A Year: Day to Day Men: December 30
Scrawls on the Wall
On December 30th in 1809, the city of Boston passed a law which made the wearing of masks at balls illegal.
The anit-masquerade opinion was already established in England before masked balls spread overseas to the colonies. Opponents in eighteenth-century England crusaded against gatherings that were tarnishing the country’s morals. The epistolary novelist Samuel Richardson, author of the 1740 “Virtue Rewarded”, asserted that public masquerades presented frightening possibilities of disguise, role-playing and sexual freedom for women.
As masquerade balls became popular in the colonies, several cities began to ban masks. In 1808, a year before Boston’s law, Philadelphia made masquerades and masked balls illegal. The city supported the law by asserting dances were common meeting places for those interested in sex commerce, and masked balls created a sense of anonymity for those participants.
In 1848, Boston extended its masked ball law by adding the following section:
“Any person who shall get up and set on foot, or cause to be published, or otherwise aid in getting up and promoting any masked ball, or other public assembly, at which the company wears masks, or other disguises, and to which admission is obtained upon payment of money, or the delivery of any valuable thing, or by any ticket or voucher obtained for money, or any valuable thing, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars; and for repetition of the offense, by imprisonment in the common jail or house of correction, not exceeding one year.”
On the first of April in 1963, Boston’s anti-masquerade law was repealed. It should be noted that Boston, with its Puritan roots, had a history that emphasized proper behavior and refraining from frivolity. In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which contained Boston, enacted a law called “Penalty for Keeping Christmas”. The idea was that such festivals, superstitiously kept in other countries, were a great dishonor of God and offense of others. People who were found celebrating Christmas by failing to work, feasting, or any other way, had to pay five shillings for every offense, about fifty dollars today. This law was in effect for twenty-two years.