Tag:

Massachusetts legislature

Proposed Ban on ‘Bitch’ Only the Latest in Boston Censorship

A Boston politician’s proposed ban on ‘bitch’ is only the latest in a city that has outlawed rock ‘n roll, Leaves of Grass and a $5 bill with bared breasts on it.

It wasn’t so much the city that did it, but a puritanical group of Boston Brahmins called the Watch and Ward Society. Boston’s own version of the Taliban, Watch and Ward policed published works from 1878 to the 1930s. But banning books and plays unintentionally heightened interest in them. And it turned Boston’s political correctness into a joke.

Watch and Ward made the mistake of tangling with the great satirist H.L. Mencken. In 1926, it banned copies of his American Mercury magazine because of a short story about a prostitute. Mencken came to Boston and orchestrated a farce. Before a crowd he sold a copy of the magazine to the Watch and Ward secretary, who then had him arrested.

A judge acquitted the publisher, and the Watch and Ward Society would soon turn its attention to banning gambling. But well into the 1970s – and certainly today – Bostonians have tried to regulate language and thought.

Ban on ‘Bitch’

In 2019, a state representative from Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, Daniel Hunt, filed a bill at a constituent’s request. He called it “An Act regarding the use of offensive words.” The bill states, “A person who uses the word ‘bitch’ directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person.”

The ban on ‘bitch’ would impose a $150 fine for a first offense, $200 or six months in prison for a subsequent offense.

The Boston Herald quoted a consultant named Chip Jones, who asked, “If we’re going to ban the word bitch, why are we only protecting 51% of the population from having their feelings hurt?” The answer, he said, was that men have become second-class citizens.

Other critics said the law wouldn’t stand up in court for 10 seconds.

Ban on ‘Bitch’ Not the First

The Watch and Ward Society had deep roots in Massachusetts’ Puritan theocracy. In 1651, Boston’s Puritan leaders banned a book by William Pynchon because it criticized Puritanism. A disgusted Pynchon returned to England the next year.

Then the Watch and Ward Society got rolling in 1878 at a meeting that barred women. A historian called its membership list “almost a roll call of Boston Brahmin aristocracy.”

Logo of the Watch and Ward Society

Shortly after its formation it banned Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The list of verboten works grew quickly and included Boccaccio‘s The Decameron, Rabelais‘ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

The expression ‘banned in Boston’ really took off in 1896, when Boston society ladies objected to the new $5 bill. Numismatists consider it one of the most beautiful U.S. currency designs ever, but it depicted a few undraped breasts. Some Boston bankers wouldn’t accept the indelicate bill, and the U.S. Treasury scrapped it a few years later.

Not in Boston you don’t.

But the ‘banned in Boston’ label only sparked interest by audiences perhaps looking for a lascivious thrill. Booksellers outside the city began to seek out the banned books.

Watch and Ward in 1927 banned Oil by Upton Sinclair for a motel sex scene, so the publisher printed 150 copies of a so-called fig-leaf edition. It had the sex scenes blacked out, which fueled the controversy along with sales. In 2007, the novel was adapted into a movie, There Will Be Blood, rated R.

Sin Not, Or At Least Don’t Talk About It

In 1958, Boston banned rock ‘n roll after an Alan Freed concert featuring Chuck Berry got rowdy. Two years later, Richard J. Sinnott (pronounced sin-not) picked up the torch of Boston censorship as chief of the city’s Licensing Division. For 22 years, he kept ‘banned in Boston’ alive by policing words and images.

He made sure strippers didn’t lose their pasties and he made Edward Albee change “Jesus Christ” to “Mary Magdalene” in the city’s performances of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He banned the Jackson 5 in 1970 because he thought they had violent fans.

The Jackson 5 was OK for the Jim Nabors Show, but not Boston

Then in 1975, during Boston’s busing crisis, he banned Marvin Gaye, because, he said, “we didn’t want black and white together so they wouldn’t kill each other.”

That same year, WCVB-TV refused to air the first eight episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter, because the show dealt with desegregation.

Boston’s nanny mentality continued into the 21^st century, when a group called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood asked the transit authority to ban ads for the video game Grand Theft Auto.

The request met the same fate as the ban on ‘bitch’ probably will.

With thanks to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

0 comment 508 views

Massachusetts Pardons Roger Williams, But He Doesn’t Return

In 1936 Rhode Islanders planned to celebrate their Tercentenary by honoring the state’s founder, Roger Williams. But they faced a few problems. First, Massachusetts still considered him a criminal. And second, no one knew what he looked like.

