John Mein


 * OSH Clearance
 * No Admittance


 * Occupation
 * Publisher


 * Class
 * Middling Sort


 * Political Views
 * Staunch loyalist (1)

"You are a publisher from Scotland who does not like to be bullied, but your hot-tempered reactions make you a popular figure of hate."


 * The Sons of Liberty pressure you to join a boycott of British goods. Your response is to lash out and repeatedly slander the Patriots in your Loyalist newspaper.


 * An angry Patriot mob threatens to kill you, forcing you to find shelter in the Barracks on King Street, next to the Old State House.


 * You flee to London. On the day you leave, an effigy of you is paraded through the streets and burnt.


 * You are seriously in debt and spend a year in debtor’s prison in London.

Social Network

 * Anne Cummings (friend)
 * Elizabeth Cummings (friend)
 * John Fleeming (business associate)
 * John Hancock (enemy)
 * James Otis (enemy)
 * Benjamin Edes (enemy)

Extra Information

 * Mein gets credited with having the first lending library in Boston.

The "Boston 1775" blog is a great resource on Mein:

http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/08/john-gill-printing-sedition-treason-and.html "One anonymous article the Gazette carried in January 1768 so enraged rival printer John Mein that he came to the Edes and Gill shop, demanding to know who had written it. When Gill refused to tell, Mein hit him over the head with a stick. Gill sued for assault, using Otis as his attorney, and won a judgment of £75. (It’s possible that Otis himself was the anonymous author.)"

More about the Non-Importation Agreement 

August 1769, the Boston merchants' committee had singled out Mein “for repeatedly violating the non-importation agreement.”

o Revealed that John Hancock, a prominent merchant and a revolutionary, had imported “one hundred pieces of British linen; especially scandalous because he was such a prominent figure against the importation[1]
 * Mein retaliated by publishing a list in his newspaper of all the imports to Boston


 * Mein wanted to show that those with the lofty ideals at the head of the revolutionary movement were actually just in it for the money

"Mein Wars"

http://drbenjaminchurchjr.blogspot.com/2011/01/mein-wars-denoument.html

[1] Andrew Stephen Walmsley, Thomas Hutchinson & the Origins of the American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 1999): 108.

Good Websites
http://www.masshist.org/revolution/doc-viewer.php?item_id=381&mode=nav