Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/331

 returned to their sadly maltreated halls. Barracks became a drug in the market. No systematic disposal of them seems to have occurred to anyone. A report on their condition filed with the above return states that “notwithstanding Care hath bin Taken to Nail up the Barracks as the Soldiers are ordered out, I find many of them Brook open Whareby thay are Exposed To Much Dammage from Winds & Weather. Also many Poor familys on Winter & Prospect hils Removd into sd Barrack.” This last use of them was doubtless particularly popular with the burned-out inhabitants of Charlestown, hard by. Indeed some of the smaller and better-built sheds were purchased and moved away, to be converted into permanent dwellings, which were long known as “ten-footers.” Some at Prospect Hill and Brookline were seized upon by progressive doctors as appropriately cheap and nasty locations for experiments in smallpox inoculation.

The barracks on Prospect and Winter Hills were again forced to do duty in 1777 and 1778 for the “Convention Troops” under Burgoyne, brought from the fatal field of Saratoga, to await here, through a wretched winter, their promised repatriation—which, to the eternal shame of the American Congress, never came to pass. By that time the flimsy sheds were fast falling