporary news report says that a large detachment of colonial troops were embarked on boats that the long Worf, together with cannon ammunition provisions, entrenching tools and every necessary implement and proceeded for Peddocks Island and Hull,
where they were joined by some Continental troops in seacoast companies so as to make near 600 men of each place.

[19:33] Though the artillery meant for Peddocks Island wasn’t put into place fast enough, the cannons on Long Island and it Hull soon drove the British ships out of Boston Harbor, never to return.

[19:46] A little bit over a century later, the military turns its eyes toward Peddocks Island again.
This time it wasn’t the British fleet that they were worried about. It was the Spanish as tensions escalated that would lead to the outbreak of the Spanish American War.
A few months later, military planners moved ahead with plans to modernize the defenses around many American harbors, including here in Boston.
Spain was a major naval power, and Boston’s harbor defenses hadn’t been upgraded to keep up with advances in armored ships and naval guns since before the Civil War.

[20:22] A January 18 98 wire service story related the plans for the defense of Boston Harbor.
The United States government has bought about 63 acres of land in Hull on the summit of Cushing Hill and Battery Heights.
It is the intention to erect their a battery of heavy guns for coast defense.
Peddocks Island nearby has also been purchased for the same purpose.
And when these three points are fully fortified, the guns will command every approach to Boston Harbor and most of Massachusetts Bay from Point Allerton to Cape Ann.

[20:57] Another wire service story in March 18 98 reported. The rumor that Hull is to be fortified immediately seems to be well founded.
It being the intention of Mount Guns on Telegraph Hill next week in place a number of mortars on Peddocks Island within the next 10 days, it is said that troops were to be placed a Long Island and Fort Winthrop within the next week.

[21:20] These rumors would turn out to be mostly true for its strong would be built on Long Island.
Fort Andrews on Peddocks and Fort Revere would be built on holes Telegraph Hill for it.
Winthrop on Governors Island was not modernized, and it was abandoned by 1905 All these new and renovated harbor forts were built according to a standardized plan recommended by the War Department’s Into COT board.
They incorporated reinforced concrete construction, large bore mortars and breech loading cannons There were mounted on retractable disappearing carriages on Peddocks Island.
The first guns afford. Andrews were ready for service in 1901 with the base complete and commissioned by 1904,
houses for officers and barracks for enlisted soldiers flanked a grassy central parade ground large bore.
Mortars were mounted in concrete. Bunkers there were hidden behind a nearly buried under the islands hills.
The’s monster guns could fire £1000 armor piercing shell eight miles out into the harbor, at the top of the island’s hills that disappearing guns were mounted in more bunkers with a direct view of the sea.

[22:35] During World War Field, artillery units trained on the island before deploying to Europe and the coastal defense. Artillery remained on high alert for German U boats.
However, by World War Two, the island’s defenses were quickly becoming obsolete.
Airpower and submarines were more than a match for stationary coastal guns, and the guns on Peddocks Island were proving themselves to be something of a laughing stock.

[23:00] After live fire exercises in 1913 didn’t go as planned, the Essex County Harold trumpeted shot falls near cottages.
£15 ball from mortar dropped on Nantasket Avenue Dateline Whole Mass.
Following a mile away from the target, a solid shot weighing from 15 to £20 landed in this center of Nantasket Avenue near the wind Mir station.
The shot was fired by the detachment of Coast Artillery Court Ford Andrew, some Peddocks Island and came from one of the mortars of Battery Cushing.
It was intended for the targets in the main ship channel that was deflected far to the east, passing over Pemberton and the village of Whole and coming to ground on Allerton Hill.

[23:48] Well, they may have been censored in reporting like this after the attack on Pearl Harbor just over a week later, The Associated Press reported on another live fire exercise on November 28th 1941.

[24:02] For the first time in 20 years, the big 12 inch coast defence mortis at Fort Andrews roared out yesterday and all but wreck the Ford four times.
£1046 projectiles thundered out of the mortar pit, and as each shot was fired, another bit of a wooden barracks approximately 100 feet away fluttered to the ground.
First, some windows rattled out at the second rural window casing her to was shattered.
The third time a door flopped down, and on the final boom, the walls shed some of their clapboards.
The firing was from two weapons at towed targets, and the success of the Coast artillery hman was not revealed.
Oh yes, one of the Ford Andrews. Cooks had trouble, too.
The first gun barked, the cook jumped and dinner was scattered in the winds.

