Book Description

Originally published as Rum, a Tailor's Goose, and a Soap Box: Three Murderous Affairs in the History of Hanover, Massachusetts, this book offers readers an updated version of the three crimes that shook peaceful Hanover, Massachusetts more than 100 years ago. The author has delved more deeply into the tragedies and provides additional information about each incident and the principal characters involved, and has included forty illustrations, many not seen in his original version. The shooting deaths of two railroad laborers by a recalcitrant, illicit rum dealer shocked the tranquil town of Hanover, Massachusetts in 1845. Violence again visited the town nearly thirty years later when the manager of a hotel in the town's Four Corners village murdered a woman in his employ. An impulsive young Canadian immigrant entered a Chinese laundry and robbed and killed the owner in the same village three decades after that. Journey back in time as John F. Gallagher chronicles these crimes that afflicted Hanover during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Explore the everyday lives of Hanover's citizens, the social and moral issues of their time, and the impact each murder had on the community, the families of the victims, and the accused. Learn about the circumstances whereby the victims, all recent immigrants, came to America filled with dreams and aspirations they would never realize.