Boston, MA
250 years ago, Boston was besieged, hungry, and desperate – The Boston Globe
The fighting at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had come and gone, and life in the encircled Massachusetts capital was consumed by simple, daily worries about finding enough to eat and scraps of wood, and steeling oneself for brutal fighting that seemed certain to come.
“A lot of people really feared that that would be Boston’s end, that it would end in some fiery conflagration,” said Jonathan Lane, executive director of Revolution 250, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization.
Thousands of people had fled before shots rang out at Lexington Green, and many Loyalists flocked to the town for safety. But after the British sealed off the town completely, those who remained either pledged allegiance to King George III, were neutral, or sympathized with the rebels and had stayed to safeguard their property.
Among the latter was Paul Revere’s teenage son, who remained to protect the family’s North End home.
The siege was harrowing, hungry, and pocked with alternating spells of boredom and horror. Civilians were barred from entering or leaving through a fortified gate that stretched across narrow Boston Neck, near today’s South End intersection of Washington and East Brookline streets.
Looking at Boston today, those day-to-day trials are hard to imagine. But in Lane’s estimation, those days were the most challenging in Boston history.
“The town was in a shambles,” said Peter Drummey, chief historian at the Massachusetts Historical Society. “The poor soldiers were taking anything that wasn’t nailed down.”
The long siege did not end until the British army, startled by the sudden appearance of Continental Army cannon on Dorchester Heights, evacuated Boston in March 1776 and sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with 1,000 refugee Loyalists.
Their exodus put a close to “the last time Boston was under direct attack in its history,” noted John L. Bell, an author and Revolutionary historian from Newton.
Before the town’s liberation, Lane said, “there was very little work and very little income and you couldn’t leave.” There also was hyperinflation that drove up the price of everything and sporadic provisions that could arrive only by ship.
Privation extended to British troops, as well. In one possibly apocryphal story, an officer was said to have shot his horse to feed his soldiers and himself.
“They’re tearing down houses and fences and anything that will burn to feed the fire to keep the army warm,” Lane said.
Little evidence of the siege remains in modern Boston, where streets and lanes that cross-crossed the Colonial peninsula were buried long ago under pavement and development.
Remains of British fortifications have vanished from Boston Neck, for example. So, too, have the Continental Army’s lines near the Eliot Burying Ground close to Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury.
One building that remains from the siege now holds the Union Oyster House, whose first floor had been a dry-goods business owned by Hopestill Capen, a Loyalist. Another vestige is the time-altered outline of some rebel earthworks in East Cambridge.
“It’s hard for us to see the siege in the urban landscape,” Lane said. Still, he added, “it’s one of few Revolutionary stories where communities like Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Brookline, Charlestown, Medford, Somerville, Cambridge are part of the story.”
Those communities are connected to the Continental Army rebels who had encircled Boston from Chelsea to today’s South Boston, trapping the British and their residents inside the town with only the sea as a lifeline.
For Bostonians inside that cordon, their town had taken on a beleaguered, bedraggled appearance. Grass had begun to grow in the streets, shops and warehouses had closed, and most of the town’s Congregational ministers had fled from an occupying force that disdained their religion and its puritanical underpinnings.
“That is what I admire most,” Lane said, “just the fortitude of these people to stand there day after day, not knowing how it will end, necessarily.”
The Reverend Andrew Eliot, one Congregational minister who remained, lamented the damage done to Boston and the large number of his friends and parishioners who had fled.
“Where these scenes will end, God only knows,” Eliot wrote shortly after the siege had begun. “But if I may venture to predict, they will terminate in a total separation of the colonies from the parent country.”
Another Bostonian who stayed, John Andrews, wrote his brother-in-law in Philadelphia that those who had left the town would “forfeit all the effects they leave behind.”
“Its hard to stay coop’d up here … more especially without one’s wife,” Andrews wrote. “But at the same time, [I] would not wish to have her here under the present disagreeable circumstances, though I find an absolute necessity to be here myself, as the soldiery think they have a license to plunder every one’s house and store.”