[24:59] The giant mortars and batteries. Whitman and Cushing were all but abandoned during the course of World War Two.
The cannons and batteries MacBook and Bumpers stood ready to fire on any invaders, and lookouts in the watchtower scanned the waves for any be periscopes.
The forts most valuable contribution to the war effort may have come as an anchor point for two giant submarine nets.
The’s steel cable measures were stretched from Peddocks Island across Hall got to Pemberton Point and across a stretch of water called a west Gut from the southern tip of the island to Nut Island and Quincy.
When they were closed, these nets prevented German U boats from creeping into the valuable shipyards. At Hangem and Quincy, there were building the vast allied fleets that would eventually help win the war.

[25:46] It was into this remote, sleepy men largely obsolete army outpost that 31 Italian officers and 1153 enlisted prisoners were incarcerated in the summer of 1944.
Matilda Silvia grew up on Peddocks Island. An inner book once upon an island describes her first experience with their new Italian neighbors.
We meaning VIP area. Matilda Silvia climb the hill near the radio shack to our favorite BlackBerry patch, where the bushes were loaded with fruit,
absorbed in picking and chatting were oblivious to the fact that we were almost imperceptibly being surrounded by men.
We realized that we were meeting head on with the Italian prisoners of war, which scuttlebutt had told us would be arriving any day.
We’ve been asked by the commandant to remain aloof unless we’re with G. Uys.
Rumor had it that these particular prisoners have been troublesome in the South Boston POW compound.
You are being sent to the island where they would not have easy contact with civilians, particularly women.
We found them to be gentlemen, but after a very brief communication, V and I, following orders, decided to say goodbye and hustle home.

[27:00] Of course, the very fact that Matilda Silvia was there on the island to witness the prisoners arrival is evidence that the U. S. Military and its Italian prisoners were not the only residents on Peddocks Island.
There was also a thriving community of fishermen living just outside the wire.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were three distinct fishing fleets plying their trade in Boston Harbor, the Italian fishing fleet, the Portuguese fishing fleet and the so called American fishing fleet.
Though, of course, both the Portuguese and the Italian fleets were mostly crewed by American citizens.

[27:37] In the middle of the 19th century, many members of the Portuguese fleet lived on Boston’s Long Island when the city began expanding its hospitals, schools and alms houses on Long Island.
They eventually evicted the Portuguese fishing families who lived there.
In 18 87 some relocated to Great Brewster and Middle Brewster Islands, while many came to pet ICS floating their cottages across Nantasket Road from island to island on barges.
They settled it first on East Head, the easternmost of three landmasses that make up Peddocks Island.
Just over a decade later, as 40 Andrews was under construction, they were evicted again.
This time, most chose to relocate to the middle head of Peddocks Island, just across the shallow bay that’s been known as Portuguese Cove ever since.
A 1909 Boston Globe article describes the settlement that resulted.

[28:34] Snuggled down in a sort of little valley on the westerly side of Peddocks Island is a small fishing village of which comparatively few Boston people know and which fewer have visited.
As a matter of fact, not many of those who travel what the yachtsman called the West way towards Quantum have ever noticed the little village of 12 houses tucked away there in the back of princes head.
But the village is picturesque and worth a visit by seekers. After the novel, the houses are all small frame structures, tenanted by families whose heads make a living by catching fish and lobsters.
The houses are all neat and well kept, and back of each is a tiny garden in which vegetables were raised.
While some of the women have even cultivated flowers and made their tiny homes quite attractive,
at nearly every house, the cooking is done in a stove, which sets out in front and is buttressed by empty dry goods boxes and packing cases, which doesn’t detract at all from the toothsome nous of the food.
Prepared Children are quite numerous in the village and a hearty, wholesome looking lot. They are, too.
There is no style put on in the Peddocks Island fishing village, but the folks who live there appear to enjoy themselves and abide in comfort.

