Spring Gun in the Grape Vines (episode 235)

This week we’ll explore the strange case of a 1907 shooting in Jamaica Plain.  There was a gun, a gunshot, and a gunshot victim… a child, in fact.  But there was no shooter, or at least no human shooter.  If this was today, we might be talking about a terrifying robot machine gun, but 1907 was a little early for that.  Instead, we’re talking about a deadly trap laid by a homeowner to protect his grape arbor.  For setting this deadly trap, the homeowner would face criminal trial for assault, but pay only a trivial fine.  As bizarre as the case sounds, it was part of a trend that was sweeping the nation at the time, with many spring gun cases arising in the Boston area, until the matter was finally settled in a state supreme court case that every first year law student still studies today.  


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Disaster at Bussey Bridge (episode 218)

March 14 is the anniversary of one of the worst railroad accidents that ever happened in Massachusetts.  On March 14, 1887, a train filled with suburban commuters was on its way from Dedham to Park Square station in Boston, stopping in West Roxbury and Roslindale along the way.  Moments before it would have passed through Forest Hills, disaster struck.  By the time the engineer turned around, he saw a cloud of dust and a pile of twisted rubble where nine passenger cars should have been.  In a split second, a normal morning commute was transformed into a nightmare of death and dismemberment for hundreds of passengers.


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Weird Neighborhood History (episode 124)

Instead of writing and recording a new episode, your humble hosts are going to History Camp this weekend.  We’ll leave you with two stories about Boston’s weird neighborhood history from our back catalog.  We’ll be sharing a story from Jamaica Plain about a politically motivated crime in the early 20th century that led to a series of running gunfights between the police and what the newspapers called “desperadoes.”  Then, we’re going to move across town to Brighton, which  — speaking of desperadoes — used to be home to saloons, card games, and hard drinking cowboys, when it hosted New England’s largest cattle market.


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