Maj. Scarborough Gridley’s useless artillery service at the Battle of Bunker Hill.2 (click to enlarge)

Maj. Gridley had failed to cross Charlestown Neck during the battle and instead took up position where he gave little service, uselessly barraging the Armed Transport Symmetry. His court-martial seemed to go smoothly and without much opposition. His sentence appears in Gen. Washington’s General Orders, Sept 24, 1775:

Major Scarborough Gridley, tried at a late General Court-Martial, whereof Brigadier-General Greene was President, for “being deficient in his duty upon the 17th of June last, the day of the action upon Bunker’s Hill,” the Court find Major Scarborough Gridley guilty of a breach of orders. They do therefore dismiss him from the Massachusetts service; but on account of his inexperience and youth, and the great confusion which attended that day’s transaction in general, they do not consider him incapable of a Continental Commission, should the General Officers recommend him to his Excellency.

The General confirms the dismission of Major Scarborough Gridley, and orders it to take place accordingly.

My opinions on this come from my forthcoming book, 1775:

Disobedience of a direct order during a critical battle is a serious charge, and the fact that Maj. Gridley was still eligible for a commission in the just forming Continental Army seems unfair in comparison with Callender’s sentence. But as his respected father, Col. Richard Gridley, commander of the artillery regiment, had announced his plans to leave the service back on July 3 (Force 4:2:1477–78), one cannot help but wonder if the softer sentence for Maj. Gridley was in part due to reverence for his father, whose favor and service the court hoped to retain. Familial connection and influence was still strong in the young American military. Of course, Maj. Gridley still needed a general officer to endorse him for future service, and whether none would or he never sought it, Scarborough seems to have never served in the Continental Army.

Likewise, Col. John Mansfield, who had been ordered to reinforce the troops at Charlestown, but who decided he would instead keep his regiment near the artillery, to “support” Maj. Gridley’s position of safety, was court-martialed and cashiered from the service for dereliction of duty.

Finally came Capt. Samuel Gridley’s court-martial sentencing, this Gridley being the cousin of Scarborough and nephew to the colonel… (Final post of this 3-part series in 3 weeks!)

The Adams 3-pounder field cannon mounted inside the top of the Bunker Hill Monument obelisk. However, this cannon probably did not serve at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

First, pending the various investigations into the conduct of the artillery officers, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress ordered on June 23, 1775:

That the Committee of Safety be directed to make out a new list for Officers of the Train of Artillery, and that no person unworthy of the office be appointed.

In consequence, Maj. Scarborough Gridley, though nominated for the first major position in the artillery by his father Col. Richard Gridley, was knocked down a peg and confirmed as second major. Even so, his investigation was on-going.

Next came the courts-martial of Capt. Samuel Gridley and Capt. John Callender, both having the undesirable distinction of being party to the first trials after the Battle of Bunker Hill. Capt. Gridley’s hearing was postponed for a time, but Callender’s went quick. As it finished, Gen. Washington arrived and took command of the various provincial armies. Callender thus had the dishonor of being party to one of Washington’s first acts as commander-in-chief. As given in Washington’s General Orders, July 7, 1775:

It is with inexpressible concern that the General, upon his first arrival in the Army, should find an officer sentenced by a General Court-Martial to be cashiered for cowardice a crime of all others the most infamous in a soldier, the most injurious to an Army, and the last to be forgiven; inasmuch as it may, and often does happen, that the cowardice of a single officer may prove a destruction of the whole Army; the General, therefore, (though with great concern, and more especially as the transaction happened before he had the command of the Troops,) thinks himself obliged, for the good of the service, to approve the judgment of the Court-Martial, with respect to Captain John Callender, who is hereby sentenced to be cashiered. Captain John Callender is accordingly cashiered, and dismissed from all further service in the Continental Army as an officer.

The General having made all due inquiries and maturely considered this matter, is led to the above determination, not only from the particular guilt of Captain Callender, but the fatal consequences of such conduct to the Army and to the cause of America.

However, the story of Callender does not end there.

Quoting from Swett’s Bunker Hill 57–58 (first and third paragraphs below)¹ and Frothingham’s Siege 185 (second paragraph below),² this is what happened next:

Notwithstanding this, our hero resolved to compel the world to acknowledge, by his future conduct, that his past had been mistaken. He continued with his corps as a volunteer, and desperately exposed himself in every action. The brave and beneficent Knox [Col. Gridley’s replacement as head of the Artillery] extended to him his friendship. At the battle on Long Island, the Capt. and Lieut, of the artillery company, in which he served, were shot; he assumed the command, and refusing to retreat, fought his pieces to the last; the bayonets of the soldiers were just upon him, when a British officer, admiring his chivalrous and desperate courage, interfered and saved him.

He was taken prisoner by the enemy, August 27, 1776. He remained over a year in the hands of the British. A touching petition, dated September 15, 1777, was addressed to the government of Massachusetts by his wife, in his behalf. ‘Your petitioner,’ it says, ‘with four helpless infants, is now, through the distress of a kind and loving husband, a tender and affectionate parent, reduced to a state of misery and wretchedness and want, truly pitiable.’ Her devotion had found a way of relief, by an [prisoner] exchange, and it was successful.

