Taverns in Colonial Boston
Before the Revolution, the Tavern was the Center of Life in Boston
Jul 9, 2009
Taverns were where you might go to borrow a book, read a newspaper, and pick up mail. In a town without theaters, taverns were the main places of entertainment. In winter, a man could duck into a tavern to get warm. Taverns were also gathering places for many clubs and organizations of all kinds, including those where ideas about rebellion might be kindled.
John Adams found taverns to be disgusting dens of “idlers, thieves, sots, and consumptive patients,” according to The Colonial Tavern: A Glimpse of New England Town Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, by Edward Field. Perhaps so, but it’s hard to imagine the town functioning without them.
A man did not have to walk far to find a tavern. Boston, with a population of 16,000, had 32 “retailers of liquor” in 1769 and 23 in 1774, according to Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743-1776, by Carl Bridenbaugh.
The town awarded licenses to sell alcohol not only to conventional tavernkeepers but also to widows, especially war widows, in dire need. The awarding of a license to sell alcohol was a kind of welfare. Partly because of this practice, female tavernkeepers may have outnumbered their male counterparts, according to Bridenbaugh.
Most taverns were known by their distinctive signs. The sign at the Salutation showed two gentlemen bowing to one another. The Green Dragon had a dragon made of hammered metal projecting out from above the door. Of course, Cromwell’s Head displayed an image of Oliver Cromwell hanging low over the footway. It was said that Royalists would cross to the other side of the street just to avoid walking—and bowing--under that the picture of the great anti-Royalist leader, according to Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, by Esther Forbes.
Rum the Favored Drink; Loggerhead by the Fireplace for Flip
At most taverns, rum was the favored drink. Each tavern had its own rum punch recipe—with rum and limes as key ingredients. Other drinks might include cider, beer, applejack, and peach brandy.
Most taverns had a great fireplace, and by each great fireplace was a loggerhead or flip iron. This was a metal rod with an iron bulb at the end. This would be heated red hot in the fire and then thrust into a mixture of beer and eggs, creating an eruption of steam and bubbles and forming a drink called flip.
Many taverns had books that patrons could read in the tavern or borrow. Politics and history were favored subjects. Books at the Bunch of Grapes included an 11-volume history of England, essays by Jonathan Swift, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, according to In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts, by David Conroy. One or more local newspapers were generally available for anyone to read.
Because coins were always in short supply, Tavernkeepers each had a ledger to keep track of what patrons owed and what they paid. Debts might be paid back in cash but alternatively in goods or services.
No post offices existed, so travelers or post carriers with letters entrusted the mail to tavernkeepers. Tavernkeepers, to attract patrons, might permit scholarly lectures, or musicians to play, or unusual animals to be exhibited. In one tavern, patrons heard a “Philosophical Lecture of the Eye.” In another tavern, a moose was displayed.
Plans for Boston Tea Party Made at Green Dragon Tavern
Some patrons were women. A woman who considered herself a member of the elite social class might hesitate to enter a tavern. But other women did, including, of course, prostitutes. Mostly, however, taverns were gathering places for men, and mainly white men. Boston had regulations forbidding blacks, Indians and apprentices in taverns, according to Field.
Every night men, many men, all over Boston met in taverns to drink a rum toddy, to swap stories, to play whist or checkers or backgammon, to get out of the cold, to hear the latest news, to grumble, to boast, and maybe plan revolts. According to Forbes, the Green Dragon Tavern was where plans were worked out for the Boston Tea Party.
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