Rainsford Island: a Boston Harbor Case Study in Public Neglect And

© RAINSFORD ISLAND A Boston Harbor Case Study in Public Neglect and Private Activism First Printing September 3, 2019 Revision December 6, 2020 Copyright: May 13, 2019 William A. McEvoy Jr, & Robin Hazard Ray Dedicated to my wife, Lucille McEvoy 2 © Table of Contents Preface by Bill McEvoy ....................................................................................................................... 4 Introductory Note by Robin Hazard Ray ................................................................................................ 1. The Island to 1854 .................................................................................................................................... 9 2. The Hospital under the Commonwealth, 1854–67 ............................................................................... 14 3. The Men’s Era, 1872–89 ......................................................................................................................... 31 4. The Women’s Era, 1889–95 .................................................................................................................. 43 5. The Infants’ Summer Hospital, 1894–98 ............................................................................................... 60 6. The House of Reformation, 1895–1920 ................................................................................................. 71 7. The Dead of Rainsford Island ........................................................................................................ 94 Epilogue .................................................................................................................................................... 110 Appendix 4. 2: Inventory of Rainsford Island, 1890………………………………………………………………………….116 Appendix 7.2: Known burials at Rainsford Island…………………………………………………………………………….122 Pictures…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..154 Cover illustration: Sweetser, M. F. (Moses Foster), 1848-1897, Charles George Copeland, illustrator, and Moses King. King's Handbook of Boston Harbor. Cambridge Mass. Moses King, publisher, p 181 3 © Preface by Bill McEvoy I first became acquainted with Rainsford Island, located in Boston Harbor, during my research on the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery, also known as the Sand Banks Cemetery, located in Watertown, MA. That four-year study, which began in February 2012, included recording the cemetery’s history, as well as gleaning all available vital statistical information on the 23,205 people interred there. Nearly all of the 5,311 Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery’s burial lots were sold between 1854 and 1864. From 1854 to 1881, 81 percent of those buried there died in Boston. With a few exceptions, all were Irish immigrants who had fled the great famine of the late 1840s, or their descendants. That research made me aware of the hardships that newly arrived immigrants faced: poor living conditions; scanty health care; a lack of skills that allowed most to only work as laborers; dangerous working conditions; a prejudiced press, law-enforcement, and judicial system; and an extremely high rate of childhood mortality. Between 1854 and 1881, 49 percent of the 15,562 people buried at Catholic Mount Auburn died before age 6; 44 percent were under 4. The cause of death for 306 was listed as “teething.” Between 1856 and 1893, thirty-six of the people buried at the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery were noted as dying at Rainsford Island. Their ages ranged from nine months to eighty-six years. James Tubman, nine months old, died in 1863 at Rainsford Island from starvation. Prior to going to Rainsford, he had been Baptized at St. Joseph Church, Boston. Mary E. Sullivan, died in 1858 at Bennett Avenue [sic], Boston, from lung inflammation. She was born at Rainsford Island. What was Rainsford Island and why did so many indigent Irish immigrants die there? After a cursory review of the City of Boston Records of Death, as well as an attempt to determine the extent of work done by other researchers, I put those questions on hold while 4 © working on the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery project. With that work completed in February 2016, I was at last able to turn to Rainsford.1 Methodology My research on Rainsford Island involved many sources. Using online resources, I found over 1,000 newspaper articles and scholarly articles from the early 1800s to 1984 that included the words “Rainsford Island”. I reviewed all the City of Boston’s Records of deaths from 1800 to 1920 for mentions of the island, and I read every available governmental report from the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that mentioned it. I searched the Military records of Ancestry.com to discover the names of Civil War Veterans connected with the place and any who may have been buried there while still on active duty. Photographs and illustrations gleaned from various archives and databases helped to visualize the changing island landscape. I visited the City of Boston Archives for information on Rainsford Island, and I wrote to, as well as, personally searched the City of Boston cemeteries to see whether anyone originally buried at Rainsford Island may have been reinterred at another cemetery. The collections of the Boston Public Library turned up a limited amount of information on Rainsford Island, including historical maps. The City of Boston’s Archaeologist, Joseph Bagley, and other written sources, helped me figure out the former placement of buildings on the island. With the exception of the base foundation of the former piggery and the scattered foundations of one old hospital, no structures remain. Rainsford Island changed hands and uses many times. It was owned privately from 1636 to 1736. Thereafter it passed through various forms of governmental ownership, beginning with the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, followed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the City of Boston. Today the island is part of a National and State Park. 1 The database, methodology, and PowerPoint presentation from that project are available on the website of Historical Society of Watertown, MA. The database is also held at Boston College’s Irish Studies Collection. All are welcome to utilize it. I request only that I be acknowledged as the source. 5 © Per the National Park Service’s Boston Harbor Islands web page: “The Boston Harbor Islands Partnership, together representatives from nonprofit organizations, federal agencies, and city and state government oversee the day-today operations of the Boston Harbor Islands. The Partnership meets regularly to report on island activities and develop overall strategies for this national and state park area.” The island’s complex history is best told by segmenting the various uses of the island, from fishing spot to summer retreat to sanitorium. Its story took a sinister turn in 1854, when the island started to be used as an off-shore dumping ground to deal with the mass immigration from Ireland. At first, the term “quarantine” was used to justify the segregation of unwanted persons far from any family or civic oversight. Later this exile became a matter of course, with hundreds shipped to the island “hospital”—a great misnomer. Though historic anecdotes allude to the later removal of the dead from Rainsford Island, I believe that more than 1,777 bodies remain there in unmarked graves (see Chapter 7). That total includes a War of 1812 Sailor; 9 Civil War soldiers who died on active duty; and 109 Veterans of the Civil War who died between 1873 and 1893. Fourteen of those were African American Veterans. One of those African American Veterans was Stephen Ennis, a musician from Montrose, PA. He was paid $50 for enlisting in the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment—the first in the Union to recruit African Americans—joining the Regiment on March 27, 1863, and serving until August 20, 1865. He died at Rainsford on August 12, 1882. One can look at the magnificent Memorial to the 54th Regiment on Boston Common by sculptor Augustus Saint- Gaudens and think, perhaps, Ennis is the drummer portrayed leading the marching soldiers. It is bitter to conclude that Ennis died forgotten at a place like Rainsford and lies there still in an unmarked grave. To quote another man who died on a different “godforsaken island” (Napoleon Bonaparte), “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” * * * 6 © There are two heroes whose efforts resulted in the City of Boston terminating the use of the Rainsford Island as a warehouse for the poor, the unwanted, and the mentally ill. Alice North Towne Lincoln (1853–1926) began her efforts to provide proper housing for the poor in 1879, at the age of 26, the year before she married. In 1890, she stepped up her efforts to reform Boston’s Public Institutions, including Rainsford Island and the Long Island Hospital, which opened in late 1887. Her dogged complaints at board meetings and letters to the editors of Boston newspapers resulted in the Boston Board of Aldermen holding fifty-eight days of hearings between May 15, 1894, and December 28, 1894. The record of those hearings totals 3,700 pages (see Chapter 4). Mrs. Lincoln was represented, pro-bono, by our second hero, Attorney Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941), later an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He remained for all of the hearings and actively participated in the presentation of witnesses and evidence to support Mrs. Lincoln’s charges. His deft cross-examination of the Board of Aldermen’s witnesses, most of whom simply wanted Mrs. Lincoln

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