With tensions running high in the wake of Seider’s funeral, brawls broke out between soldiers and rope makers in Boston’s South End on March 2 and 3.
On March 2, a British soldier, Private Patrick Walker, was walking along Gray’s Ropewalk in Boston, looking for a job (NOTE: Since British soldiers were not paid very much, they would often look for part-time jobs in order to supplement their salaries). William Green, a Boston rope maker, asked Walker if he was looking for work. When Walker said he was, Green told him he could clean the public toilet. Walker was offended and told Green, “Empty it yourself.”
When the two exchanged heated words, Walker tried to hit Green. One of Walker’s employees knocked Green down. When Walker was able to get to his feet, he went to the barracks and gathered some friends. He returned to the scene with a handful of soldiers and they were looking for a fight.
When the rope makers saw them, they gathered to help defend Walker and then roughly 40 soldiers arrived on the scene. The crowd of rope makers included Samuel Gray and, possibly, Crispus Attucks. A full-scale riot broke out and the rope makers forced the British soldiers to return to their barracks.
Aftermath of the Incident
On March 4th British troops searched the rope works owned by John Gray for a sergeant (Sergeant James Mayson) who was believed to have been seriously injured or murdered in the fights that had occurred because Sergeant Mayson had been missing ever since then.
Sergeant James Mayson was found after the search and he had not been murdered. He was located on March 4, 1770, and it turned out that he had not been killed in the earlier fights between British soldiers and rope makers on March 2nd and 3rd.
Mayson had been badly wounded during those confrontations, but reports suggest he had not died, as was initially feared. The circumstances of his injury were that he had been struck and likely knocked unconscious during the skirmishes with the local colonists. While it was believed by the British that he had been murdered or seriously harmed, it was later discovered that after sustaining his injuries he had been hiding, possibly out of fear for his life or because he had been unable to return to his post due to his injuries.
The confusion and the heightened tension caused by Mayson's disappearance played a role in escalating the already volatile atmosphere in Boston. Gray had heard that British troops were going to attack his workers the next day on Monday, March 5, so he consulted with Col. William Dalrymple, the commander of the 14th Regiment. Both men agreed to restrain those in their charge, but rumors of an imminent encounter flew.
On the morning of March 5th someone posted a handbill ostensibly from the British soldiers promising that they were determined to defend themselves. That night a crowd of Bostonians roamed the streets, their anger fueled by rumors that soldiers were preparing to cut down the so-called Liberty Tree (an elm tree in what was then South Boston from which effigies of men who had favoured the Stamp Act had been hung and on the trunk of which was a copper-plated sign that read “The Tree of Liberty”) and that a soldier had attacked an oysterman. One element of the crowd stormed the barracks of the 29th Regiment but was repulsed. Bells rang out an alarm and the crowd swelled, but the soldiers remained in their barracks, though the crowd pelted the barracks with snowballs. Meanwhile, the single sentry posted outside the Customs House became the focus of the rage for a crowd of 50–60 people. Informed of the sentry’s situation by a British sympathizer, Capt. Thomas Preston marched seven soldiers with fixed bayonets through the crowd in an attempt to rescue the sentry.