Gray's Ropewalk

Gray's Ropewalk was one of seven long rope-making sheds that lined what is now Pearl Street, and the fight there between ropemakers and British soldiers on Friday 2 March 1770 led, three days later, to the Boston Massacre. The business was begun by Edward Gray in 1712 and run in 1770 by his son John, whose walks were 744 feet long. Sworn depositions printed by the town later that month tell the story. At about half past eleven a soldier of the 29th Regiment came to the walks, where a ropemaker asked him if he wanted work and then insulted him, and the ropemaker Nicholas Ferriter knocked him down. He came back with eight or nine comrades carrying clubs, then a party of thirty or forty, and thirteen or fourteen ropemakers drove them off with their wouldring sticks. John Hill, a 69-year-old justice of the peace, commanded the peace and was nearly struck with a club for it. On the Saturday soldiers were seen making clubs, promising satisfaction by Monday, and on Monday night, 5 March, the crowd that faced the guard in King Street included men from the ropewalks. Samuel Gray, a ropemaker at John Gray's walks, was one of the five killed. At the soldiers' trial that autumn Ferriter testified that Gray and Private Matthew Kilroy had both been in the affray at the ropewalks, and it weighed against Kilroy. Kilroy was convicted of manslaughter and branded on the thumb. All seven ropewalks burned in 1794, and the lane beside them, then Hutchinson Street, became Pearl Street in 1800.