Washington expressed the highest approbation of his conduct, gave him his hand and his cordial thanks; ordered the sentence of the court martial to be erased from the orderly book, and restored him his commission. He held this during the war, and left service at the peace, with the highest honour and reputation.

Meanwhile, Capt. Samuel Gridley’s court-martial was inexplicably stretched on for months. But Maj. Scarborough Gridley’s fate in the artillery was soon coming to an end… (Part 2 of this 3-part series in 3 weeks!)

1. Samuel Swett’s The History of the Bunker Hill Battle, With a Plan (Boston: Munroe and Francis, 1826, 2nd ed. [orig. 1818]).
2. Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1872, 3rd ed.).

Back in mid-October, Sam generously sent me several Warren Russets apples, which are a variety of apple first cultivated by the father of the famous revolutionary Dr. Joseph Warren III. The irony in that saying, “Just what the doctor ordered”, was not lost on me, as Dr. Sam Forman is indeed a medical doctor, and the kind note he included with the apples looks almost like a prescription.

Warren Russets next to a Fuji Apple

This particular variety of apple was both a blessing and a curse to Dr. Joseph Warren’s father, Joseph Warren II. In one sense, the apples helped to increase the farm sales and sustain the family income. But in these apples were also sealed the fate of farmer and father Joseph Warren II. Per the newspaper Boston News-Letter, Oct 30, 1755, p. 3:

As Mr. Joseph Warren [II] was gathering apples from a tree, standing upon a ladder at a considerable distance from the ground, he fell from thence, broke his neck, and expired in a few moments.

The green Warren Russet apples (pictured here next to a modern Fuji apple), known by many other names, including Roxbury Russets, Boston Russets, Warren Pippins, etc, are still grown in New England today. Sam Forman, who has the good fortune to live in Boston, generously sent me several of these green apples of antiquity, though he noted that during the colonial era, most apples were used for cooking rather than eaten raw.

Russet Apples Letter (or Prescription) from Dr. Sam Forman

Nevertheless, I decided to bite into a raw one. I had never seen these apples, and did not know they still existed. (Proof that Sam’s new biography is well researched!) Here’s what I thought of them (yes, I took notes, like some apple connoisseur, which I am not):

The exterior was slightly rough, with a almost paper-like skin. Upon biting into it, the apple itself was semi-crisp, though one could press into it slightly with one’s thumb. It was not crisp enough to shear off in chucks as you bit into it, like many modern crisp apples do. It was not particularly fragrant. It had a hint of tartness, but had a classic “apple” taste, though with almost a hint of flavor of a Bartlett Pear. It was not particularly acidic and had mild sweetness. There was no aftertaste.

So, it seems, apple cultivation has come along way, with the modern varieties more suited to eating raw. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience, and the apples themselves were also enjoyable, though I especially appreciated the opportunity to nibble on something unique from Dr. Joseph Warren’s childhood. (More about these apples and Dr. Warren’s childhood in Sam’s bio.)

Perhaps, given the time of the year, it’s worth noting, in 1775, that those who had apple pie for the holiday season might have used Warren Russets.

And so I leave you with this: Happy Holidays!

Warren Russet apple cut in half

Copies of the bi-monthly magazine can be found at many Barnes & Noble stores. But better yet, you can buy it online, and save a buck over bookstore prices. It is just $5.00, including shipping, if you order it at the magazine publisher’s website. And for those to prefer it digitally, the magazine is also available on the Android market for your smart phone.

Thank you for your continued support as I and my agent try to find 1775 a publisher!

‘Patriots of the American Revolution’ magazine — Nov/Dec issue

This post concludes a 4-part series (read part 3) delving into the particulars of the death of Dr. Joseph Warren, which includes posts by guest contributor Dr. Sam Forman, author of the biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (pictured to the right), which is due out December 1. –Derek

As we have discovered, thanks to the thorough research of guest blogger Sam Forman, the entry hole in the front of Warren’s skull was of a bullet about 0.54 caliber, much smaller than the expected 0.75-caliber hole of a common Brown Bess smoothbore musket, as was standard issue to the British soldiers in 1775. So then, who killed Joseph Warren?

I had my suspicions, but decided to get an expert involved. You may be familiar with him if you have ever watched Pawn Stars on The History Channel. His name is Sean Rich, owner of Tortuga Trading Inc., an expert in small arms and armour, and frequent guest expert on Pawn Stars and for other Hollywood creations such as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Sean Rich (far left), expert in small arms and armour, frequently featured expert on The History Channel’s “Pawn Stars”, advised in the writing of this article. Image courtesy of Sean Rich.

From a conversation I had with Sean on June 2, 2011, here are some facts that he shared with me.

First, I asked Sean if the bullet could have been smaller than the standard 0.75 inches, but still fired by a Brown Bess. Sean informed me that the balls had to be standard, otherwise the supplying of the soldiers would have been logistical chaos. Sean also politely informed me that the Brown Bess bullet was actually more like 0.71 inches in diameter, as there had to be an allowance for windage (a gap between the barrel diameter and the ball, to account for imperfections in these handmade items). I really did not think the fatal shot, given the size, was fired by a Brown Bess, but thought it best to ask the expert.

