The Secret History of Boston

[LMNO]

OK.  I gotta finish Scollay, then I'll look into that.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

OK.  I gotta finish Scollay, then I'll look into that.

It's a hoot, actually.  Took me a minute to spot the weird bit.

[LMNO]

Once again, time passed.  Scollay Square became a hotspot for entertainment and shopping for the next hundred years or so.  Ok, that's not entirely true.  It really roared along through the end of the 19th and early part of the 20th century, but Prohibition left its mark on the square (as it usually does).  Almost from the get-go, speakeasies and underground clubs appeared in the heart of the square (the earliest reported was a hole-in-the-wall on Court Street in March of 1920).

That thumbprint of decadence and licentiousness left its mark for decades, and as the more respectable businesses stayed away, the area became the go-to spot for sailors on leave, college students looking to blow off some steam, and general reprobates.  And the place to see the best shows was at the rebuilt Old Howard.  Interestingly, as the neighborhood around it sunk into a series of cheap bars and roughly-patched flophouses, the Old Howard thrived, hosting boxing matches (the great Rocky Marciano famously took out Lee Epperson in three rounds there in 1948) and vaudeville slapstick shows (The Marx Brothers, Abbot and Costello).

But what really drew in the crowds was the girls.  Seats would be packed as scantily-clad women pranced about on stage.  And as the years passed, the girls became more daring.  To curry favor with the (largely male, but with time, more than a few women started showing up) audience, they competed with each other with how much they showed, how much they teased, the types of acts and props used.

The owner at the time, Scott Sherman, was also the Master Warden of The Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, and the founder of the lodge at Boston University.  The shows were bringing in quite a lot of funds, and he wasted no time building additions to the Old Howard, private boxes and booths, event rooms set off from the main auditorium, and even separate entrances, so the better-heeled could attend the shows without fear of being spotted.

Things couldn't last, of course, and in 1953, while a young woman named Mary Goodneighbor was doing something highly questionable with what appeared to be Red Sox souvenirs, she was filmed by an undercover police officer.  A raid soon followed, but the records collected from the raid were never released to the public and were said to have been destroyed (it should be pointed out that the Police Chief at the time was Joseph McGinnis, a fellow Mason).

Even though the theater had officially closed by the end of 1953, one could still see a lot of traffic around the Old Howard, such as delivery trucks (ostensibly for the deli next door) and there was no shortage of Ford Thunderbirds and Studebaker Coupes easing slowly down the crowded streets.  No one was ever really seen entering the theater late at night, but one could see men with dark cloaks milling up and down the street, and although no one was seen walking away, there would be fewer and fewer of them on the street, until none were left. 

This went on until one night on June 20, 1961.  Screams were heard coming from the theater, and passerby smelled smoke.  The alarm was raised, and fire crews rushed to the scene.  The fire was small, and produced quite a lot of smoke, but was able to be contained relatively quickly.  The emergency crews appeared shaken, however, and when police arrived, they immediately cleared the square.  Though the fire was small, and didn't do much structural damage, it was quickly ordered condemned and was razed to the ground within a week.

On a related note, the Church of the Covenant in Copley Square, not too far away, worked closely with the Avon Home, a Cambridge orphanage.  On June 21, 1961, seventy-three orphans were recorded as having been admitted to the Avon Home, the largest single admittance in their history.  All of the children were reported to be malnourished and suffering greatly from a great variety of physical and mental trauma.

In the end, the government took over the square and renamed it Government Center.  The new city hall is built directly on the spot of the Old Howard.  Many have commented on the bizarre architecture, likening it to the Lincoln Memorial flipped on its head, draped in concrete, and jammed into the middle of what appears to be the bleakest city plaza built in the last century.  But what people don't recognize is that, when you exit the subway facing City Hall, the negative spaces around the building, and the haphazard laying of the brick in the plaza resembles those sigils found on the roadways of Jamaica plain, built more than 200 years ago... with luck, they'll hold.




End.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

That gave me the chills at the end!