Williams was notorious in Massachusetts for challenging government authority. He thought the government should separate itself from religious affairs. He believed that oaths were a form of prayer. Therefore, he believed, government couldn’t enforce oaths.

Williams also challenged the right of the King of England to grant ownership of North American lands. He said the indigenous people had to sell the land before falling under British control.

Massachusetts’ Puritan leaders had actually welcomed Williams with joyful relief when he arrived on the Lyon from Bristol, England, on Feb. 5, 1631. They were pleased to have another Puritan minister who could help preach.

But after a five-year stay, the Puritan leaders chased Williams out of his Salem church. They did it by refusing to approve official business for Salem until the town got rid of him. Off he went to Providence to establish the colony that became a haven for nonconformists.

Finally, a Pardon

Williams made peace with two Narragansett sachems, Canonicus and Miantonomi. He bought land from them, and Rhode Island then prospered. The goodwill Williams created with the Narragansett people helped bring about their alliance with the colonists during the Pequot War. That alone should have won him forgiveness from the Massachusetts Legislature.

Roger Williams buys land in Rhode Island

He didn’t get it until 1936, when Rhode Island officially requested the pardon in the run up to the Tercentenary. The Legislature granted it in time for Rhode Island’s celebration. But Massachusetts admitted no wrongdoing. It did retract the ban on him as well, but a little late.

Civil libertarians seized on the pardon for political purposes. Massachusetts had instituted a loyalty oath for teachers in 1936. Critics suggested if Williams still lived he would have fared no better in Massachusetts in 1936 than he had in 1636.

A Fitting Memorial

Rhode Islanders faced other hurdles in honoring their founding father. For decades they had debated a fitting memorial, but the state wrestled with how to erect a statue to Williams. The most practical obstacle: No one really knew what he looked like.

Commemorative stamp

One artifact of Williams’ day had survived. In unearthing his grave in 1860 in an early attempt at creating a memorial, an apple tree root had been found instead of a skeleton. It was preserved by enthusiastic Williams fans who suggested it had been divinely inspired to grow to conform to the shape of Williams’ body.

Meanwhile, various institutions had discovered paintings over the years that people had claimed looked like Williams. But all had been debunked. Williams was often drawn in Pilgrim costume, though he was not a Pilgrim. And he is often shown with long hair and clean shaven, though some accounts suggested he actually had close-cropped hair and wore a beard.

Roger Williams statue

Finally, the committee planning the tercentennial settled on the likeness that appears on a statue of Williams. They also placed it on the three-cent stamp that commemorated the founding of Rhode Island.

This story last updated in 2023.

Images: The Landing of Roger Williams in 1636 by Alonzo Chappel (1857). Roger Williams statue By Rhododendrites – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65213559.

4 comments 433 views

Rufus Choate Wins Trial of the Century With Sleepwalking Defense

Rufus Choate first used the sleepwalking defense successfully in a sensational 19th-century trial for a man accused of murdering a prostitute. A brilliant trial lawyer, Choate had a reputation for never losing a case.

Rufus Choate

He was born in Ipswich, Mass., on Oct. 1, 1799 to an old New England family. His birthplace, Choate House, still sits on Hog Island (sometimes called Choate Island) in Ipswich virtually unchanged.

He graduated as class valedictorian from Dartmouth College and spent a year at Harvard Law School. He was an orator, lawyer, U.S. senator from Massachusetts and a strong ally of fellow Dartmouth graduate Daniel Webster.

Biographers have made note of his defining characteristic: He threw himself into whatever task lay before him.

While he matriculated at Dartmouth, the state of New Hampshire tried to annul the school’s charter and make it a public university. In the midst of the controversy, Choate took the 2,000 books of Dartmouth’s library from a state-owned building and stored them in his room. That led to his arrest and further inflamed the dispute. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dartmouth, which didn’t want to lose its charter as a private institution. Daniel Webster argued the case, which convinced Choate to pursue a career in law.

He followed his mentor, Daniel Webster, to the U.S. Senate, first serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Massachusetts Legislature.

Albert Tirrell

Perhaps nothing he did earned him as much celebrity as his defense of 22-year-old Albert Tirrell. Tirrell came from a respectable family in Weymouth, Mass. He was married with two children, but in 1845 he left his family for Maria Bickford, 21, a Boston prostitute. They lived together in her Mount Vernon Street brothel as man and wife. However, she never abandoned her profession.