I then asked Sean about fusils, those smaller smoothbore rifles that some, especially junior British officers, carried with them into battle. Maj. Gen. Henry Clinton deplored the use of the fusil, writing:

I reprobated the use of the fusee [fusil] for officers, argued that an officer has enough to do to keep his platoon together… [he] became instead of their chief the worst soldier in his platoon that he would have no dependence on his men & they no confidence in him, but this had been too long an American custom.¹

1856 Photos of Dr. Joseph Warren’s Skull (revealing a shot entered from front and exited the back of skull). These copies courtesy of the family of Lester L. Luntz, D.D.S., refined by the author.2 Re-use of these images require permission!

According to Sean, most fusils were about 0.64 caliber and had shorter barrels than the Brown Bess. Okay, most fusils fired shots that were too big. I asked the important questions, but now I moved to the type of weapon that I had all along suspected was the one used to kill Dr. Warren…

I asked Sean, what about a pistol?

Sean informed me that pistols of that era varied widely, but were typically from 0.50 to 0.68 caliber. This equates perfectly with the evidence of the bullet entry hole in the front of Warren’s skull.

And who typically had pistols? Generally only British officers. Certainly not the common soldier.

Sean added that pistols were single shot, so whoever fired it would have wanted to not waste his shot unless he was sure to make it count. I asked, what was the range of a typical pistol then? Sean said the lethal accurate range was “maybe as little as 20 feet, or less… though it could have been a lucky shot from 50 feet away”. Sean then stressed, whomever fired the shot, unless it was fired from very close indeed, it was just a lucky shot, as smoothbore guns (be they pistols or muskets) were very inaccurate.

Yet, given the limited range and thus low muzzle velocity of these weapons, and given there is a large exit wound out the back of the skull, everything points to the shot being fired from very close indeed.

I also asked Sean, if pistols varied so much, how did officers get the appropriate balls? Did their servants make them ahead of time, on demand? Sean said officers typically got boxed sets (of two pistols) including all the accouterments to manufacture the balls. So yes, the servant probably did the labor, as all you needed was some molten lead, which was widely available.

0.44-caliber British Nicholson over-and-under flintlock pistol, c. 1770, on display at the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington DC. This is representative of a pistol of that era, though its caliber is too small to have been like the one that killed Dr. Joseph Warren.

So there we have it, case closed. Or is it?

Sean gave me a few other thoughts. One alternative could have been a Loyalist, fighting with the redcoats, who brought his own gun to the field. Also, while there is little support for this, perhaps some colonial Loyalist had at that early battle a Kentucky rifle, which typically fired a 0.45 to 0.50-caliber ball, had great accuracy and range, and could have been fired accurately from even 100 yards away, by some sniper picking off Yankees at his leisure. And then there is another alternative: the shot could have been friendly fire. (If true, that might explain why no one could quite recall how or where Joseph Warren died! No one wanted to admit the truth!) Most muskets carried by the colonials (including any Loyalists on the field) were relics of the French and Indian War of more than a decade earlier, and many were not well maintained, and most were handed down from father to son. The size and variety of these guns varied quite a bit. While I and Sean both doubt these alternatives are true, we must admit one thing: we cannot know for certain. (Sam Forman keenly points out another reason to doubt a friendly fire incident: the Americans were retreating from their redoubt on Breed’s Hill because they had run out of ammunition. So few shots were coming from the Americans at this point in the battle.)

So then, who shot Dr. Joseph Warren?

The most likely conclusion is that the fatal shot was fired from a pistol. Pistols were primarily carried by British officers and came in a variety of sizes. But one old yet reliable secondary source, citing an unknown British account, claims Warren’s shooter was “an officer’s servant”, who was afterwards “instantly cut to pieces” by the Americans.³ This is the only one of very many eyewitness accounts of Warren’s demise that involves a British officer’s weapon, so only it is likely to be the true one. The idea of an officer’s servant having fired the fatal shot is very plausible, as there were many servants on the battlefield, for which we have a few accounts, though we know little about their role. As it seems unlikely any civilian servant would have been so armed, since any combatant not in uniform would have been treated as a spy if captured, it must have been a soldier servant (a batman) or an aide. Whoever the shooter, they did not use a standard Brown Bess musket but rather a pistol. And they were likely wearing a red coat. Nor did they not live to tell of their cowardly exploit.

The following video gives a nice video summary of this blog series.

Next Month: The Courts-martial of the Massachusetts Artillery officers following the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1. Clinton MSS loose sheet in front of Box 280 “I was not a Volunteer…”, Clinton MSS, Clements Library, Univ. of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
2. Third generation skull photos taken of the lost originals by Dr. Luntz for his 1973 Handbook for Dental Identification, published by J. B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia. The Luntz copies are now in Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine, Boston. Original daguerreotypes probably taken on May 6, 1856.
3. Richard Frothingham’s Life and Times of Joseph Warren 519–20, citing an unknown British account of July 5, 1775 (thus not likely biased; this is not the Letter of a British Officer, July 5, 1775 cited in my Bibliography).
   True, the Americans were running out of ammo at the end of the Battle of Bunker Hill, but only those in the redoubt, not those covering the retreat that had been along the redoubt’s breastwork and the rail fence.