[29:47] The prevalence of the fishing industry and the need to support three separate fishing fleets may go some way toward explaining the presence of another seasonal community that called Peddocks Island home.
During the first few years of the 20th century.
A 1906 article notes on the beach on the north westerly side of Peddocks Island can be seen a small Indian wigwam,
in which lived the Indian Seal Hunters of Boston Harbor, who are capturing seals every day and who are making money at the business.
There are six of them, all members of the past, Um, a quad eBay tribe from near Eastport, Maine.
They were here because the town of Quincy offered a $3 bounty for every seal killed, as every fish that the seals got was considered stolen from a fisherman.
An article about the 1907 ceiling season says many people have wondered why the state encourages the killing of the seals.
The answer is to be found in the seal’s stomach.
Last year, efficient game warden found in the stomach of one seal 11 eels, several lobsters, a few flounders and a general assortment of smell.
Another small fish to the amount of one peck by actual measurement multiplies several meals per diem of this sort, even by the number of seals that have already been killed in Quincy Bay this season.
That is 181 and you get some idea of the competition, which seals afford the local fishermen.

[31:17] The 1906 article goes on to say that it’s their second summer on the island.
They came with four heavy main type canoes, which they packed full of camping and hunting gear and then loaded onto a steamer in Portland.
Arriving at Atlantic Worf in Boston, they began off loading on. The article describes the scene.
They started from the WARF on Atlantic Avenue and paddled down among the deep sea craft whose sailors look down on the small flotilla from their floating fortresses of iron and wood.
In astonishment, they selected Peddocks Island is the base of their operations and commenced a remarkable campaign against the seal.

[31:57] The article describes how they hunted with one man paddling in the start of the canoe and the other holding a shotgun at the ready in the bow.
After taking a shot, the gunner would quickly pick up a Gaff, hook the seal and bring it onboard.
They ate a lot of seal meat in the summer as a way of keeping costs down, and the seal skins were tanned for later sale.
The tales were taken as evidence of the kill and turned in for the $3 bounty.
The article, published near the end of the season in 1907 quotes. The Quincy town clerk is saying that the town had already paid out $543 in seal bounties to the six pass inequality hunters that year, not about Hall.
One of the hunters told reporters that his group made a living by fishing and main in the spring.
Hunting seals on Boston Harbor in the summer, guiding white hunters in the fall and making baskets in the winter and Boston Seals were their most lucrative pursuit.

[32:56] The Passamaquoddy made their camp along the beach between the East head, where Ford Andrews was located, and Middle Head, which was home to the growing cottage community at the turn of the century.
There are about 30 cottages on the island, some owned by Italian Americans, others by the families of soldiers at the fort, but most by members of the Portuguese fishing fleet.
In the book East of Boston, this week’s Boston Book Club pick, Stephanie Schorow, describes some of the businesses that grew up in about the same time.

[33:29] Two ends were established on the island, the Wyo. West End House, owned by William Drake, and the Island Hotel, run by John Erwin.
A surviving menu from the island hotels showed that it offered a full range of food and drink.
A SAS perilla was 10 cents, a Budweiser was 25 cents, and a gin fizz was 20.
Royal Bobster was set you back a whole 75 cents, and boiled tripe would take 40 cents out of your pocket.
The island hotel, however, often served more than food to those willing to pay the price.
A small cottage near the hotel provided female companionship for a price.
The money was slipped into a slot under a window.

[34:17] In 1909 The Boston newspapers were filled with stories about so called Chinese picnics and subsequent police raids on Peddocks Island.
Chinese picnic was a euphemism for a gathering where people used opium.

[34:32] Even after the hotel proprietors were arrested and the island hotel eventually burned.
Peddocks Island was mostly free from prying eyes.
During Prohibition, Islanders found a reliable way to make a few extra dollars.
As Matilda Silvia recounted during the 19 twenties, the civilian end of the island had quite a flourishing bootlegging business going.
Soldiers, it seemed, would drink anything from list Tareen to rot gut.
I’m not suggesting the Peddocks Island or sold inferior booze. I think most of it was pure, even though flavored and water down as far as it could be and still be alcoholic.
It was apparently good enough for some of the men to risk court martial and to engage in any ploy to get by the guards at the outpost.
In order to find this ill fated hooch, the soldiers would hide on the beach and wait until the guards met each other halfway on their walking post, then sneak by the barbed wire fence, which extended to the tide line,
in summer, they would take the civilian ferry from Pemberton, or sometimes a friend on guard would allow them to pass and pretend not to see them come hell or high water.
Where there was a will, there was always a way to get what you wanted Enough of. The fellows found their way over to the other side to make it profitable for the purveyors.

