Upon the Execution of Alexander Wedderburne, Esq. and Thomas Hutchinson, Esq. … Boston: Kneeland & Davis, 1774.
While serving as a colonial agent in London in 1774, Benjamin Franklin was publicly humiliated by British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburne before the Privy Council. Wedderburne accused Franklin of facilitating the publication of the private correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson, then governor of Massachusetts. The resulting outrage among England’s political elites helped spur Parliament to pass the Intolerable Acts.
By May of 1774, news of Franklin’s humiliation had reached America. Angry citizens in Philadelphia paraded effigies of both Wedderburne and Hutchinson through the city, hanged them on the gallows, and set them ablaze. The left half of this broadside details these “executions” for the Boston audience, and the right half features a litany of complaints against the Crown and venerates the “illustrious Doctor Franklin.”