Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (26 page)

As early as
1
768 American patriots began collecting reports of sexual abuses by British soldiers. In response to colonial unrest because of the unpopular Townshend Acts, British troops landed in Boston that September, creating in effect a garrison city. Con tinuing friction between the soldiers and the local populace even tually culminated in the famous Boston Massacre, but from the moment the British forces landed, an anonymous group of Ameri cans-Henry Knox, the Greenleafs, John Adams and Josiah Quincy may have been among them-secretly prepared a weekly account of city life under military rule and distributed their reports to sympathetic liberal newspapers in Boston, New York and London. The weekly unsigned column, known as A
Journal of the Times
or A
Journal of
Occurrences, appeared in print for more than a year, terminating as suddenly as it began. The Journal, according to one historian, was "the first systematic gathering and retailing of news found in American newspapers," a sort of pre-wire-service syndi cation.

It
was the patriots' stated purpose to show what happens to a city under "the insolence of power." Among the news items they gathered to give evidence of "the great impropriety and grievance of quartering troops in town
11
was a considerable amount of attempted rape. Continuing sexual harassment of Boston's women by the British forces was viewed by the patriots not as a series of unrelated, irrational acts performed by boisterous soldiers, but as an integral part of colonial oppression. "Perhaps," they wrote, "by treating the most respectable of our inhabitants in this sort, it is intended to impress our minds with formidable ideas of a military government, that we may be induced the sooner to give up such trifling things as rights and privileges." Some relevant items:

November 9,
1768:
A married woman living in Long Lane, returning home in the night, was seized
by
the neck and almost

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AGAINST OUR WILL

strangled, she was then thrown upon the ground and treated with great indecencies. Another woman at New Boston was rudely handled . . . . The mention of such abuses as these is by no means intended to insinuate a want of care in the commanding officers, but to show the great impropriety and grievance of quartering troops in the town . . . . These are times in which no inhabitant knows what ground he stands upon, or can call his own.

December
12,
1768: A
married lady of this town was the other

evening, when passing from one house to another, taken hold of by a soldier, who otherways behaved to her with great rudeness.
A
woman near Long Lane was stopped by several soldiers, one of whom cried out seize her and carry her off; she was much surprised, but luckily got shelter in a house nearby. Another woman was

pursued by a soldier into a house near the north end, who dared to enter the same, and behave with great insolence. . . . These are further specimens of what we are to expect from our new con servators of the peace.

April
30, 1769: The quartering of troops in the body of a town is as ruinous to the soldiery as it is distressing to the inhabitants; every day furnishes out instances of their debaucheries and con sequent violences. As an aged woman at the north end of Boston was setting the other evening in a lower room, having no person in the house with her, a soldier came in and seeing her have a Bible on the table before her, he expressed his approbation of her piety and attempted a kind of exposition upon some parts thereof. But soon dropping this discourse, he acquainted her that he had a bad swelling on his hip and should be glad of her advice. While the good woman was attending to his relation, this abandoned wretch seized her by the shoulders, threw her upon the floor, and not withstanding her years, attempted a rape upon her, which was prevented by the resistance and screams occasioned by his brutal behavior. He thought it proper to hurry off, taking with him a bundle of shirts and other linen, which had just been sent into the house for washing and ironing, a business which the person followed to obtain a livelihood.

May 17, 1769:
A
woman at the north end enter'd a complaint

with Mr. Justice Ruddock against a soldier and some others for a violent attempt upon her, but a rape was prevented by the timely appearance of a number of persons for protection, when the soldier made his escape.

July 3,
1769: On Tuesday morning the 27th of June, a woman going to the south market for a fish stopt at the shop of Mr. Chase, under Liberty Tree, appearing to be faint. They got some water, but

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on raising her up she died instantly. A jury of inquest was sum moned, and upon examination she appeared to be one Sarah John son, of Bridgewater, on whom it appeared by evidence and several marks that violence had been perpetrated the 24th inst. by soldiers unknown, which probably was the cause of her death. Several physicians who were called in upon the occasion declared that upon examining the body, they observed sundry livid spots, which evidently demonstrated violence. From the combined appearances, upon opening the body, they were of the opinion that she had been recently ravished, and had resisted to the utmost; and that the over exertion of her strength might probably terminate in a syncope or faintness, which they thought might be the immediate cause of her death.

