The Dark Side of Boston - 90 Minute Walking Tour

There are 37 brick tombs under the church, the first of which was built in 1732. Wealthy parishioners began to commission personal tombs. There is also Tomb 14: the ‘strangers’ tomb’— where anyone, regardless of social status, could be interred through the intercession of a benefactor. In 1820, the area was quite full with 33 tombs, so they built under the Vestry, but by 1845, it was necessary to reuse the space and remove coffins. Church leaders were not loath to sweep out the bones after a few decades and replace them with fresh ones—all in the name of cash flow in a fast-changing society. In 1853, a City ordinance closed the tombs to further burials for health concerns. This was an era of relocating services due to the stench. But wardens disregarded the law on occasion, presumably for a fee. A skeleton was found in the cellar when the first tomb was built; its coffin plate read ‘Mr. Thomas’— a family that was among the founders of Christ Church.

Dr. John Warren’s son, Dr. John Collins Warren (1778–1856), a founder of Mass. General Hospital in 1811, wrote about a body snatching incident from his medical school days in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. While Dr. John Collins Warren was in college in 1796, he began procuring bodies for dissection. When he heard a man without relations was to be buried at Copp’s Hill, he and some associates set out to dig up the body. They reached the spot at 10:00 at night. They started digging, but thought they were in the wrong place, so went to a different grave. Then they decided they were right the first time and went back to the first grave. They uncovered the coffin by breaking it open. Then they took the body of “a stout young man” and put it in a bag.

Many smallpox epidemics have occurred in world history. In Cotton Mather’s lifetime, three of his children nearly died in one such wave of the virus. In 18th-century England, the disease of Variola major (smallpox) was referred to as the speckled monster, as after the patient was strickent with weakness, fever, pain and chills, a spotty bumpy rash would cover the patient and eventually erupt into oozing blisters and pustules. Frequently patients would have these pox on the face and inside the eyelids. After a few weeks the blisters would dry and scab off leaving the victim with pitted scars. In Boston, 6 out of every 10 people who contracted the disease died, often due to systemic shock from body-wide infection and due to a buildup of toxins in the blood (toxemia). Even those who survived smallpox often had long-term complications as a result such as severe scarring or blindness (Massmoments.org, 2020).

Brinks was America’s biggest money mover. In the 1950s when large companies paid their employees, they paid in cash. So the company would hire Brinks to deliver the cash to distribute on pay day. Brinks had a reputation for security, but their practices had grown lax. Tony Pino was under suspicion for robbery and burglary when he took an interest in Brinks and began observing the Brinks’ operations. “He set up a telescope on the roof of 109 Prince St., with a direct line of vision into the garage. He learned every detail of the company’s daily routines: how the money was brought in, counted by Brink’s employees, stored in the vault, and locked up. He also studied the habits of the guards, including their bathroom breaks. To expedite the break-in, he removed a cylinder from one of the Brink’s office doors and rushed it to his locksmith friend who created a key. Pino went back and carefully reinstalled the cylinder, one door at a time, and obtained all the keys for the 5 locked doors.”