“Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Written by herself,” a novel alternatively entitled as, “Memoirs of Fanny Hill written by herself,” is best known familiarly as “Fanny Hill.” It is the most famous of all illicit books of fiction written in the English language, its author being John Cleland (1709-1789), a London Grub Street writer. The book was first published in 1749-1750¹ and it has been published and republished unto the present day. During the years 1817-1820 a number of copies circulated in New England, the sources of which have not been determined. What is known is that men in the Worcester area and in Boston were indicted in local courts for selling copies of the book. The following genealogical notes are the result of my attempt to identify Giles E. Weld, a printer caught up in the Boston trial, and as an addendum identified the Weld parentage of the wife of Isaiah Thomas, Jr., bookseller of Worcester and Boston.

In May 1820 three auctioneers of Boston were charged in the Boston Municipal Criminal Court with “vending a wicked and obscene libel,” namely, “Memoirs of a woman of pleasure written by herself. ” The book was illustrated with prints. The Boston selectmen were notified of this breach of the peace and, with “diverse religious people,” demanded that the instigators of it be ascertained and punished. An immediate trial of Thomas Boardman, Jr., John Minchin, and Charles Willis, Jr.,² was held in the Boston Municipal Court on May 6, 1820. The three men were found guilty as charged, were fined $100 each, and were incarcerated for thirty days in the Suffolk County jail. In their plea to the judge for mercy, Minchin and Willis testified that “about two years since,” i.e. 1817 or 1818, they had obtained the offending, unbound sheets from Giles Weld as collateral against their loan to him. Further, they wrote, they had not sold nor had they any knowledge of the sale of copies of the book. They claimed the sheets were not their property and had been locked away in the garret or in the lower storey of their premises. Minchin and Willis also presented written testimonies of their good character from a half-dozen fellow citizens. Judge Thomas Dawes responded to their plea by stating that as this was “the first time in which there had been a public conviction in Boston of this nature,” he explained the mildness of his sentences by proclaiming his “particular respect to the previously fair character of the unfortunate offenders.”³

Little is known about Thomas Boardman, Jr., but Charles Willis, Jr., and John Minchin (or Minchen) were well known in town.⁴ It is possible the  troubles of Willis and Minchin had local political implications. Reference was made to the convicted auctioneers in a newspaper article in which they were deemed representative of the “true character” of the citizens who had voted, but failed, to remove the serving members of Boston’s board of selectmen at the 1820, town meeting.⁵ While the auctioneers were imprisoned, their chambers, located above 18 Merchant’s Row, were burglarized of 132 Liverpool and London-made watches, as well as a quantity of English, gilt watch chains, seals and keys. They offered a reward of $300 for the return of their property.⁶

Giles Weld was named by the defendants as the source of the printed sheets of “Memoirs of a woman of pleasure,” or “Memoirs of Fanny Hill.” I am, however,  unable to prove that Weld printed the sheets of the 300 page book. Still, it is not unlikely that he did so, or that he was the agent in procuring them from another source..⁷ Be that as it may, when, in about 1817 or 1818, Minchin and Willis obtained the sheets of “Fanny Hill” as collateral for their loan to Weld, this young man about town, was in jail for debt. He had been successfully sued by his tailors, his landlord, and, with his partner Ezra B. Tileston, by Benjamin Yeaton, a harness maker. They had borrowed horse tack from Yeaton and were indebted to him for $60. The young men were sponsors of an equestrian circus performance held in Boston on July 4, 1816. They, in turn, had lent harness and equine accoutrements to members of an itinerant troop of performers who left town without returning the loan; that is to say, the performers stole the horse tack!⁸

Giles E. Weld was a printer in Boston during the years 1815-1818. In 1816 the partners, Tileston & Weld, had an office in the Suffolk buildings, Chambers no. 3, in Congress st., from which they issued a handful of imprints; ironically one being (by subscription) the second edition of Reports of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Judicial Court, of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Their brief partnership collapsed in July of that year. Only one other imprint of Weld’s is recorded – Catalogue of the materia medica and of pharmaceutical preparations. (Boston: Printed by Giles E. Weld, 5 Congress st., 1817), printed for Charles White, a Boston pharmacist.

Giles Edward Weld, gentleman (as he was once denominated in a court document), was born in Boston, about the year 1790, the son of Giles Weld, Inspector of Customs of the Port of Boston, and of his wife, Hannah Farrar.⁹ Their son, Giles E., and Sarah Ann Wyatt were married by the Rev. Mr. Lowell in Boston on May 2, 1816.¹⁰ At some point young Giles left Boston and headed west. He died on September 16, 1823, in the Natchez, Mississippi, hospital of yellow fever during an epidemic that was the most severe outbreak of the disease in that town from the year 1817 until 1905. His estate consisted of $27, Giles having sold in 1816 to an uncle all of the property he had received from his grandfather’s ample bequest.¹¹

I tried to establish a business connection between Giles Edward Wells and Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), the great printer of Worcester. I failed to do so, but I knew that his son, Isaiah, Jr., (1773-1819), had married into the Weld family; a Mary, who was not fully identified in the Thomas genealogy. Mary Weld was the daughter of Edward Weld (formerly of Marblehead) and his wife, Hannah [Church].¹² They were married in Boston on April 7, 1757.¹³ Their daughter, Mary, was baptized August 7, 1768 and died in Boston on April 26, 1825.¹⁴ She and Isaiah Thomas, Jr., were married on May, 4, 1797, by the Rev. Samuel West in Boston. She and Isaiah had ten children who survived infancy, including Frances Church Thomas, born 1800; and Benjamin Franklin Thomas, born 1813.¹⁵ The clue to the parentage of Mary Weld Thomas lay in the name of her daughter, Frances Church Thomas. Investigation showed that a Miss Frances Church died in Boston on August 1791, aged 15.¹⁶ Thus, Frances Church, presumably a relation of Mrs. Edward Weld (née Hannah Church) provides the link to the name of the mother of Mary Weld Thomas (Mrs. Isaiah Thomas, Jr.).