This post is part 3 (read part 2) of a 4-part series delving into the particulars of the death of Dr. Joseph Warren, which includes posts by guest contributor Dr. Sam Forman, author of the forthcoming biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (pictured to the right), due out December 1. –Derek

I am happy to be continue as a guest blogger, addressing the facts and legends of Joseph Warren’s heroics at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In the course of writing the upcoming definitive biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty, I based my brief account of Warren’s battlefield demise in part on an extensive forensic analysis of the old pictures of Joseph Warren’s skull. These are some of the oldest known medical or anatomic photographs, so employing them in all-new forensics constitutes an unusual application of forensics.

1856 Photos of Dr. Joseph Warren’s Skull (revealing a shot entered from front and exited the back of skull). These copies courtesy of the family of Lester L. Luntz, D.D.S., refined by the author.1 Re-use of these images require permission!

Derek Beck remarked that Joseph Warren’s fatal entry wound, above the left upper false teeth in the maxillary bone of the skull, seemed smaller than one might expect of a British infantry musket ball. Those balls were cast of lead, about ¾ of an inch in diameter, or 0.75 caliber. “Caliber” is firearms-speak for the diameter of gun barrels and their projectiles, expressed in hundredths of an inch. By comparison, a fearsome modern gun considered to be a large caliber is a 0.44 caliber magnum revolver (often the decimal is dropped when spoken, thus a “44 magnum”). The old British infantry muskets fired a much larger projectile.

But we have a big problem. How could one say for certain what the size of the entry wound was, or anything in the old picture for that matter, without knowing the scale of the picture? The photographer did not put a ruler into the frame, a circumstance leaving us without reliable numbers for the sizing of anything.

Or does it? What if we could obtain average measures of a large number of similar Caucasian, adult male skulls of Northern European origin, and approximate a scale for the old picture and Warren’s skull? If we could do this, our estimated scale would be data-based. We could have some confidence in the sizes of things, and any inferences we might draw from them that may be of importance to Joseph Warren’s story. Does anyone have a few dozen white male heads lying around?

Indeed, someone has. Several decades ago a Harvard anthropology professor — the late W. W. Howells — took hundreds of thousands of measures of statistically large numbers of skulls of men and women of various races and ethnicities, to the delight of physical anthologists, forensic pathologists, plastic surgeons, and others interested in the fine points of skulls.²

A standard musketball of the colonial era, 0.75 caliber, like those bullets fired by the Brown Bess as carried by the common British soldier. The flat spot on the ball is likely due to the ball’s mold having not been completely filled when it was cast, rather than indicative of, say, an impact into a skull.

Professor Howells noted that adult skull sizes are much less likely to be impacted by nutrition and other environmental factors in the way long bones are. Heredity rules relative to the size of your head.

Digging deeply into Professor Howell’s tabulations, I found detailed data on over 150 Northern European skulls of  white men who died in recent centuries. Included were 55 Norwegian skulls from the Anatomical Institute of the University of Oslo, 54 Hungarian skulls from the Natural History Museum of Budapest, and 56 Austrian skulls from Carinthia. Of Howell’s various measurements, Orbital Breadth (OBB) varied the least among these three Caucasian groups. What variation there was among the skulls was quantified statistically with standard deviations. OBB was 40.4 millimeters (range 38.95–43.24, +/- 2 standard deviations) for the middling population, the Norwegians.

Returning to Warren’s skull photos, I concentrated on the 7/8ths frontal view, having it manipulated digitally to a full frontal view. This eliminated the distortion intoducerd by the rotated angle. Putting calipers to the picture, I measured the relative size of Joseph Warren’s OBB at 139 pixels; and the fatal entry wound at 47 pixels.

Using Howell’s actually-measured average OBB, I could set up a ratio calculating the size of the entry wound. Recalling for some of us 6^th grade arithmetic:

Dr. Warren’s OBB in pixels is to the entry wound in pixels, as average OBB in millimeters is to X in millimeters, where X is the diameter of the entry wound.

Cranking the numbers and applying the confidence interval, the entry wound was 1.37 centimeters or 0.54 caliber (range 0.50–0.58 caliber, +/- 2 SDs). 0.54 caliber is considerably smaller than the 0.75 caliber Brown Bess standard infantry musket. Even allowing for some noise in the methodology, 0.54 caliber is much smaller than 0.75. A penetrating entry bullet wound through bone could not possibly be smaller than the projectile that made it.

I want to assure the reader that this “Crime Scene Investigation” approach was deep background to my definitive new biography of Joseph Warren. I did it to rest the account of Dr. Warren’s heroic demise on a rock-solid foundation. It was all the more important because what really happened was very unlike most eyewitness accounts, contemporary beliefs, legends, and standard history books.

