Tragedy

July 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

New-Hampshire Gazette (July 30, 1773).

“Just Published, The PARTICULARS of the late Melancholy and Shocking TRAGEDY, which happened at Salem.”

The account of the “most distressing and melancholy Affair” of the drowning of three men and seven women, five of them reportedly pregnant, when their boat sank near Salem during a sudden storm on June 17, 1773, first appeared in the Essex Gazette on June 22 and then in the Boston Evening-Post on June 28 and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter on July 1.  News also spread beyond the colony where the tragedy occurred.  On June 25, Daniel Fowle reprinted the account from the Essex Gazette in the New-Hampshire Gazette, though some readers likely already heard some of the details via word of mouth.

As was the case in Boston, commemoration and commodification of the drownings, entwined so tightly as to render them inseparable, soon appeared in the public prints.  Ezekiel Russell first advertised a broadside “Decorated with the Figures of Ten Coffins” that related “The Particulars of the late melancholy and shocking TRAGEDY, which lately happened at SALEM” in the July 12 edition of the Boston Evening-Post.  Just three days later, Russell inserted the same advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy, adding a brief note about a second broadside, “An ELEGY on the affecting Tragedy at Salem.”  Fowle apparently acquired copies of the first broadside, which Russell sold “by the Groce,” to sell at his printing office.  A brief advertisement in the July 30 edition of the New-Hampshire Gazette announced, “Just Published, The PARTICULARS of the late Melancholy and Shocking TRAGEDY, which happened at Salem, near Boston, on Thursday, the 17th Day of June, 1773.”

Fowle did not include any of those “PARTICULARS” in the advertisement, nor did he publish any of the extensive memorial that previously appeared in the advertisements in the other newspapers.  Between the account in the New-Hampshire Gazette and conversations about the drownings, he may have thought that the broadside did not need additional explanation.  He also did not have the same financial stake in marketing the broadside that Russell did, likely accepting only as many as he anticipated he could sell.  Russell played on the proximity of the tragedy to Boston in marketing the broadside to readers of newspaper published in that city, though he did proclaim that it “is recommended as very proper to be posted up in every House in New-England, to keep in Remembrance the most sorrowful Event.”  Fowle, on the other hand, did not assert such urgency to readers of his newspaper.  He presented the broadside for prospective customers who might be interested, but did not make the same hard sell in Portsmouth as Russell did in Boston.

July 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Massachusetts Spy (July 22, 1773).

“An ELEGY on the affecting Tragedy at Salem.”

Three days after Ezekiel Russell first advertised a broadside “Decorated with the Figure of Ten Coffins” that gave the “Particulars of the late melancholy and shocking TRAGEDY,” the drowning of three men and seven women, “which lately happened at SALEM, near Boston, the 17th of June 1773,” in the Boston Evening-Post, he ran a similar advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy.  That new advertisement, repeated in the next issue, included all of the copy from the Boston Evening-Post with the addition of a note about a related item, “An ELEGY on the affecting Tragedy at Salem … By a friend to the deceased.”  These broadsides memorialized the deaths of ten colonizers, including five pregnant women, but they also commodified the tragedy in the form of a keepsake that Russell recommended as “very proper to be posted up in every house in New-England.”  To that end, he offered a similar deal for both broadsides to peddlers who purchased copies to sell near and far.  For the first broadside, the Particulars, Russell noted that “Great allowance is made to travelling Traders, who buy them by the Groce.”  For the other, the Elegy, he offered “an allowance to travelling traders.”

The broadsides each featured an image of ten coffins, each with the initials of one of the drowning victims, and thick mourning borders, but otherwise their contents differed.  In advertising them together, Russell suggested that customers might wish to acquire both as a means of memorializing “the most sorrowful event of the kind, that has happened in America since its first discovery.”  In addition, the broadsides expanded on the coverage that already appeared in newspapers published in Salem and Boston.  The Particulars included the report that first appeared in the Essex Gazette on June 22 as well as an introduction that reiterated the description in the advertisement first published in the Boston Evening-Post on July 12.  The “Names of the Deceased” appeared in the center, surrounded by mourning borders.  A short poem, “The Salem TRAGEDY.  Being a Relation of the drowning of Ten Persons, who were taking their Pleasure on the Water,” appeared below the newspaper account.  It consisted of five stanzas of four line each.  In addition to the ten coffins, an image depicted a strong gust of wind, so strong that it was visible, and a boat foundering in the water.  Mourning borders also surrounded that image.

The Elegy included a shorter introduction that gave the names of the victims and indicated their relationships to each other above a poem, fifteen stanzas in two columns with a double mourning border between them, and a remembrance attributed to “A FRIEND TO THE DECEASED.”  That anonymous friend stated, “Surely no one can fully express the horror and anguish of mind these People’s friends at MARBLEHEAD must suffer … resulting from this amazing catastrophe, and which must form such a shocking scene, that it can better be imagined than expressed.”  Yet neither that “FRIEND” nor Russell left the “Tragedy at Salem” to the imagination of consumers.  The “FRIEND” encouraged others to “make a right improvement” in the wake of “such an awful warning as this from GOD.”  Russell may have shared that perspective.  Whatever his views in that regard, he certainly leveraged current events in marketing a relic to consumers, playing on their emotions and curiosity about the extraordinary tragedy.