[35:48] Silvia was born in 1917 and her memories of growing up in the island before and during World War two sound pretty idyllic.
She describes the gardens. The college community planted, gathering and splitting driftwood to stay warm through the winter and taking a boat to school first and Hull and then in South Boston.

[36:08] Though she sees it through rose tinted lenses, her memoir makes it clear that those years were not without hardships, mostly due to weather and isolation.

[36:18] Every week, most of the housewives took the long boat trip into Boston to buy meat, fruit and particularly in winter, any fresh vegetables the market had to offer.
Most supplies were purchased at the commissary, which is around the hill in the huge quartermaster warehouse.
Once or twice a week in the morning, mother would walk to the commissary to place your order.
A Teamster and a Kanis toga type wagon would deliver it sometime that afternoon.

[36:47] In a 1941 interview with The Boston Post, another longtime resident described what it was like on the island during the 18 98 Portland Gail, which we talked about when discussing the whole life saving station. An episode 88.

[37:03] You remember when the steamer Portland went down? There was a big storm here.
I was about nine at the time, so I don’t remember much about it. But it was a big storm.
A snowstorm to it blew the house all the way over the hill from the flats over there.
He pointed to the ocean end all the way over the hill.
There was a house down here at this side. He pointed at the Quincy End, and that got blown away altogether.
My father saved the whole family. Just in time. He carried the twins back in his arms and froze one hand.
I remember the family stayed with us for a couple of days till they built a new house.
That isolation is what made Peddocks islands seem like the perfect destination for a troublesome group of Italian prisoners.
In 1944 the Military Affairs Committee report, recorded from before, makes a brief mention of the conditions.
The Italian service units were held in that Fort Andrews at their compounds. Their ability, the part for American personnel have their own mess halls, post exchanges, theaters, entertainment, recreation and chapel.

[38:11] They lived in tents and roughly built barracks within the perimeter of the four, where the American soldiers could keep an eye on them, though the report says they have their own separate facilities for recreation, entertainment and worship.
In reality, they shared these facilities with the American GI’s who guarded them.
They used the combined post exchange in gymnasium building alongside the soldiers, enjoyed movie nights with Um and attended church at the small whitewashed wooden chapel beside the Forts parade ground.
There was one popular entertainment among the American soldiers that the Italians never adopted.
Matilda Silvia expresses air surprise that the prisoners played a sport other than baseball.

[38:55] The first time I saw a soccer game was when I watched the prisoners play. It was fast and rough.
Once in a while, one of the prisoners will be carried off to the hospital.
As far as I could gather, there were never any serious injuries. They were completely devoted to this game.
America’s favorite pastime of baseball seem not to be a much interest to them.
I was a bit surprised because they seem to readily adopt American customs habits and actions.

[39:24] Even after they were removed from Camp Maketa Ford Andrews. The issue was employed at the Port of Embarkation and Quartermaster Depot in South Boston.
Now, instead of walking to work with the U. S Army escort, they commuted daily by boat,
though they were still prisoners and considered enemies by many Bostonians, that considerable liberties, as described in an article from National Geographic magazine.
Among the prisoners, around 50 lucky ones were recognized as trustees.
Trustee status was earned by those who demonstrated good behavior, kept themselves tidy and followed orders.
Being a trustee allowed those prisoners to go places in the prison off limits to others.
But the most coveted privilege for trustees was the Sunday ferry ride to Boston’s North End.
A military fairy would take them to visit the Italian American families who sponsored them and return them to Peddocks before dark.
The’s trips gave the trustees an opportunity to go to Sunday mass, eat a home cooked Italian meal and talk about their life Back in the homeland.