[Eater of Clowns]

Oh that is chilling. Now is that the end of just Scollay Square or is that the end of the whole series?

[LMNO]

I'm thinking the whole thing, as I've circled back to the first chapter. Plus, I'm thinking of doing something with it, but I'm not sure how just yet. I want to find a dummy URL, semi-believable name, upload the chapters, and then try to make it go viral by cross-posting it on FB/social media. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Wow.


That was worth waiting for.

[LMNO]

Thank you. That's high praise.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Brrrrr. That was awesome! It reminded me of something, maybe a factoid you can do something with. I'll go dig it out of the book I read it in.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Excerpted from "Monkeyluv" by Robert Sapolsky:

To begin to make sense of hospitalism, one must consider that in numerous traditional societies, newborns are not given names until they are a number of months or years old. This explanation is because of extremely high infant-mortality rates -- wait until the child has actually managed to survive before personifying it with a name. A similar cultural adaptation could have existed early in the twentieth century in American foundling homes, institutions for abandoned or orphaned children. This was because of their staggeringly high mortality rates. In 1915, one physician, Henry Chaplin, canvassed ten such places in the United States and reported numbers that didn't require a statistician to be detected -- in all but one institution, every child died before two years of age.

[Junkenstein]

Excerpted from "Monkeyluv" by Robert Sapolsky:

To begin to make sense of hospitalism, one must consider that in numerous traditional societies, newborns are not given names until they are a number of months or years old. This explanation is because of extremely high infant-mortality rates -- wait until the child has actually managed to survive before personifying it with a name. A similar cultural adaptation could have existed early in the twentieth century in American foundling homes, institutions for abandoned or orphaned children. This was because of their staggeringly high mortality rates. In 1915, one physician, Henry Chaplin, canvassed ten such places in the United States and reported numbers that didn't require a statistician to be detected -- in all but one institution, every child died before two years of age.

Holy fuck. What conclusions did they come to regarding the causes of that death rate?

Moving this book up the list.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Excerpted from "Monkeyluv" by Robert Sapolsky:

To begin to make sense of hospitalism, one must consider that in numerous traditional societies, newborns are not given names until they are a number of months or years old. This explanation is because of extremely high infant-mortality rates -- wait until the child has actually managed to survive before personifying it with a name. A similar cultural adaptation could have existed early in the twentieth century in American foundling homes, institutions for abandoned or orphaned children. This was because of their staggeringly high mortality rates. In 1915, one physician, Henry Chaplin, canvassed ten such places in the United States and reported numbers that didn't require a statistician to be detected -- in all but one institution, every child died before two years of age.

Jesus....

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Excerpted from "Monkeyluv" by Robert Sapolsky:

To begin to make sense of hospitalism, one must consider that in numerous traditional societies, newborns are not given names until they are a number of months or years old. This explanation is because of extremely high infant-mortality rates -- wait until the child has actually managed to survive before personifying it with a name. A similar cultural adaptation could have existed early in the twentieth century in American foundling homes, institutions for abandoned or orphaned children. This was because of their staggeringly high mortality rates. In 1915, one physician, Henry Chaplin, canvassed ten such places in the United States and reported numbers that didn't require a statistician to be detected -- in all but one institution, every child died before two years of age.

Holy fuck. What conclusions did they come to regarding the causes of that death rate?

Moving this book up the list.

It was very simple, actually; the same thing that happened in orphanages in Romania during the era of compulsory fertility, but for different reasons. According to the prevailing experts in child development at the time, picking up or touching or playing with babies was bad for them, something mothers only did out of foolish sentimentality. We applied our new knowledge of germ theory and sanitation to childrearing. It was also very common for young children who were hospitalized for any reason to die, especially the children of the rich, because they were placed in the very most modern sterile incubators and isolated from any human interaction.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Wasn't that called "turning their face to the wall"?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wasn't that called "turning their face to the wall"?

Shiver. I've never heard that term for it, but OMG it gets me on my spine.