The Conclusion Next Monday: So just who killed Dr. Joseph Warren?

1. Third generation skull photos taken of the lost originals by Dr. Luntz for his 1973 Handbook for Dental Identification, published by J. B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia. The Luntz copies are now in Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine, Boston. Original daguerreotypes probably taken on May 6, 1856.
2. Howells, W.W. Cranial Variation in Man — a Study by Multivariate Analysis of Patterns of Difference among Recent Human Populations. Vol. 67, Appendix C. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1973.

This post is part 2 (read part 1) of a 4-part series delving into the particulars of the death of Dr. Joseph Warren, which includes posts by guest contributor Dr. Sam Forman, author of the forthcoming biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (pictured to the right), due out December 1. –Derek

I am happy to be a guest blogger, addressing the facts and legends of the foundational early Revolutionary period. Not only are its personalities and tales compelling, but these comprise the story and defining issues of our country, issues that resonate today.

In the course of writing the upcoming definitive biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty, I too encountered the old pictures of Joseph Warren’s skull. They are so macabre as to invite doubt of their validity. Derek Beck’s, J.L. Bell’s and my research, all approached from different directions, reveal that these relic pictures are exactly what they purport to be. So what kind of pictures were the originals, who took them, exactly when, and why?

Warren’s Tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston

Standard histories state that Joseph Warren was buried four times: once into a hasty battlefield grave by the British, again in April 1776 in the Granary Burial Ground in the Minot family crypt, a third time in 1825 in the Warren family crypt at St. Paul’s Church in downtown Boston, and a fourth time in 1855 at Forest Hills Cemetery. Photography, introduced to the world in 1839, could only have been associated with the last of the re-interments.

Further, a photograph taken around 1855 would most likely have been a daguerreotype, taken in a photographic studio or under very bright natural lighting conditions. The firms of Albert Southworth and Josiah Hawes, and that of John Adams Whipple and James Wallace Black, were the two dominant photographic studios in Boston in the 1850’s. Southworth and Hawes took the famous Ether Dome photographs of the first use of anesthesia during surgery in 1847. Joseph Warren’s influential and quirky medical professor nephew was associated with those ground-breaking medical photographs. John Collins Warren I (1778–1856) was the same person, according to his journals archived at the Massachusetts Historical Society, who had his uncle’s remains dis-interred on August 3, 1855. John Collins Warren’s son, Jonathan Mason Warren (Joseph Warren’s grandnephew), probably had the photos taken sometime prior to the final reburial of their ancestor’s remains at Forest Hills Cemetery on August 8, 1856.¹

1856 Photos of Dr. Joseph Warren’s Skull (revealing a shot entered from front and exited the back of skull). These copies courtesy of the family of Lester L. Luntz, D.D.S., refined by the author.3 Re-use of these images require permission!

Why would Warren’s physician descendants go out of their way to take pictures of the head of Joseph Warren? They did not write of their motivations, but we can make an educated guess. The Victorian era Warrens were proud of their Revolutionary War heritage. Additionally, phrenology, a quasi-science asserting that skull contours explained personality traits, was all the rage in both medical and pop culture circles. Given the medical proclivities of the family, it is understandable that the Harvard Medical School professors, father and son, would want to capture images of their illustrious ancestor’s skull on film. John Collins Warren I was an odd duck, who liked all kinds of specimens and body parts around his home, ostensibly as teaching specimens. Among them was a full skeleton of an Ice Age mastodon, the best specimen discovered anywhere up until that time (it is now on display as a prized exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.) Regardless of the motivations for their creation, the pictures of Warren’s skull were some of the earliest medically-oriented and human anatomic photographs made anywhere in the world.

The pictures we see today are copies from photos once exhibited as a poster at the Old South Meeting House in Boston, themselves copies of the original photographs. So what were those original photographs like? Can inferring their properties somehow help us understand Joseph Warren’s story?

Daguerreotypes were direct positive photographs on metal. Silver-halide-covered light-sensitive silver plates or silver-plated copper plates were loaded, one at a time, into a camera. The photographer then exposed them. Images were developed in a dark room by metallic mercury vapor. The remaining light sensitive material was washed off with sodium hyposulphate solution. Shutter speeds were typically several seconds long. Bright light was required. Only direct sunshine would do in the 1850’s. The resulting images are metallic silver on metal. They must be viewed at a favorable angle, otherwise they appear as mirrors.

Daguerreotypes had the advantage of producing much sharper images than the rival (and little used) Talbotype paper process, and were less bother and expense than oil painters’ portraits. A major problem daguerreotypes presented was that they could not be reproduced unless engraved into printing plates.

Photographs employing the wet collodion method, using glass plate negatives, while just a tad less cumbersome than  daguerreotypes, could reproduce many prints from one negative, and shortened exposure times down to under a second. Wet collodion photography was introduced by 1860 and quickly displaced daguerreotypy. Readers may be familiar with Matthew Brady and his photographs of grisly Civil War battlefields. Brady used wet plate collodion photography.