[40:34] Matilda Silvia recalled those weekend passes as well, and added those remaining on the island were allowed to have friends and relatives visit them on either day of the weekend.
The guests were not allowed to stay overnight.
In his book Discovering the Harbor Islands, Christopher Klein quotes longtime island resident Claire Hail during the war.
The Italian prisoners started coming to the Cottages on Sunday. When they didn’t have to work, they had a grand old top.
I remember all these soldiers with Italy written on their uniforms just before they were sent back.
My grandmother had them visit our house in Somerville.
Our house was surrounded by MPs with guns.
We were the only Italians on the street in a mostly Irish neighborhood. So you can imagine all the neighbors were on their porches.

[41:23] Not everyone looked fondly at how these prisoners seemed to be pampered.
American veterans who remembered fighting Italian forces at Monte Cassino or Sicily or Tunisia, were offended by news stories about Italian prisoners being wined and dined in the North End.
In July of 1944 Thomas Berry, the Massachusetts chair of a group called the Allied Veterans of World War Two Wroten, open letter to the army, saying,
prisoners should receive only such rights and courtesies as air provided under international law,
some of them killed and maimed our soldiers, their access partners have murdered and tortured their prisoners of war.
They’ve received courtesies almost equal to those were under dignitaries of friendly nations.
Could these conditions exist in Germany or Italy? They have been coddled in pampered by citizens as well as army authorities.
The Associated Press article about this letter notes with irony that while the letter was being prepared, a group of Italian war prisoners from Camp McKay in the Dorchester district of Boston work guests of a club in suburban Somerville,
which entertained them with a picnic and a ball game.

[42:36] An editorial in the Boston Herald complained that if Italian prisoners were supposed to be our allies now, they should be shipped back to Europe to fight our common enemies.
Somebody dreamed up a new name for the status of a licked outfit and decided to call them co belligerents.
And this country co belligerency has been extended to the former millions of El douche, all of whom were captured in the process of shooting and killing American boys,
have these fellows requested guns and the privilege of going back to help free their native land if they even asked to go back and help move the gear of war.
I’d stand it full salute, but does co belligerency me that only American kids air fit to fight and die for Italy.

[43:20] Perhaps everything Wasn’t sunshine and puppy dogs on the side of the Italian prisoners, either?
A brief wire story on the day after Christmas 1944 noted that the eye issues on Peddocks Island were being disciplined for a strike on their refusal to go to work today. The Boston port of Embarkation.
The members of two new Italian service units, which arrived at Fort Andrews, Boston Harbor last week, were confined to the fort under disciplinary conditions on orders of Major General Sherman Miles.
This seems to have been part of a pattern of strikes among the Italian service units around the country.
From news reporting on the other strikes, we can infer what the disciplinary conditions at Fort Andrews likely were when Italian prisoners in the England went on strike in May 1944.
They were confined to camp and given a punishment diet, meaning meals of bread and water. Three days a week.
After a strike in a camp near Toledo in March 1945 the prisoners were placed on a bread and water diet and confined to barracks.
Their canteen was closed and post privileges were withdrawn, and for prisoners who went on strike in Utah that June, a bread and water diet and outdoor quarters were imposed.

[44:38] The Italian service units were caught in a no man’s land, where there are no longer considered enemies but still treated as prisoners.
The series of strikes, including at least one earlier strike in Boston in early summer, 1944 seems to have been aimed at improving their working and living conditions and demanding that they not be treated as prisoners.

[45:02] The’s Italian service units were on Peddocks Island because some of them had rioted and attacked Boston police officers.
Many Bostonians still saw them as enemy prisoners, even though their status it officially changed after Italy switch sides in the war.
And now they’ve gone on strike and likely been put on a bread and water diet is punishment.
And yet, throughout their confinement, even after the riot in the strikes, they were consistently given passes to visit Italian American neighborhoods in the north End.
In East Boston, where many residents who weren’t naturalized citizens have been forced to register as enemy aliens,
Though the Geneva Convention required all former prisoners of war to be repatriated after the conflict, local legend says that dozens of former prisoners, married local girls and stayed in this country.
It’s truly remarkable to consider the liberties given to these Italian soldiers who were captured on the battlefield while fighting against American soldiers,
and compare them to the plate of over 100 20,000 American citizens who are placed in the desert camps under armed guard for the duration of the war,
simply because their ancestors had come from Japan.

