Last updated: April 8, 2024
Place
Rainsford Island
Boston Harbor Now
Quick Facts
Just six miles from Boston sits the 21- acre Rainsford Island. The island has two drumlins that reach 49 feet above sea level and provide excellent views of the surrounding islands in the harbor. Owned and managed by the City of Boston, access to the island is extremely limited.
Similar to other islands in the harbor, Indigenous people in the area accessed the island seasonally for thousands of years before colonization. Purchased by Edward Raynsford in 1636, he used the island for farming and grazing. Raynsford lived on the island with his family until his death in 1680.
The City of Boston purchased the island in 1737, using it as a quarantine station. This meant any ship that entered Boston Harbor from overseas had to stop at the island to be checked for any evidence of disease aboard. The city built two hospitals on the island: one for smallpox, and the other for fever.1 Poor conditions meant that many of those brought to the island did not return home. During this time, the town government allowed the keepers of the island to run a summer resort, which opened on the eastern head of the island in 1819. It accepted boarders only when no infectious diseases were present on the island.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased the island in 1852. They established three almshouses and a hospital for sick state members of the poor. Conditions on the island continued to decline, resulting in many deaths. A report in the 1860s revealed all Commonwealth-run houses had been poorly run and maintained. Soon after, the Commonwealth’s facilities moved to Long Island and, and the city purchased the island in 1872. The city opened a men’s almshouse and a hospital for Civil War veterans who sought medical treatment. The hospital remained operational until a facility in Chelsea opened.2 Those in the almshouse during this era faced severe overcrowding and mistreatment. Those capable of work, cut stone.
In 1889, the city began consigning women members of the poor and downcast to Rainsford. Like the others before them, these women faced terrible and unsanitary conditions. A Boston Post article called the facility "A disgrace to the City of Boston." 3
Appalled by the treatment of those on the island, activist Alice North Towne Lincoln filed a formal complaint to the City of Boston Board of Aldermen. It took nine months of testimony and 54 hearings, but the city closed the facility in 1894 and moved the women to Long Island. 4
As Boston considers its next chapter, Rainsford is moving in a new transformational direction. The shoreline erosion of Rainsford is currently being studied by the Stone Living Lab, and the results will benefit management decisions and greater understanding of climate change for future years. The island is still owned and operated by the City of Boston and is a part of Boston Harbor Island National and State Park. 5
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Footnotes:
- Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Cultural Landscape Report: Boston Harbor Islands National & State Park Volume 1: Historical Overview, (Boston: National Park Service, 2017) 28-29, 140-142; Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Cultural Landscape Report: Boston Harbor Islands National & State Park, Volume 2: Existing Conditions (Boston: National Park Service, 2017), 210.
- Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Cultural Landscape Report Volume 1: Historical Overview, 134-141; Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Cultural Landscape Report: Volume 2: Existing Conditions, 210; Moses Foster Sweetser, King’s Handbook of Boston Harbor (Cambridge, MA: Moses King, 1883), 182; William McEvoy and Robin Hazard Ray, Rainsford Island: A Boston Case Study in Public Neglect and Private Activism (Independently Published, 2019), 33-35.
- McEvoy and Ray, Rainsford Island: A Boston Case Study in Public Neglect and Private Activism, 31-36, 48.
- McEvoy and Ray, 49.
- "Island Sedimentation", accessed April 3, 2023.