Boston Massacre Occured on March 5, 1770, Marking Severance of the British Empire

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The Boston Massacre Monument
Tremont Street on the Boston Common
Near the Visitors Information Center and Parkman Bandstand
MBTA: Red Line to Park Street Station

Irishman Patrick Carr was one of five people shot to death in front of the Old State House on State Street on March 5, 1870 after a scuffle between colonists and British solders erupted into gunfire.  The Boston Massacre, as it became known, was the flash point for the American Revolution.  Daniel Webster said it marked "the severance of the British Empire" in the minds of the American colonists.

Little is known of Carr, except that he was an Irish immigrant in Boston and likely a Roman Catholic.  Because he was Irish, he was alleged to have been a "mob expert" by prosecutor Samuel Adams during the trial of the British soldiers who opened fire.  Ironically the soldiers were part of an Irish regiment from Dublin, led by Captain Thomas Preston, an office of the 29th Regiment of Foot.

Carr lingered for over a week and was the last of the five to die.  On his deathbed, Carr admitted that the colonists had instigated the episode, thus preventing vigilante justice from occurring.  Carr was buried on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, at the Old Granary Burying Grounds, where all five victims are buried together.

In the 1880s an effort to build a Boston Massacre Memorial to honor the victims was led by John Boyle O'Reilly, Mayor Hugh O'Brien, Patrick Collins and other Irish Bostonians.  In spite of objections from certain Bostonians who considered the five victims rabble-rousers, the memorial was built and unveiled in November 1888.  O'Reilly recited a poem for the occasion entitled Crispus Attucks, a reference to the Black man who was among the five victims. 

The bronze monument, created by artist Robert Adolf Kraus, features a trampled British crown, chains of bondage, an American flag and an eagle.

Also of Interest:

The actual site of the massacre itself is in front of the Old State House at the corner of State and Washington Streets.  A medallion of cobblestones on the sidewalk marks the spot.  

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