Bunker Hill

Mary Dill Thomas on a trip to Portsmouth and back in which they spent no less than five nights together in as many taverns and guesthouses. In divorce papers he filed two years later, Thomas recounted how his wife had defiantly told him that she “would roast in hell rather than give [Thompson] up.”
    The affair was unsavory and no doubt embarrassing for Thomas, but at least he could claim that he had done nothing wrong. Such was not the case, however, when it came to the carefully guarded secret held by Dr. Joseph Warren.
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    March 30 was sunny and very cold, with a few showers of wispy snow, as noted by Dr. Nathaniel Ames of Dedham in his diary. He also recorded that he traveled to Boston that day to visit his good friend Joseph Warren. Whether on March 30 or a week or so later in early April, Ames returned to the tavern he owned with a new boarder, whom he described in his account book as Warren’s “fair
incognita pregnans
.” The girl’s name was Sally Edwards, and she was about six months pregnant. If two letters Mercy Scollay later wrote, in which she refers to Edwards as a “little hussy” and a “vixen,” are any indication, Scollay did not have much sympathy for the woman’s plight. Given that Sally Edwards ended up living with the same family that took in Warren’s oldest daughter, Betsy, it’s possible that Edwards had been a nanny for Joseph Warren’s children.
    There is also the possibility that Sally Edwards had become pregnant by another man, and that Warren was providing her with a discreet safe haven. In all likelihood, however, in mid- to late September 1774, when Warren was caught up in the excitement of the Powder Alarm and the Suffolk Resolves, he got a young woman named Sally Edwards pregnant.
    When Mercy Scollay learned of this indiscretion is an open question. Warren’s account book reveals that he treated Scollay several times in September 1774, including two visits in a single day, during which he treated her with ipecac, an emetic used until quite recently to induce vomiting after a poisonous substance has been ingested. In the eighteenth century, however, ipecac had an additional use based on the ancient belief that disease was the result of an imbalance in four essential humors: blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile), and black bile. Too much of any one humor created physical as well as emotional problems. For example, too much black bile meant that you suffered from melancholy; too much phlegm and you were stolid or phlegmatic. It was up to the doctor to restore the balance in the humors. Bleeding was one popular way to bring the levels back in sync, as was purgation, and ipecac was used to reduce the levels of choler through vomiting. This meant that about the time Warren may have had sexual relations with Sally Edwards, he was treating Scollay for excessive anger and irritability.
    Scollay’s last recorded visit to Warren’s office was on March 19, 1775, and within a few weeks’ time, Sally Edwards was safely tucked away at the Ames tavern in Dedham. By then, or soon after, Joseph Warren and Mercy Scollay had agreed to marry.
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    On March 30, the same sunny, unseasonably cold day that Dr. Nathaniel Ames traveled from Dedham to Boston, General Hugh Percy led the First Brigade on a march into the countryside. All winter, Gage had been sending the soldiers on brief forays out of Boston. They provided much-needed exercise for the regulars and accustomed the surrounding towns to having soldiers in their midst. This might prove beneficial to Gage when he launched a truly decisive move against the patriots. Lulled into a state of relative placidity by the previous exercises, the country people wouldn’t realize that the operation was the real thing until it was too late.
    But on March 30, that all changed when at six in the morning, Percy marched across Boston Neck with the one thousand soldiers under his command in the First Brigade. Lieutenant John Barker recorded in his diary that “it alarmed the people a good deal. Expresses were sent to every town near.” What Joseph Warren described as “great numbers, completely armed” appeared on the roads around Boston. At the bridge at Cambridge, the boards were pulled up to prevent the soldiers from crossing the Charles River. At Watertown, the next town on the river beyond Cambridge, two pieces of artillery were positioned at the bridge in anticipation of the troops’ arrival. No trouble occurred, however, and by