Choate House

Tirrell wasn’t happy about Maria’s choice not to retire. On Oct. 27, 1845, she was found murdered in her room, her throat slashed so savagely her head was nearly separated from her body. Tirrell fled to New Orleans. Ten days later he was arrested and brought to Boston for trial.

The evidence against him was strong. Not only had he been seen entering and leaving the brothel, bits of his clothes and his cane were found at the crime scene. The Boston newspapers sensationalized the trial, concluding Tirrell was guilty.

The Sleepwalking Defense

His parents hired Rufus Choate to defend him. Choate argued no one had witnessed the crime, and all the evidence was circumstantial. Further, he argued Tirrell had no motive to kill Mary Bickford, but if he did, he would have done it while sleepwalking. Little was known about sleepwalking then, and Choate read to the jury accounts of violent actions by sleepwalkers. He concluded his closing argument with a rhetorical flourish:

Every juror, when he puts into the urn the verdict of guilty, writes upon it also, — Let him die… Under the iron law of old Rome, it was the custom to bestow a civic wreath on him who should save the life of a citizen. Do your duty this day, gentlemen, and you too, may deserve the civic crown.

The jury took two hours to deliver a not guilty verdict on March 30, 1846. Tirrell then tried to get a refund of half of Choate’s legal fees because his innocence was so obvious.

Rufus Choate died at age 59 on July 13, 1859.

Images: Photo of Rufus Choate by Southworth & Hawes, Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, Gift of Sam Pratt. Licensed under public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Choate House By Cody Carlson – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9511587. This story was updated in 2022.

10 comments 505 views

1913, the Year of the Great Tango Controversy

In April 1913, 90-year-old Henry McHenry walked out of the Chelsea Old Soldiers Home, telling his friends he was going to town – which they assumed meant Boston – and he didn’t come back. Three days later, word arrived that he had surfaced in New York City with a pocketful of cash. McHenry pointedly told police, who wanted to send him home, that he would leave when he had seen what he came for. What enticed this cantankerous Civil War veteran and retired stonemason to travel all the way to New York? He wanted to see this new dance phenomenon everyone was talking about: the tango.

The year 1913, the writer H.G. Wells noted, was “the year of the tango.” This new dance where couples danced cheek-to-cheek, legs and arms pressed close against each other in an erotic embrace, had everyone’s attention.

Chelsea Old Soldiers Home (Boston Public Library Archive)

And New England was no exception. Just like controversial dances today, the tango in 1913 gave rise to fascination, longing, disgust and fury – depending, of course, on your age and point of view.

Tango Travels to America

Where the tango originated is open to debate. But it took firm root in Argentina. Poor people danced it in the slums. At the time, Argentina was a wealthy nation (seventh richest in the world), but there were tremendous inequalities. So while the wealthy danced their sedate steps at fancy balls, the poor danced the tango in bars, brothels and dance halls.

Among the young and wealthy, the tango became a fascination, and they would slip into the ghettos for a taste of the dance craze. As these young people went to Europe to polish their education, they brought the tango with them.

In 1909 and 1910, the dance began popping up. But in 1913, it took the entire world by storm, first sweeping Europe and from there to the rest of the world, including the United States. Among the non-dancers, curiosity turned to outrage as soon as they got a firsthand look at the new dance. It was disgust at first-sight.

Rushing headlong into the First World War, the nations and religions of the world didn’t seem to agree on much. But the tango proved an exception. The people loved it; the leaders did not.

Germany’s Kaiser banned the dance. And England’s Queen Mary also ordered it kept out of any palace functions.

“Tango Tee” from Puck Magazine.

In the United States, ministers, priests and rabbis began speaking out against the immoral dance. The more strident labeled it “unwholesome degeneracy.” They were especially angry at the hordes of adults who tangoed, making it seem acceptable to children. The more moderate clergy saw it as a passing fad; an evil, but a temporary one.

In the summer, towns throughout New England began waking up to the fact the tango being performed in their midst. Town officials began issuing directives to local dance committees to ban it from town and benefit dances.

Banning the Tango

In Lebanon, N.H., the selectmen announced that people attending dances at the town would be expelled for dancing the tango. But it had little effect. The students of Dartmouth College were singled out as the offenders, but the dancing continued until the selectmen finally voted to ban dances altogether.

