In colonial America, the system of "warning out" was distinctive to
New England, a way for a community to regulate those to whom it
would extend welfare. Robert Love's Warnings animates this nearly
forgotten aspect of colonial life, richly detailing the moral and
legal basis of the practice and the religious and humanistic vision
of those who enforced it. Historians Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon
V. Salinger follow one otherwise obscure town clerk, Robert Love,
as he walked through Boston's streets to tell sojourners, "in His
Majesty's Name," that they were warned to depart the town in
fourteen days. This declaration meant not that newcomers literally
had to leave, but that they could not claim legal settlement or
rely on town poor relief. Warned youths and adults could reside,
work, marry, or buy a house in the city. If they became needy,
their relief was paid for by the province treasurer. Warning thus
functioned as a registration system, encouraging the flow of labor
and protecting town coffers. Between 1765 and 1774, Robert Love
warned four thousand itinerants, including youthful migrant
workers, demobilized British soldiers, recently exiled Acadians,
and women following the redcoats who occupied Boston in 1768.
Appointed warner at age sixty-eight owing to his unusual capacity
for remembering faces, Love kept meticulous records of the
sojourners he spoke to, including where they lodged and whether
they were lame, ragged, drunk, impudent, homeless, or begging.
Through these documents, Dayton and Salinger reconstruct the
biographies of travelers, exploring why so many people were on the
move throughout the British Atlantic and why they came to Boston.
With a fresh interpretation of the role that warning played in
Boston's civic structure and street life, Robert Love's Warnings
reveals the complex legal, social, and political landscape of New
England in the decade before the Revolution.
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