On the 25th of January [1774] a great number of rioters in the town of Boston, committed a most inhuman act of violence upon the person of John Malcolm.
Parliament was considering how to “better [secure] the execution of the Laws, and the just dependence of the Colonies upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain” — that was what the King had asked them to do — and in the process, they were reviewing a number of letters, newspapers and reports about the American colonies. This particular account came from a letter from Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that would inspire the members of Parliament to be lenient toward the people of Boston in the aftermath of the Tea Party.
John Malcolm (or Malcom) was a customs officer, and he wasn’t very well liked. Not only was his job the sort that could easily make a man unpopular (since he enforced trade regulations), but he had a nasty temper. He had been tarred and feathered a few months before when he evidently pushed his authority too far, but apparently that hadn’t taught him to be more diplomatic. Here’s the account of his second run-in with a mob, as a Parliamentary committee recorded it:
This unfortunate man having afterwards been hooted at in the streets, was provoked on the 25th, by a tradesman, who, he alleged, had several times before affronted him, to strike him with his cane; in consequence of which a warrant was issued against him, but the constable not being able to find him, a mob gathered about his house in the evening, and having broke his windows, he pushed through the broken window with his sword, and gave a slight scratch to one of the assailants; soon after which the mob entered his house, lowered him by a rope from an upper chamber into a cart, tore his clothes off, tarred his head and body, feathered him, and dragged him through the main street into King Street, from thence to Liberty Tree, and from thence to The Neck, as far as the gallows, where they whipt him, beat him with sticks, and threatened to hang him. Having kept him under the gallows above an hour, they carried him back in the same manner, to the extremity of the north end of the town, and returned him to his own house, so benumbed by the cold, having been naked near four hours, and so bruised, that his life was despaired of.
The man that Malcolm hit with a cane was none other than George Hewes, one of the “Indians” who had destroyed the tea in Boston harbor a month earlier (see his account in my previous post). Hewes reportedly came upon Malcolm threatening to hit a boy with his cane; he tried to stop him, and Malcolm decided to hit him instead. That was the spark that started the mob on fire that day, but they wouldn’t have gone so far if Malcolm hadn’t already been so unpopular. As the Parliamentary record put it, “Mr. Malcolm [had] for some time before been threatened by the populace with revenge for his free and open declarations against the late proceedings [such as the Boston Tea Party, and] had occasionally indiscreetly given them provocation.” That was putting it a bit mildly; but to Parliament, it was just one more stick on the fire; it encouraged them all the more to punish Boston harshly for the Tea Party.
For more on Malcolm’s tarring and feathering, see The Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr (an odd name but a valuable resource) or The Epic Tarring and Feathering of John Malcom.
Source
American Archives, Series 4, Volume 1, p. 31.