Knots of men and women fighting

From 1776 by David McCulough.  Page 123.

On April 22, less than a week after the Continental Army moved into the city, all hell erupted in the Holy Ground. The mutilated bodies of two soldiers were found concealed in a brothel. One of the victims had been “castrated in a barbarous manner,” as Bangs recorded. In furious retaliation, gangs of soldiers went on a rampage, tearing to pieces the building where the murders had taken place. Some days later, the remains of “an old whore” were discovered dumped in a privy, “so long dead that she was rotten,” as Bangs also recorded.

Washington condemned all such “riotous behavior.” Were it to happen again, the perpetrators would be subjected to the severest punishment. If they resisted arrest, they would be “treated as a common enemy,” meaning they would be shot dead on the spot.

He ordered a curfew and warned that any soldier found “disguised with liquor” would be punished. Still, it seems, business was business and not to be intruded upon. “Every brutal gratification can be so easily indulged in this place,” wrote William Tudor of Boston, Washington’s judge advocate, to his fiancée, “that the army will be debauched here in a month more than in “twelve at Cambridge.”

The whores, the trulls, “these bitchfoxly, jades, hags, strums,” as wrote another officer, Colonel Loammi Baldwin, continued “their employ which is become very lucrative.” Baldwin, an apple grower from Massachusetts, was one of the officers dispatched to the Holy Ground with military patrols, under orders to deal only with drunken or unruly soldiers—“hell’s work,” as he said. Since almost no soldiers had uniforms, it was all but impossible to distinguish who among the drunks and brawlers were soldiers and who were not, in dark, shadowed streets lit only by dim oil lamps. Baldwin and his patrol broke up “knots of men and women” fighting, cursing, “crying ‘Murder!’ ” and “hurried them off to the Provost dungeon by half dozens.” Some were punished and some “got off clear—hell’s work.”

Meantime, the army was “growing sickly.” Smallpox appeared and several soldiers died. Frightful rumors swept through the city, including one that the British had returned to Boston and taken Dorchester Heights. With more bad news from Canada, Washington was directed by Congress to send reinforcements. When approximately 3,000 men under General Sullivan departed by ship up the Hudson, Washington informed Congress he had to have at least 10,000 more.