Early American Crime

In the fall of 1703, the owners of the 80-ton brigantine, the Charles, desperately wrote to various West Indies ports in an attempt to discover any information on the whereabouts of their new ship, but without success. This leading group of Boston merchants—Charles Hobby, Col. Nicholas Paige, William Clarke, Benjamin Gallop, and John Colman—built the […]

George Burns made one last desperate attempt to save himself: he wrote to the Attorney-General and named Ephraim Jones and Arthur Sykes as accomplices in a robbery that he had actually helped to pull off with three different men on July 29, 1766. The victim of the robbery, John “Ready Money” Scott, had mistakenly fingered […]

The “Enemies of Souls” had clearly taken control of Jeremiah Meacham in March of 1715. Meacham visibly possessed a troubled conscience and walked around in deep reflection. He became paranoid. He believed that all of his neighbors looked oddly at him, and he feared that somebody somewhere was out to kill him. He woke up […]