[46:15] When the war was over, the military saw very little utility and Fort Andrews.
It was mothballed in 1946 when the island was sold to a private developer in 1958.

[46:28] In 1970 the Metropolitan District Commission, precursor to the Department of Conservation and Recreation, bought the island as a step in creating what’s now the Boston Harbour Island State National Park.
This move put the future of the cottage community a middle head in question.
The Islanders have never owned the land the cottages were built on.
They owned the structures, but not the land they were built on most. It started out of squatters, then paid a small annual fee first to the U. S. Army, then to the private landowner bought the property.

[47:03] As part of the development of the park, the MDC announced a plan that would have evicted the owners of the cottages by the time this plan was announced in the early nineties.
There are only about three year round residents left on the island, but many of the cottages were still used seasonally.
A 1991 New York Times article reported on the impending evictions.
Now plans call for further development of the island’s fort as a public park.
After years of living in obscurity, owners of the 47 cottages have been ordered to leave the island by October 1st, 1992.
The Metropolitan District Commission, the state agency that oversees public parks and beaches, ordered the eviction is part of a campaign to reclaim public lands from private users after they evict the Cottagers.
Commission officials hope to restore and redevelop the 27 buildings that are a part of Fort Andrews, the army post, and make room for a wildlife sanctuary.
But Cottagers are refusing to give up their homes or their rustic traditions.
None of us are going to go willingly, said Matilda Silvia, a 74 year old native. This island is part of us. Our feet are tied to the ground.

[48:18] Richard Murphy, who lives on the island year round, promises a fight over my dead body, he said, vowing not to leave his home.
The Islanders were sympathetic figures, and public outcry soon brought the eviction plan to a halt.
Stephanie Schorow describes its replacement.
In 1992 a compromise was worked out. The current owners will be allowed to remain in their cottages until they died.
They would not be allowed to pass on the cottages to their Children or sell them to anyone else.
On their death, the cottages would become the property of the M. D. C.

[48:58] Anecdotally, it seems that many of the island families deeded their cottages to the youngest member of the family in 1991 or 1992.

[49:08] By the time the compromise went into effect, many burbling infants found themselves the happy owners of cottages on Peddocks Island.
Nevertheless, as he walked the trails of Middle Head today, it’s easy to see the remains of a dozen or so cottages that haven’t ravaged by nature After falling vacant when their last owners passed away.

[49:29] By 2010 Ford, Andrews was overgrown and decrepit enough to serve as an appropriately creepy filming location for the demented asylum portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s film Shutter Island.
The following year, the DCR began a concerted cleanup effort to try to make the fort safe and inviting for visitors.
Some of the most decayed buildings were demolished, debris was cleared where other buildings had earlier burned down and the remaining structures were boarded up and stabilized.

[49:59] We’re not in a global pandemic, varies from Boston’s Long Worf in the Hingham Shipyard now serve the island.
In the summer time, visitors can explore the Ford strolling across the parade ground and passed the empty barracks they can enter the crumbling mortar pits whose guns cause more damage to the fort itself in tow. Any enemy ship.
And they can hike the length of the island through the cottage community on middle head and passed. Matilda Silvia is old home.
If you visit, keep your eyes open for the many deer in Turkey’s that roam the island. Now that forests have grown up around the barracks and cottages, comb the beach for shells, sea glass and perhaps the remains of the submarine net at the far end of West Head.
And take in one of the best views of the Boston skyline that you can find anywhere while you enjoy the history, serenity and natural beauty of Peddocks Island.
Keep in mind that the DCR in Boston Harbor now or in the planning phase of a redevelopment project for the island plans call for historic Fort Andrews to be bulldozed and replaced by a luxury hotel in spa.
So the next time you visit may be your last chance.

Wrap-Up

[51:11] To learn more about the prisoners on Peddocks Island. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 194,
I’ll have links to that Military Affairs Committee report news stories about the past, UM, a quality seal hunters who called the island home and Matilda Sylvia’s book.
I’ll also have links to many other sources that will help tell the stories of the Italian service unit and the communities the called Peddocks Island home.
Just for good measure. All throw in some pictures I’ve taken on the island in recent years and, of course, off links to information about our upcoming event and east of Boston, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of Hull history dot com.
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Music

Jake:
[52:24] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.