When Old South Meeting House museum staff copied the daguerreotypes of Warren’s skull in the late nineteenth century, they would have taken glass-plate negative photographs from the then-20-years-old daguerreotypes, returning the originals to the Warren family, and making a poster from their copies.² This would have been a photograph of a photograph, a necessary compromise resulting in a second generation image losing some detail from the originals.

Unfortunately, even this second generation of the photographs, once at Old South, are now lost. Fortunately, Dr. Lester L. Luntz, a dentist and forensic scientist, made a third generation photograph from those once at Old South, which he published in his Handbook for Dental Identification (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1973). Dr. Luntz then kindly left quality prints (though not the negatives, presumed lost) at the Center for the History of Medicine, part of the Countway Library of Medicine under the auspices of the Harvard Medical School. These remain the best copy known to still exist.

All this sheds light on the story of the skull pictures and the methods used to produce them. But can we learn anything important from these photographs, aside from the obvious evidence of a fatal gunshot to the head? Derek Beck thinks that the bullet wound was made by a projectile smaller than that fired by a British infantry musket. Is that right? If it is true, what does it mean? Warren was killed by the British in battle, right?

Next Monday: Forensic reconstruction helps determine the particulars of Warren’s fatal shot.

1. Interment Log, Forest Hills Cemetery Archive, Roxbury, MA; and John Collins Warren’s Journal (Aug 8, 1856; entry by Jonathan Mason Warren) v. 96, John Collins Warren MSS, MHS.
2. A 1901 Boston Globe article documents that the original photos were back in Warren’s descendant hands by then: Corbett, A., “Real Sword of Bunker Hill.” Boston Daily Globe, June 16, 1901: “The Globe prints today the first picture ever made of the genuine sword of Bunker Hill — the weapon which belonged to the immortal Gen. Warren… through the kindness of the general’s great-grand nephew, Dr. John Collins Warren (II) of 58 Beacon St, who has the sword hanging above the mantel in his library… Dr. Warren has many other interesting relics… including a painting by Copley, a little psalm book… books from his library containing his book plate, etc. Bookplate states: ‘The Wicked Borroweth and Returneth Not’. Also in the collection are Dr. Joseph Warren’s account books and manuscripts of several of his famous orations delivered in the Old South or Faneuil Hall during the last years of his life. One of the most striking and interesting relics is a series of three photographs of Gen. Warren’s skull, taken 80 years after his death, showing it from different points of view, the big bullet hole in the back of the head, which was the cause of death, being particularly conspicuous.”
3. Third generation skull photos taken of the lost originals by Dr. Luntz for his 1973 Handbook for Dental Identification, published by J. B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia. The Luntz copies are now in Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine, Boston. Original daguerreotypes probably taken on May 6, 1856.
4. Arnold, Howard Payson, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, MD, Boston: published privately, 1886. The book quotes a journal entry dated May 6, 1859: “The remains of General Joseph Warren were removed from St. Paul’s to Forest Hills [Cemetery] on Aug. 3, 1855, when my father, Sullivan (another of John Collins Warren I’s sons, a great nephew of Joseph Warren), William Appleton, and myself put them into a stone or earthen urn, like those of John Warren, Mrs. Warren, and my mother. The place was quite moist where they were put, and the hole in the head of General Warren was becoming enlarged by the crumbling of the margin. I had a photograph made of it in three positions.” Note that this 1859 recollection was in error. Dr. Jonathan Mason Warren returned to Boston from overseas following his father’s death in April of 1856. John Collins Warren I had Joseph Warren’s skull removed from St. Paul’s Church in early August 1855, but it was his son Jonathan Mason Warren who probably arranged for the photos to be made sometime between April and early August 1856. Warren descendants and biographers of the late nineteenth century either glossed over or ‘forgot’ the bizarre one year’s residence of Joseph Warren’s skull outside of the grave. There is a slight chance that Jonathan Mason Warren had the three pictures made, while his father was still alive, between August 3, 1855, and August 29, 1855, before Dr. Jonathan Mason Warren departed Boston for Europe.
5. Forman, Samuel A. “The Dynamic Interplay between Photochemistry and Photography.” Journal of Chemical Education 52, no. 10 (1975): 629–31.
6. Lowry, Bates, and Isabel Lowry. “Simultaneous Developments: Documentary Photography and Painless Surgery.” In Young America — the Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes, edited by Grant B. Romer and Brian Wallis. New York: I George Eastman House, International Center of Photography, GEH/ICP Alliance, 2005.
7. Pierce, Sally. Whipple and Black: Commercial Photographers in Boston. Boston Athenaeum, distributed by Northeastern University Press, 1987
8. Warren, John Collins. Mastodon Giganteus of North America. 2nd ed. Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1855.

This post begins a short 4-part series delving into the particulars of the death of Dr. Joseph Warren, which includes posts by guest contributor Dr. Sam Forman, author of the forthcoming biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (pictured to the right), due out December 1. For a recap on the background on Dr. Joseph Warren, see the two previous posts on the subject: (1) and (2). –Derek

To begin our month-long series about Dr. Joseph Warren, let us examine the classic sources and contemporary reports of the death of Dr. Joseph Warren.