Detail from “The Particulars of the Late Melancholly and Shocking Tragedy” (Boston: 1773). Courtesy Library of Congress.

July 12

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Boston Evening-Post (July 12, 1773).

“The Particulars of the late melancholy and shocking TRAGEDY.”

Ripped from the headlines!  Just a few weeks after the “melancholy and shocking TRAGEDY, which lately happened at SALEM, near Boston, the 17th of June 1773,” Ezekiel Russell advertised a broadside commemorating the deaths of ten drowning victims, three men and seven women.  Compounding the tragedy, five of the women were pregnant, “two or three of them far advanced.”[1]  Several boats had departed from Salem’s harbor “on Parties of Pleasure,” including one boat that took its passengers to Baker’s Island, “where they went ashore, staid and dined.”  When the passengers boarded again, the boat sailed to another part of the island “for the Purpose of Fishing” and later anchored between Baker’s Island and Misery Island, “where they drank Tea.”

When the weather began to look threatening, they determined to try for Marblehead Harbour.”  As the wind intensified, the men recommended to William Ward, “the Commander of the Boat,” that he lower the sails, but Ward insisted that “the Boat would stand it.”  The passengers, “trusting his Judgment, thought proper to submit.”  The women huddled in the cabin, out of the wind and out of the way of the men attempting to get the boat to shore.  When a “sudden, smart Gust of Wind canted the Boat over on one Side,” one of the men, John Becket, had time to open the cabin door and warn the women that “they were all going to the Bottom.”  The Boat “instantly sunk.”  Becket and a “Lad about 15 Years old” were the only survivors.  Becket reported that heard the women shrieking in their last moments.  Observers on shore in Marblehead, about a mile distant, saw what happened and, “by their timely and vigorous Efforts,” launched a small schooner to retrieve Becket and the youth from the water, but it was too late to aid Ward and the women.

Russell presented an even more dramatic scene when he marketed the broadside, suggesting that the boat had been closer to shore than the newspaper accounts indicated.  “Shocking indeed must one imagine it for their Friends on the Shore at Marblehead, and at the small Distance of 100 Yards,” he proclaimed, “to behold these distressed People just launching into Eternity, and not able to afford them the least of their wonted Assistance!”  Ramping up his efforts to play on the emotions of prospective customers, Russell became even more melodramatic: “Surely the Shrieks and Cries of the poor drowning Souls, which seemed to reach the Heavens (especially the Lamentations of the Women, as the pregnant Situation of five of them made the Scene more dreadful) must pierce the Soul of the Spectator, and melt his Heart, even were it adamant!”  It was not Russell who was ghoulish in marketing this broadside, but rather readers who could learn of this “melancholy and shocking TRAGEDY” without it affecting them.  They could demonstrate that the events had indeed moved them by purchasing and displaying the broadside “Decorated with the Figure of Ten Coffins.”

The following day, colonizers from Salem and Marblehead located and raised the sunken boat.  They recovered the bodies of six of women, but did not find the bodies of Mrs. Diggadon and the three men.  They returned the bodies of the women to “the same Wharf from which so much Cheerfulness and Gaiety they departed the Day before.”  At the funerals, the “Solemnity of the several Processions drew together a vast Number of People” of “all Ranks” to mourn the victims of such a tragedy.

That account of the tragedy first appeared in the June 22 edition of the Essex Gazette, published in Salem.  Within the next ten days, the Boston Evening-Post reprinted the news on June 28 and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter did so on July 1.  Even if colonizers in Salem, Boston, and other towns did not read about the tragedy, they almost certainly heard about it given the way that local news, especially something as “melancholy and shocking” as these drownings, usually spread by word-of-mouth much more quickly than printers could set type.

Russell provided an opportunity for consumers to acquire a keepsake of the tragedy.  He anticipated that they would be eager to do so, offering “Great Allowance … to travelling Traders, who buy [the broadside] by the Groce [or Gross].”  In other words, peddlers who would disseminate the broadside throughout the countryside received a significant discount for purchasing by volume.  Russell claimed that he did not consider it macabre to advertise and sell the broadside, asserting that it was “printed in this Form at the Request of the Friends and Acquaintance of the Ten deceased Persons.”  To incite sales, whether at his shop or from itinerant peddlers, he suggested that it was “very proper to be posted up in every House in New-England, to keep in Remembrance the most sorrowful Event, of the kind, that has happened in America since its first Discovery.”  Even as Russell focused on the emotional response to such a harrowing story, he participated in the commodification of recent events, just as printers, booksellers, and others did following the Boston Massacre and the death of George Whitefield.

The Library of Congress makes an image of the broadside available to the public.

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[1] This narrative draws from the account in the Essex Gazette.  That account also appeared in the Boston Evening-Post and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and on the broadside.