NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE / 1740-1744

1740

Mar 18

The home of the Royal governor in New York City’s Fort George, along with the nearby Dutch church, is destroyed by fire.

Jun 13

Richard Nicolls is commissioned as a examiner in New York City’s Court of Chancery.

City

Rumors circulate that blacks are intending to poison the city's wells. ** The Society of Friends (Quakers) move their meeting house from Green Street Alley to nearby Liberty Street. ** Pennsylvania, involved in a boundary dispute with Maryland, sends an agent here to transcribe early Dutch records. ** Greenpoint, Brooklyn, landowner Pieter Praa dies. Having no sons he leaves his property to his five daughters and their husbands, the settlement's sole residents - the Bennetts, Calyers, Meseroles, Provosts and Van Zandts.

1741

February

A series of fires and thefts occur in New York City.

Feb 28

The Manhattan tobacco shop of Robert Hogg is burglarized. The money is later found at Hughson's Alehouse and rumors spread of a slave insurrection - the "Alehouse Plot" or "The Negro Plot". By the time calm is restored, four whites and 25 blacks (including tavern owner John Hughson and his wife, alderman John Pintard's servant Caesar and his white mistress Peggy Kerry) will have been hanged on an island in The Collect pond. 13 additional blacks are burned at the stake. 70 blacks and seven whites are banished. Also hanged is the Catholic teacher John Ury, who supposedly performed the duties of a priest.

Mar 18

The 1640 Dutch church on Manhattan is destroyed by rebellious slaves.

Apr 7

Journeymen bakers go on strike in New York City, are prosecuted for criminal conspiracy.

City

The city forms a volunteer firefighting company. ** 20% of New York's population is black.

1742

City

A law is passed allowing slaves to get water only from the nearest neighborhood well.

State

Future governor John Taylor is born in New York City.

1743

Oct 2

Physician and Presbyterian churchman Dr. John Nicoll dies in New York City at the age of 64.

November

The provincial assembly meets in Manhattan's City Hall, considers a citizens petition to ban various sources of pollution.

City

Smallpox kills 217 people this summer. ** James Parker begins publishing the New-York Weekly Post-Boy.

1744

February

New York City's Common Council orders that copies of the 1731 street cleaning laws be prominently posted.

May

The New York council orders an overhaul of the city's sanitary laws, going after tanners, hog owners and starch makers, and moving them outside of the city. Waste dumping on public property is prohibited.

July

Annapolis physician Dr. Aledxander Hamilton visits New York City, criticizes the water.

City

Stephen Bayard is appointed mayor for six consecutive one-year terms. ** The population is approximately11,000. There are 166 licensed taverns.

© 2011 David Minor / Eagles Byte

Script 29 - Oh, Their Aching Feet !

© 1997 David Minor / Eagles Byte

We’re going to have a pop quiz today (No, it’s not because Father’s Day is coming later this spring).

Of the following items, which one does not belong in the series:

Poet John Milton, General Philip Schuyler, Henry VIII, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Tyrannosaurus Rex, painter Winslow Homer.

Is this a trick question? Would I do that? Of course I would.

I’ll explain. We’ve all seen him. Wealthy, likes his food exceedingly well, uses a cane or walking stick on the few occasions he stands. He has a huge bandage on one foot which everyone manages to either hit, trip over, or drop things on. The sufferer of the gout has been familiar to us in cartoons and silent comedies and stage farces for hundreds of years. Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff cries out, “A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe.”

We hear the word gout and some of us immediately think of Henry VIII. Other famous people have suffered from this disease, including English clinician Thomas Sycamore Sydenham, who was the first to differentiate between acute rheumatism and gout, back in the 17th Century. The condition is caused by deposits of crystals of uric acid in body tissues, especially in bone joints, causing extremely painful inflammations. It was probably a contributing factor in the death of John Milton. Philip Schuyler, New York State general of the American Revolution had it.

In the religious wars in Germany during the 1540s, Charles V, suffering from the condition, hobbled all over Europe for several months, from Regensburg to Landshut to Ingolstadt to Ulm. Warming his aching limbs in a movable wooden room heated by a stove, he made his tortured way from Nordlingen back to Regensburg, then to Eger then, spending 21 straight hours in the saddle, to Muehlberg, where he finally accepted the surrender of the Landgrave Philip.

So how about our quiz?

Recently [1997] the Democrat & Chronicle carried an item from Youngstown, Ohio’s Arthritis Center of Northeast Ohio, where Bruce Rothschild reported finding evidence that Tyrannosaurus Rex suffered from the gout. He did eat a lot of red meat.

As far as we know, Winslow Homer did not suffer from gout. So he’s our odd man out.