Andrews also lamented the Bostonian diet under siege.
“Was it not for a trifle of salt provisions that we have, ‘twould be impossible for us to live. Pork and beans one day, and beans and pork another, and fish when we can catch,” he wrote.
Peter Edes, 18, kept track of his 107 days of confinement in a Boston jail. The apprentice son of a Revolutionary printer in Boston, Edes had attracted attention for his rebel sympathies as he watched the British retreat from Concord and the costly assault at Bunker Hill.
On Aug. 15, 1775, he wrote from jail: “Close confin’d, the weather very hot. Died, Capt. Walker, a prisoner taken at Bunker’s Hill,” Edes said. “The place seems to be an emblem of Hell … The worst man-of-war is nothing to be compar’d with this diabolical place.”
During Edes’ time as a prisoner, only 11 of 29 Americans who had been wounded at Bunker Hill and confined near him would survive.
The importance and impact of the siege are not widely known, historians said.
“What would you do in this situation?” asked Bell, the Revolutionary author who writes the “Boston 1775″ blog. “We can still identify with people fighting for liberty and being driven from their homes.”
For Drummey, the Massachusetts Historical Society historian, the siege is an “inflection point” that “is obviously an important event, not only in Boston but for the Revolution.”
When General George Washington and the Continental Army entered Boston after the siege, Drummey said, their improbable victory had lifted hopes among sympathetic Americans and morale among the army.
“People now really thought it was possible that a civilian army could defeat a professional army,” Drummey said. “They thought, we have done this already. We are a going concern.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.
Charlotte Hornets (31-31, ninth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Boston Celtics (41-20, second in the Eastern Conference)
Boston; Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. EST
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Celtics -6.5; over/under is 214.5
BOTTOM LINE: Charlotte is looking to keep its five-game win streak alive when the Hornets take on Boston.
The Celtics are 27-13 against Eastern Conference opponents. Boston is sixth in the NBA with 46.2 rebounds led by Nikola Vucevic averaging 8.8.
The Hornets are 19-21 in conference matchups. Charlotte is 7-8 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 15.0 turnovers per game.
The Celtics average 15.5 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.7 more made shots on average than the 12.8 per game the Hornets allow. The Hornets average 16.0 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.1 more made shots on average than the 13.9 per game the Celtics allow.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jaylen Brown is averaging 29 points, 7.1 rebounds and five assists for the Celtics. Payton Pritchard is averaging 17 points and 5.8 assists over the past 10 games.
Kon Knueppel is averaging 19.2 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists for the Hornets. Brandon Miller is averaging 22.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists over the past 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Celtics: 8-2, averaging 109.4 points, 50.7 rebounds, 27.1 assists, 6.1 steals and 6.4 blocks per game while shooting 45.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 98.5 points per game.
Hornets: 7-3, averaging 117.3 points, 47.8 rebounds, 27.4 assists, 8.5 steals and 4.2 blocks per game while shooting 45.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 106.2 points.
INJURIES: Celtics: Jayson Tatum: out (achilles), Neemias Queta: day to day (rest).
Hornets: Coby White: day to day (injury management).
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Today is a First Alert weather day. A system to our south is pushing mix of snow and rain into southern New England through this evening and tonight.
For us here in Greater Boston, expect snow to continue spreading over our area through the afternoon/evening commute. In fact, parts our area could see up to 1 to 2 inches of snow accumulation before the sleet and rain move in.
Much of Greater Boston will likely see snow amounts on the lower end. Higher snow amounts are expected toward southern New Hampshire and along and north of outer Route 2. Also, some ice accumulations are possible, up to a tenth of an inch, creating a thin glaze here and there.
Dozens of schools in Connecticut and Massachusetts have already announced early dismissals as a result of the storm.
While this system won’t cripple our area, conditions could still create a mess on the roads during the evening commute through tonight. Be careful while driving. A Winter Weather Advisory remains in effect for parts of our area through early Wednesday morning. High temperatures will be in the mid to upper 30s today. Overnight lows will drop into the low 30s.