A cavalier view from the other side was recorded when the American Revolution was in full swing by Captain Francis Rawdon, who wrote to his uncle, the Earl of Huntingdon, in August, 1776, that he appreciated Southern women because they did not publicly take issue after being raped by British soldiers. As for the women of Staten Island, they were "fair nymphs" for the British soldiers, who were "as riotous as satyrs. A girl cannot step into the bushes to pluck a rose without running the most immi nent risk of being ravished, and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don't bear them with the proper resignation, and of consequence we have most entertaining courts martial every day."

By contrast a terse communique from Colonel George Measam to General Anthony Wayne in January, 1777: "The enemy make great devastation in their retreat, burning without distinction Tory's as well as Whig's houses. Great part of Prince town destroyed. Tory's as well as Whig's wives and daughters ravished and carried off with them."

The British and Hessian campaigns in New York and New Jersey were the most notorious for abuses against civilians, and

accounts of rape were sometimes written up by correspondents for the
Pennsylvania
Evening Post.

Since I wrote to you this morning I have had an opportunity of hearing a number of the particulars of the horrid depredations committed by that part of the British army which was stationed at and near Pennytown, under the command of Lord Cornwallis.

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Besides the sixteen women who had fled to the woods to avoid their brutality and were there seized and carried off, one man had the cruel mortification to have his wife and only daughter (a child of ten years of age) ravished; this he himself, almost choked with grief, uttered in lamentations to his friend, who told me of it, and also informed me that another girl of thirteen years of age was taken from her father's house, carried to a barn about a mile, there ravished, and af terwards made use of by five more of these brutes. Numbers of instances of the same kind of behavior I am assured of have happened . . . . Another instance of their brutality hap pened near Woodbridge: one of the most respectable gentlemen in that part of the country was alarmed by the cries and shrieks of a most lovely daughter; he found an officer, a British officer, in the act of ravishing her. He instantly put him to death; two other officers rushed in with fusees, and fired two balls into the father, who is now languishing under his wounds.

An unsigned contemporary narrative of the battles of Trenton and Princeton, written in
i
777, described specific burnings, rob bings and plunderings during
"26
days of tyranny" and then remarked:

The Damages Done by these Plunderings and Desolations must amount very high and Occasion much Trouble to the Suf ferers. Yet they are Vastly short of Another Horrid Outrage that I have not yet mentioned, I mean the Ravishing of Women, which by a Great Defect in Human Nature that is against both Justice and Reason We Despise these poor Innocent Sufferers in this Brutal Crime Even as long as they live. In time of Peace to avoid so miserable and lasting Reproach I am of the Opinion That many honest virtuous women have suffered in this Manner and kept it Secret for fear of making their lives miserable and so many of those Capital Crimes escape Punishment.
In
time of War when those Unnatural Miscreants are sure of Getting off with Impunity they commit them the more frequently.

The anonymous narrator took note of the ravishments already mentioned in "the Friendly Post" and added "Another Tretcher ous Villany":

There was two of Gen. Howe's light Horsemen Quartered at Pensneck about two miles from Princetown Who Pretended to a

RIOTS, POGROMS AND REVOLUTIONS
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Young Woman that they was Searching for Rebels, and had been Informed that some of them were Secreeted in the Barn and desired her to go with them and Show them the most Secret Places there. And She ( Knowing that no body was there) to convince them, Went to the Barn with them to show them that no body was there. And when they had got her there, one of them Laid hold on her Strangled her to Prevent her crying out while the Villain Ravisht her, and when he had done, he Strangled her Again While the Other Brute Repeated the horrid crime upon her again. She is a Farmer's Daughter but her
·
name with her Father's must be kept Secreet to Avoid the Reproach above Mentioned.