In the popular summer destination of Nahant, Mass., the police chief learned the dance halls of Bass Point were promoting tango exhibitions to lure customers. He ordered all the posters for the event torn down and announced the police would stop any such dancing.

Opponents also expanded their battleground. “Medical authorities have lately expressed the opinion that these objectionable dances are nerve-wracking, and if persisted in must undermine both health and morals,” they told the newspapers.

And one newspaper editorial bemoaned the state of affairs where citizens would ignore the bills from their dentists and butchers to instead pay for tango lessons.

U.S. Vice President Thomas Marshall, speaking to a Methodist camp meeting in August of 1913, denounced the dance craze. The tango, turkey trot and slit skirts, he said, were all signs that the churches were losing their hold on people: “It is high time that the people were waking up.”

Finding Popular Support

The tango had advocates as well, mostly among dancers, dance instructors and young people. These factions tried a multipronged approach to making the tango acceptable. First, they tried to calm people’s sensibilities. They pointed out that new forms of dance often excited outrage. The polka, they noted, had been widely criticized when first introduced.

Similarly, the waltz scandalized people when it was introduced in America. It was known as the Boston, and a variation was known as the Boston Dip. Both were abhorred by moralists. But both were eventually accepted as proper. The tango was no different, its defenders said.

This line of reasoning did little to persuade the anti-tango factions.

Advocates reached out to their own medical experts, who pointed out the tango helped people lose weight and stay in shape.

But most of their efforts focused on convincing tango dancers themselves to embrace a more modest form of the dance, one that didn’t involve so much physical contact and flamboyance. And no dipping, they instructed. At least not “deep dipping.”

Banning the Tango

In October of 1913, Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald upped the ante.

The Boston Musician’s Protective Union had announced its opposition to “freak dances” that involved “glides, slides and hugs.” While the union didn’t pledge that its members would not play music for these dances if directed to, they would discourage it.

Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald, known as “Honey Fitz”

Fitzgerald put the force of government behind their opposition, and he announced a ban on the tango at all city dance halls:

“The prohibition includes all the so-called animal dances such as the turkey trot, bunny hug, bear dance, etc. also the kitchen sink, tango and other extravagances,” the announcement said.

The new rules further stated:

All dancing would stop at 11:45 on Saturday nights.

“No moonlight or shadow lighting effects. The hall must remain fully lighted.”

A police matron would be assigned to each dance hall, and have charge of the ladies room. A police officer assigned to the hall would have the authority to stop the music if necessary.

In November, Pope Pius X declared the tango immoral and off-limits to Catholics. If they partook in the dance, they were instructed to include it in their confessions and would need to do penance. Supporters of the dance fabricated a story that the pope had witnessed a demonstration of the dance and recanted his opinion, but the Vatican quickly shot that down as a falsehood.

With New England’s large Catholic population, the edict had weight. But not enough to kill the tango.

Happy Dance

The fight against the tango finally came to a head in 1914. At English High School in Lynn, Mass., students made headlines by boycotting dances where the principal had banned the tango.

Social and country clubs and hotels came under great pressure to eliminate the tango from the popular dances and “tango teas.” Some did, others did not. And people boycotted charity balls that banned the tango, which prompted a satirical cartoon in Puck magazine. Wellesley College vacillated, first banning the dance and then reversing course.

In the Massachusetts Legislature, Rep. Lewis Sullivan introduced a bill to outlaw the tango across the state. Like Henry McHenry, he traveled to New York to see a tango firsthand. He saw a sedate version of the dance. But he remained opposed to the dance in its more expressive forms.

By now, however, public opinion moved in the direction of the tango as people saw that it did no harm. With little remaining popular support for banning the dance, Sullivan’s proposal died in legislative committee.

Rudolph Valentino dances the tango

The tango soon became much more mainstream in the United States. Then it faded, only to be popularized again by Rudolph Valentino in the 1921 film, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Vice President Thomas Marshall would haul out the tango once again for political purposes. When a rival attempted to replace him on the ticket in 1916, rumors spread that the Missouri rival liked to dance the tango.

Vice President Thomas Marshall.

And in Catholic circles the dance remains controversial. When Pope Francis told reporters that he had danced the tango as a young man and still enjoyed the dance, his critics saw red and called him a weak successor to men like Pius X.

This story was updated in 2022.

1 comment 755 views