In addition to this connection between the Edward and Giles Weld families with the Thomas family, another exists between the Welds and Ebenezer Turell Andrews, the highly successful Boston partner of Isaiah Thomas, Sr., of Worcester. A daughter of Edward and Hannah Church Weld, Hermione (younger sister to Mary), married Ebenezer Andrews on December 22. 1791, by the ubiquitous Rev. Samuel West. Hermione died in 1807 where upon her sister, Elizabeth, married Ebenezer in 1808.¹⁸  It may not be too extended a stretch of the imagination to suggest that Giles Edward Weld had been apprenticed to his uncle-in-law in the printing office of Thomas & Andrews in Marlborough Street (now Washington St.), Boston.

Further, deponent saith not.

1.  Both formulations of the title are used in the Boston indictment. See David Foxon, Libertine literature in England, 1660-1745. (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, ©1965) pp.52-63.

2.  Minchin & Willis were partners from about 1815 until at least 1825. See Boston city directories and various newspaper adv. Thomas Boardman, jr., was listed as auctioneer at Garden Court st, 1820.

3.  Records of the trial are located in the archives of the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court; #20 Commonwealth v. Boardman, Thomas Jr., Willis, Charles Jr., and Minchin, John; Libel, 1820 May term; Boston Municipal Court for Criminal Business. Courtesy, Elizabeth C. Bouvier. See also, Boston Christian Watchman, 13 May 1820, p.3; the article is dtd. 8 May.

4.  A John Minchen married Nancy Thayer of Braintree, 29 Dec. 1808. The Boston Repertory, 24 Apr. 1810, p.2, posted the marriage in Boston of Eliza Eaton to Charles Willis, Apr. 22, by the Rev. Dr. Baldwin. No additional information on Boardman has been located.

5.  Boston Commercial Gazette, 8 May 1820, p.[2], in response to a “Communication, Town meeting – Choice of municipal offers.” in the politically republican  Boston Patriot & Daily Mercantile Advertiser, 9 Mar. 1820, p.2; see other articles on the controversy (which involved complaints on the practices of auctionering) in its issues of March 11, 13, 18, 20, & 21.

6.  Boston Daily Advertiser, 9 June 1820, p.4; adv. dtd. June 7.

7.  For an explanation of my interest in determining the source of these printed sheets, see my forthcoming article, “Printers and the law: The trials of publishing obscene libel in early America,  in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.

8.  See Suffolk County Court of Common Pleas, Oct. 1816 term, v.1, pp.148-9; Jan. 1817 term, v.1, p.97-8; 135-6; 173-4; 290; Boston Gazette, 4 Jul. 1816, adv. p.3.

9.  Giles Weld, baptized 31 Mar. 1765, Marblehead; was the son of Edward (a successful Boston merchant), (b. 5 Feb. 1734 in Roxbury, d. in Meeting in Boston, æt 75, 19 Feb. 1809; and his wife, Hannah Church, b. ca. 1733, d. æt.71, 14 Sep. 1804; they were married in Boston, 7 Apr. 1757, see “A record of deaths in Boston and vicinity, 1799-1815, from a manuscript in the possession of the NEHGS,” NEHGR, v.78, p.316, July 1924 and v.78, p.71, Jan. 1924 [On line, NEHGS.] Their son, Giles,  m. Hannah Farrar, 14 Jul. 1787. Giles Weld and Hannah Farrar  had six children, Giles Edward Weld being the eldest. See Charles Frederick Robinson, Weld collections, (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Privately printed, 1938.) pp.98-102, 128-129; nos. 35, 36. Courtesy, Michael J. Leclerc, Director of Special Projects, NEHGS.

10.  Columbian Centinel, 4 May 1816, p.2; see also “Diary of William Ingersoll Champney,” 29 Nov. 1814 [On line NEHGS.]  Sarah Ann’s brother-in-law was Joseph Wyatt, and George W. Wyatt was a friend of Giles.’

11.  Washington, Miss., Mississippi State Gazette, 20 Sep 1823, “Board of Health, Natchez, September 19, 1823. Report of Deaths, within the limits of the City of Natchez, from Sept. 12 to Sept. 18.” [312 total deaths, 10 Aug -18 Oct 1823]; Boston American Federalist Columbian Centinel, 22 Oct. 1823, p.2. See again C. F. Robinson’s, Weld collections, p.129.

12.  Charles L. Nichols, “The portraits of Isaiah Thomas with a genealogy of his direct descendants,” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct. 1920; also issued separately, Worcester, 1921, p.19. See further, footnote 9 for genealogical details of the Weld family, especially C. F. Robinson’s Weld collections, p.100,  for their associations with Isaiah Thomas, Sr., and Jr.

13.  Marriages in Boston, 1700-1809. [Online database: NEHGS] Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Records Relating to the Early History of Boston, Containing Boston Marriages from 1752 to 1809. (Boston, Municipal Printing Office, 1903.)  vol. 30, p.23.

14.  C. F. Robinson, Weld collections, p.100.

15.  Nichols, “The portraits of Isaiah Thomas,” p.19.

16.  Dunkle, Robert J. and Ann S. Lainhart, Boston Deaths, 1700-1799, NEHGS, 1999. [Online database: NEHGS, 2007.]

17.  C. F. Robinson, Weld collections, pp.101-102.