Off the Bricks

Big Scores · STOP 05 · North End

In 1765 a Boston crowd took about £900 in cash from the lieutenant governor's house, by his own count, and stripped it to the floorboards.

On August 26, 1765, a crowd split the lieutenant governor's front door with axes and had his North End mansion stripped by four in the morning. By his own count they took about £900 in cash and scattered thirty years of his papers. The mansion is gone. A small city tablet on Garden Court marks the spot, and leaves out the axes.

This is stop 5 of Big Scores. Walk it - any two stops are free.

The plate

Axes on Garden Court

Collected on site

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Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Garden Court at Prince Street, North End (west side of Garden Court, just before North Square)
Directions

1

Hutchinson blamed his own cellar. He had about a dozen pipes of wine down there, he wrote, and the crowd was already inflamed by liquor found at the customs officer Benjamin Hallowell's.

More footnotes on the story card, in the app.

Argue about it

Was the night on Garden Court a protest or a robbery?

Both sides, with their sources, are on the story card in the app.

Crime and punishment, Plaque hunt

In these collections: Crime Scenes

Near Haymarket · Near Aquarium

Sources (4)