After nightfall on Monday, March 5, 1770, small groups of Bostonians armed with lead-weighted clubs, cudgels, and cutlasses started accosting lone British officers and soldiers in the city’s streets. Elsewhere in town, soldiers threatened and assaulted civilians. It was rumored that a missing sergeant had been murdered, while troops had beaten an oysterman bloody. By eight o’clock, angry men were confronting the redcoats outside Murray’s Barracks, a sugarhouse at Draper’s Alley and Brattle Street where parts of the king’s army were quartered.