The [Death of Joseph Warren at the] Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 17 June, 1775, circa 1815–1831, by John Trumbull (1977.853), courtesy of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

The first comes from the Tory Peter Oliver, the earliest written example I could find on Warren’s death:¹

Many of your associates have already quitted the field of battle, to appear before that solemn tribunal where the plea of the united forces of all the colonies will be of no avail to bribe the judgment or avert the sentence of the offended Deity. Some of them, in the agonies of death, sent messages to their friends to forbear proceeding any further, for they now found themselves in the wrong; others have repeatedly said, that an ambition of appearing something considerable and that only, led them into rebellion; and the unhappy leader, in the fatal action at Charlestown, (who from ambition only, had raised himself from a bare legged milk boy to a major general of an army) although the fatal ball gave him not a moment for reflection, yet had said in his life time, that he was determined to mount over the heads of his coadjutors and get to the last round of the ladder or die in the attempt: Unhappy man! his fate arrested him in his career, and he can now tell whether pride and ambition are pillars strong enough to support the tottering fabric of rebellion.

By 1781, Oliver was more explicit in describing Warren’s end:²

… The british Troops by repeated Efforts made a Passage through the Fences, & were marching to the Redoubt; but in great Disorder. Mr. Howe, observing it, ordered a Retreat, he was obeyed. He soon formed them, & they marched on again in good Order; & immediately, upon one or two having mounted the Parapet, the Rebels fled from the Redoubt. Major General Warren, who commanded in the Redoubt, exerted himself to prevent their rushing out at the Passage, but all in vain. He was the last Man who quitted it; & while his Men were running off, he very slowly walked away; & at about 20 or 30 Yards distant from the Redoubts he dropped; a Bullet having entered the back Part of his Head, & gone through it so far as to occasion a Prominence on his Forehead.

From perhaps less biased, bona fide historians, we have the following later accounts of Warren’s last moments:

Everett’s Life of Joseph Warren states: “While his face was directed toward the works, a ball struck him on the forehead, and inflicted a wound which was instantly fatal.” ³

Swett’s The History of the Bunker Hill Battle states: “…the fatal ball had sped; eighty yards from the redoubt Warren received a musket ball through the head, which killed him instantly, securing to him immortal fame, and the eternal gratitude of his country.” ⁴

Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston states: “He had proceeded but a few rods, when a ball struck him in the forehead, and he fell to the ground.” ⁵

Frothingham’s Life and Times of Joseph Warren gives several variations. In one instance, the book states “He fell about sixty yards from the redoubt, being struck by a bullet in the back part of his head, on the right side. Having mechanically clapped his head to the wound, he dropped down dead.” But the very footnotes on that page explain that the author had heard many “confused accounts”, and chose this as the one most likely authentic.⁶ It should be noted that the likelihood of Warren clasping his head mechanically after a shot through the brain is completely unlikely. Additionally, few other sources reference the claim of Warren clasping his head.⁷

Another variation in Life and Times is a quote from one Samuel Lawrence: “I saw him when the ball struck him, and from that time until he expired.” This seems to suggest there was at least a moment of apparent life, but if so, it was involuntary movement of the body.⁸

A third variation in Life and Times is that his body was identified (after the British Evacuation) in part due to the “fatal bullet behind the left ear.” ⁹

These three contradictions all appear in the same book. Regardless of the inconsistency, Frothingham seems to be the first to attempt to specify the location of the shot to Warren’s head, and he bases it on the varied and “confused accounts”.¹⁰

However, it may be that the sentiment prevalent among historians in the 1800s (and even today), that history of the Revolutionary War had been too biased with pro-American heroism, and this swayed Frothingham. For, given his “confused accounts”, he seems to have been inclined to believe those of reporting the shot in the back of the head, a fate that is decidedly not heroic or romantic, as if assuming stories of the shot being from the front were biased with mythology.

Books of the 1900’s returned to a generic description of the location of the fatal shot, though a few only served to add to the confusion.¹¹ Perhaps the most colorful (but ridiculous) claim is “Warren was struck behind the ear as he turned to call one last time to his countrymen. He flung his hand to the wound and fell without a sound.” ¹²

1856 Photos of Dr. Joseph Warren’s Skull (revealing a shot entered from front and exited the back of skull). These copies courtesy of the family of Lester L. Luntz, D.D.S., refined by the author.15 Re-use of these images require permission!

For what it’s worth, John Trumbull, in his 1786 painting The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, pictured above, depicts the good doctor with just a hint of red dripping from behind and on top of his head. His face is intact; his friends surround him, holding back the oncoming British and their bayonets.

But perhaps the most honest account is “The exact manner of his death cannot be known, as too many ‘witnesses’ reported too many different accounts of it, all of them, however, agreeing that he was killed late in the day, that he was among those who were covering the retreat.” ¹³

What is the truth? Where was Warren shot? In the rear of the head, in retreat? Or in the face, possibly seeing his killer? The proof came when the autopsy photos were taken in the mid 1800’s, when Joseph Warren’s body was again re-interred (the particulars of which are detailed in a previous blog post). The photos were long lost, but now rediscovered, and are shown below.¹⁴

The photos reveal a small entry wound below Warren’s left cheek, with a larger exit wound out the back, through the base of the skull. Strangely, to my measurement, it seems that the entry wound diameter is a bit less than the expected 0.75-inch diameter that would have been made had the musketball been one from the common British Brown Bess smoothbore musket, the standard weapon of the British soldier in 1775.

