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Fuck with someone’s morning coffee and they may just wreck your shit. During the American Revolutionary War, food shortages were common. Sometimes those shortages were created by unscrupulous businessmen who hoarded products to drive up prices. Then some women suffering from caffeine withdrawal got together and rioted.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 24, 1777--
The British evacuated from Boston in March of 1776, and for the next three years shortages were common. With the British Navy cutting off trade routes to the West Indies, imports were scarce. Shit, with two warring armies requisitioning supplies, everything was scarce. But when shopkeepers started making the problem worse to increase their profits, people got pissed.
Women. Mostly women got pissed, and they organized and carried out almost three dozen food riots in Boston between 1776 and 1779. One such riot took place on July 24, 1777, when merchant Thomas Boylston—asshole—decided to drive up the price of sugar and coffee by keeping them off the market. So about a hundred women showed up at his place of business and said hey asshole stop being an asshole. Sell us some fucking coffee and no gouging.
Tom said you’re not the boss of me and they said fuck you give us the keys to the shop and he said no and then things got fun. The women had brought carts with them, because a good bit of food raiding involves planning ahead. One of the righteously pissed women grabbed Boylston by the neck and threw him into the cart and said give up the fucking keys, asshole. Wisely, he acquiesced. Then they tipped the cart and dumped him into the street and literally spanked him on the ass and he (probably) cried and ran away.
They opened up his warehouse and took all the coffee and loaded it into their carts and fucked off. They referred to their thievery as supporting “the glorious cause,” because they were stealing from thieves in order to serve the community. These women viewed themselves as soldiers fighting for ethical behavior from merchants seeking to profit from the misfortune of others. It was combatting the same kind of oppression the fledgling country was fighting against with the English. Fucking capitalists.
The food riots continued, with marauding gangs of women getting together to violently steal from unscrupulous merchants. Other merchants saw what was going down and said well shit, I guess we better stop being such greedy dicks or these women are going to fuck us up, and they agreed to start selling their wares at fair prices.
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I wonder whether Boylston St in Boston is named after him?