We’ll wake up to patchy fog Wednesday morning before the sun returns. High temperatures will be in the upper 40s. We’ll stay in the 40s on Thursday with increasing clouds. But by late Thursday night into Friday, wet weather returns. Some snow could mix with the rain into Friday morning. Highs will be in the upper 30s Friday.
Warmer weather is expected this weekend. Highs will be in the 50s Saturday and possibly near 60 on Sunday.
Boston, MA
Boston police officials dominate the list of highest-paid city workers in 2025 – The Boston Globe
That was more than what every other city department spent on overtime combined, though it was a slight drop from the $103 million the police department spent on overtime in 2024.
High overtime spending inside the police department has long been controversial and a source of frustration for police-reform advocates. Last year’s nine-figure total comes as Mayor Michelle Wu warns of a challenging budget season to come for the city, which is grappling with inflation and the possibility of more federal funding cuts.
In a December letter, Wu told the city council that she instructed city department heads to find ways to cut 2 percent of their budgets in the next fiscal year. She also imposed a delay on new hires. Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper has also proposed cutting somewhere between 300 and 400 positions next fiscal year due to budget constraints.
Overall, the city spent about $2.5 billion on employee salaries in 2025, up around 1.5 percent from $2.4 billion in 2024. The city employs roughly 21,000 workers, according to a public dashboard.
In a statement, Emma Pettit, a spokesperson for Wu’s office, attributed the payroll increase to raises, and in some cases, employees receiving retroactive pay, that were part of contracts the city negotiated with its various labor unions.
“We’re grateful to our city employees for their hard work to hold Boston to the highest standard for delivering city services,” Pettit said.
When Wu won her first mayoral race in November 2021, all of the city’s 44 union contracts had expired. Since then, Wu’s office has negotiated new agreements with all of them, and last year, agreed to a one-year contract extension with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union.
But as the city heads back to the bargaining table to negotiate extensions or new contracts with others, city leaders should keep cost at the forefront of those conversations, said Steve Poftak, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-backed budget watchdog group.
“As budgets tighten, I’m hopeful that it increases the scrutiny on these collective bargaining agreements,” Poftak said.
The top earner on the city’s payroll last year was Boston Police Captain Timothy Connolly. In addition to his $194,000 base salary, Connolly took home nearly $230,000 in overtime, about $26,000 in undefined “other pay,” and roughly $49,000 as part of a higher-education bonus, for a total of $498,145 in compensation.
Skipper, as BPS superintendent, was the 55th-highest earner among city workers, coming behind 54 members of the police department. She made a total of $378,000 in 2025.
Nearly 300 city employees made more than $300,000 last year. In contrast, Wu made $207,000, though her salary increased to $250,000 this year. More than 1,700 city employees made more than the mayor in 2025.
Larry Calderone, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, argued that the high overtime costs in the police department are, in part, a result of understaffing.
The department is short roughly 400 rank-and-file police officers, Calderone said, meaning the department has to pay its staff to work overtime and fill vacant shifts. The average salary for an officer in the BPPA is roughly $195,000, Calderone said.
With several large events approaching, including a Boston-based fan fest around this summer’s World Cup matches and the return of a fleet of tall ships to Boston Harbor, Calderone said most of the members of his union are likely to be working the maximum allowable 90 hours a week.
“We just don’t have the bodies on the street,” he said.
The Boston Police Department and the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation — the union that represents the department’s sergeants, captains, and lieutenants — did not immediately return requests for comment Monday.
Jamarhl Crawford, an activist and former member of the Boston Police Reform Task Force, said while high spending on overtime is not new for the police department, it’s a pressing problem the city should tackle.
The police and fire departments are “essential components of the city and society in general … [and] folks should be getting a fair wage. But it also has to be within fiscal responsibility,” Crawford said.
“In another 10 years,” he continued, “with pensions and everything else, this type of thing can bankrupt the city.”
Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold. Yoohyun Jung can be reached at y.jung@globe.com.
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