Needham History: Smoking and Drinking in Town Meeting

Sorry TMMs – those days are gone.

The First Parish Meeting House as it appeared in 1711, in a sketch by Timothy Newell Smith. The Meeting House was both the location for divine service, and also the place for public meetings. Membership in the congregation was a requirement for Town Meeting participation, and TM took place in the Meeting House after service.

Smoking and Drinking in Town Meeting

Every question is an opportunity to tell a new story. A few days ago, a friend passed on a question from the Town Meeting Members’ Facebook page – Was smoking and drinking allowed in Town Meeting in the past? I knew something about drinking in Needham, but smoking sent me down a few rabbit holes.

Tobacco is native to North America, and was brought back to Europe by early explorers. It was introduced into Portugal and France in the 1550s, and (famously) into England by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. It was first considered to be a medicinal, but due to its relaxing and extremely addictive properties, it was in widespread leisure use by the 1600s.

Tobacco cannot grow in Europe, and so when English settlers began to colonize Virginia and the Atlantic coast, they were well aware that they were occupying a place where tobacco could be produced, and that the potential for profits was enormous. The export market grew rapidly. Most tobacco (then, as now) was grown in the southern states, but the best tobacco for cigar wrappers – then, as now – was grown in the Connecticut River Valley in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The area around Hadley is still an important tobacco-growing area. (I grew up in CT, and remember when the warehouses and the warren of roads on Rt 84 into Hartford also used to be tobacco fields).

In Massachusetts in the 1600s, tobacco was used as a form of hospitality and exchange between the settlers and Native tribes. Exchanges of tobacco were an item of diplomacy in the early interactions of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag in the 1620s. A deed dated 1657 between Richard Thayer and the Massachusett sachem Wompatuck stipulated that Thayer would pay Wompatuck one pound of tobacco annually as the price for using a designated parcel of land.

However, as the use of tobacco became more widespread, so did the concerns. Although tobacco was first thought to be medicinal, questions about whether the smoke really was healthy or not arose as early as 1604 (in A Counter-blaste to Tobacco, by King James I of England). Smoking was also becoming a nuisance. The first smoking restrictions in Massachusetts were passed in Plymouth Colony in 1637, and prohibited smoking in the public streets, in barns or outbuildings, or anywhere more than a mile from your home. This was in part a nuisance law, and in part a fire-safety law. In 1669 the colony passed a further law that specifically prohibited smoking in the Meeting House, because the smoke fouled the air and because the noise of smokers striking their flint and steel to light their pipes disturbed the service. Also, Puritans – a habit taken solely for pleasure was suspect in itself. Similar laws became common in Puritan Massachusetts, though they began to diminish as the 18th century progressed.

George Kuhn Clarke, in his History of Needham 1711-1911, makes no mention of tobacco or smoking, but it is not reasonable to assume that the situation here in the 1700s was any different from Plymouth. Which brings us (finally!) to Town Meeting. In early Needham, through the first decades of the 1800s, Town Meeting took place in the Meeting House. The Selectmen and the Minister were essentially the joint authorities, and when service was over the Moderator would take over the pulpit and hold town meeting. Although there was an Annual Town Meeting (in March) to elect the town officers and vote on expenditures, “special” TMs could be called whenever there was a matter to decide. Smoking, then, probably followed rules similar to those in Plymouth – no smoking in the Meeting House, and therefore no smoking in Town Meeting.

Drinking and smoking and settling the affairs of a colonial town. From a 1793 etching by English printmaker and satirist James Gillray.

Town Meeting moved out of the Meeting House in the later 1700s as community life became more secular. In the late 18th century, TM would open early in the day in the Meeting House and then adjourn right away, to reconvene later in the day at one of the town’s taverns. (“And it has been said,” Clarke remarked with a perfectly straight face, “that the change was not made in the interest of good government.”) I’ll bet. Once TM moved into the taverns, TM members no doubt go down to some serious smoking and drinking – why else move out of their usual abstemious venue? It is likely that beer was drunk in the Meeting House in those days, because that was pretty much the main beverage, even for youngsters. But spirits were only allowed in licensed taverns. Selectmen’s meetings, coroner’s juries, and other public meetings also met in the taverns. And the town paid the cost of liquor and candles.

By the 1830s, the rise of temperance sentiment made it less defensible to hold public meetings in the taverns, and TM moved into the new public meeting halls. One of the early meeting halls was Nehoiden (or Revere) Hall, a retail block at the corner of Nehoiden Street and Central Avenue. George Revere had his cobbler shop on the first floor, and leased the second-floor meeting hall for town meetings and social events. (This building was moved to Rosemary Street in 1906 by William Carter and converted into apartments for his workers; it still stands at 270-274 Rosemary Street (with the three chimneys), so go by and tip your hat). The town later built a meeting hall and poor farm on what is now the Wellesley Country Club, and TM met there from about the 1850s until Wellesley split off from Needham in 1881. I have to assume that smoking took place during TM in all of these locations; drinking is less likely, except maybe beer in the earlier days, but there is no definite information about this that I can find.

After the split with Wellesley, TM met in (yet another) rented meeting hall for about 20 years, until the current Town Hall opened in 1903. The second-floor hall (now Powers Hall) was the location for TM (smoking, probably; drinking, almost certainly not) and numerous other town events until the 1950s, when the space was needed for town offices. Between the 1950s and 2011, TM moved around to auditorium spaces in town, mostly the Newman School auditorium (maybe smoking in the earlier part?; no for drinking). During that period, both the public drinking and public smoking laws changed, and neither is permitted any longer in these venues.

When TM returned to Town Hall in 2012, Powers Hall was definitely a smoke-free and (for public meetings) alcohol-free location.

So sorry, Town Meeting Members. While your predecessors enjoyed some latitude and a wider range of refreshments while they carried out their civic duties, you are restricted to water. All the more reason to undertake the town’s business with efficiency and purpose. Though it doesn’t take too many signatures to add a citizen’s petition Article to the Town Meeting Warrant. Just sayin’…..

The old town center at the intersection of Nehoiden Street and Central Avenue, circa 1870 (Central Ave. in the road in the foreground). The First Parish church is at the right margin, and Nehoiden Hall is the building to its left with the three chimneys. Nehoiden Hall was moved to 270 Rosemary Street in 1906, and is now a residence.

Gloria Polizzotti Greis is the Executive Director of the Needham History Center & Museum. For more information, please see their website at www.needhamhistory.org.