Boston
was first discovered by an European when John
Smith explored the New England coast in 1614. However it did not
become an established settlement until the arrival of John
Winthrop with 700 immigrants from England in 1630. Boston was
an early centre of Puritanism and in 1865 established America's first
public school. The Shawmut Peninsula, where the town was settled,
was originally nearly completely surrounded by water.
The long shoreline provided ample space for wharves and shipyards.
In 1800 the Boston Naval Shipyard was built and the waterfront was
extended, with Black Bay being dammed (1818-21).
The growth of Boston as an industrial area attracted a large number
of immigrants. It was especially popular with the Irish and in 1906
John Francis Fitzgerald became the
mayor Boston. In doing so, Fitzgerald became the first mayor in the
United States whose parents had been born in Ireland.
He now joined forces with his former rival, Patrick
Joseph Kennedy, to run the city. Fitzgerald's daughter, Rose
Fitzgerald, was later to marry Kennedy's son, Joseph
Patrick Kennedy: the parents of John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Kennedy
and Edward Kennedy.
James Curley was elected mayor of Boston.
in 1914. This period of power ended in 1918 but he served again from
1922 to 1926 and 1930 to 1934. Although he was twice sent to prison
and was generally believed to be a corrupt politician, Curley was
popular with the large Irish population in Boston.
However, his opponents described him as the "Irish Mussolini"
The city includes former neighbouring towns: Roxbury, West Roxbury,
Dorchester, Charleston, Brighton and Hyde Park. Boston is 46 square
miles (119 square kilometres) and in 1990 had a population of 574,283.
(1)
In 1849 a Health Committee investigated a cholera
epidemic in Boston. The committee reported that the disease had badly
affected the Irish population in the
city.
The average age of Irish life in Boston does not exceed fourteen
years. In Broad Street and all the surrounding neighbourhood, including
Fort Hill and the adjacent streets, the situation of the Irish is
particularly wretched. During their visits last summer, your committee
were witnesses of scenes too painful to be forgotten, and yet too
disgusting to be related here. It is sufficient to say, that the whole
district is a perfect hive of human beings, without comforts and mostly
without common necessaries; in many cases, huddled together like brutes,
without regard to sex, or age, or sense of decency: grown men and
women sleeping together in the same apartment, and sometimes wife
and husband, brothers and sisters all in the same bed.
(2)
Rosalind
Franklin, letter to Charlotte
Franklin (31st August 1954)
Boston prides itself on being a cultural centre and
really to some extent is
so. The public library is beautifully laid out around a large pseudo-Italian
courtyard and fountains, with seats around where people sit and read
and keep cool on hot evenings. There is even one-half of the courtyard
reserved for non-smokers.
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