But the picture is rotated, and there is no scale to draw from. Can we say anything with certainty, based on these old pictures?

Next Monday: Understanding the old photographs and their authenticity.

See the complete bibliography for these abbreviated references.

1. Oliver, Peter. “An Address to the Soldiers of Massachusetts Bay Who Are Now in Arms against the Laws of Their Country” in Boston Weekly News-Letter, January 11, 1776.
2. Oliver, Peter. Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View. (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1961) p. 126.
3. Everett 186 (1902 ed., p. 176 of 1856 ed.).
4. Swett 43.
5. Frothingham’s Siege 170–71.
6. Frothingham’s Life and Times 517.
7. Ibid. 517–22.
8. Ibid. 519.
9. Ibid. 524.
10. It is interesting to note the reversal here from the Frothingham’s very work just 14 years prior (History of the Siege of Boston). In Life and Times he states the back of the head, though on one page saying it is the back right, on the other saying back left. But in his earlier Siege he says the shot was to the forehead.
11. For two generic responses, see Cary 221 and Ketchum 177. Interestingly, French’s Siege 283 states “After he had gone a little way in the open field he was shot in the head, and died instantly.” While French essentially used this book to update Frothingham’s Siege, which thus served as French’s primary material for his book, yet even still, French did not adopt Frothingham’s placement of the gunshot wound. In French’s First Year of the American Revolution 250, he does not describe how Warren died. However, he gives indication that the rebels tried in vain to recover the body despite the onslaught of British bayonets.
12. Fleming 298.
13. Truax 62.
14. Esther Forbes is the only author I am aware of to have referenced the photos in making an assessment on the fatal shot. Forbes’s Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (First Mariner Books ed., 1999; orig. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1942) 477 note 36 states: “In 1855 it [Warren’s body] was moved again out to Forest Hills. At that time a photograph was taken. The two teeth Paul Revere wired for his friend seem to have been carved out of one piece of ivory and have outlasted most of the natural teeth. The bullet which killed Warren entered a few inches above them and came out the back of the skull. He made no dying speeches.” However, this little note, tucked in way in the back of Forbes’s book, was left unread or forgotten by most historians.
15. Third generation skull photos taken of the lost originals by Dr. Luntz for his 1973 Handbook for Dental Identification, published by J. B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia. The Luntz copies are now in Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine, Boston. Original daguerreotypes probably taken on May 6, 1856.

Dr. John Warren’s Revolutionary War Amputation Kit.

Dr. John Warren’s Revolutionary War Amputation Kit (instruments from).

Writing in his journal, John Warren gave the following:

Upon this dreadful intelligence I went immediately to Cambridge, and inquired of almost every person I saw whether they could give me any information of him. Some told me he was undoubtedly alive and well, others, that he was wounded; and others, that he fell on the field. This perplexed me almost to distraction. I went on inquiring, with a solicitude which was such a mixture of hope and fear, as none but one who has felt it can form any conception of. In this manner I passed several days, every day’s information diminishing the probability of his safety.

Finally, John Warren had had enough. He was determined, being in grief and not in his right mind, to go across Charlestown Neck (to British occupied Charlestown) and inquire there. John became so overzealous with a British sentinel guarding the Neck that the sentinel bayoneted him. Though it is not recorded where he received this injury, it took the sharp pain of a steel blade to snap him back into a proper state of mind. He was forced to give up his search and assume the worst. His physical wound would eventually heal, though he carried the scar for the rest of his life, but his emotional wound would remain until he found that intangible bandage known as closure. Yet such closure could not come until Charlestown was again in provincial hands. Only then might he hope to find the remains of his fallen brother. Perhaps in part as an homage to his brother, Dr. John Warren focused his grief toward good by joining the American Army as a physician. He would serve with the Continental Army for the next two years of the war.

In April of 1776, John, John’s brother Ebenezer, and Paul Revere would go onto Breed’s Hill, abandoned after the Evacuation of the British from Boston. There they would discover Joseph Warren’s remains.

John left the Army service in late 1777, returning to his home in Salem, where he would take custody of his brother Joseph’s four orphaned children. John would later help found the Harvard Medical School.

Some of the surgical instruments John Warren used during his time in the Revolutionary service, as well as instruments of his physician son John Collins Warren (founding member of Massachusetts General Hospital), will be up for auction on Oct 16, 2011. Two kits are pictured here, both of Dr. John Warren.

Dr. John Warren’s Fish Skin Amputation Kit, Gift of Dr. Joseph Warren.

Dr. John Warren’s Fish Skin Amputation Kit, Gift of Dr. Joseph Warren (instruments from).

Next: a series about Dr. Joseph Warren, with a guest blogger contributing…