Citizens and Students Observe Bicentenary Of Boston Massacre

Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the Boston Massacre.

Early last evening, 100 citizens assembled at the site of the Massacre in front of the Old State House to commemorate the event.

At about the same time, 50 students turned up in Lowell House Courtyard to hear John W. Curtis '70 read a transcript of the address delivered by Joseph Warren on March 5, 1772, on the first anniversary of the Massacre.

Speaking at the Massacre site, Boston attorney Charles H. Lewis remarked that since the time of the war of Independence, "troops have never been stationed by a foreign government in Boston."

But Curtis noted in his address that "the ruinous consequences of standing armies to free communities may be seen in the histories of Syracuse, Rome, and many other once-flourishing states."

Worse?

Dressed in tri-corner hat, colonial waistcoat, knee knickers, and silk stockings, Curtis expounded on the horrors of the British armed occupation : "our beauteous virgins exposed to all the insolence of unbridled passion. and our virtuous wives falling a sacrifice to worse than brutal violence."

A few minutes after Curtis began to speak. a group of Tory renegades unfurled the Union Jack from Lowell Tower, then emerged and dragged the rebel away.

Curtis'speech was preceded by a five-minute dirge sounded in the Lowell bell tower by the Lowell House society of Russian bell ringers.