xc Introduction.

selected by the justices, before August 3, 1768, and the Sheriff, at any time,
was to remove the prisoners from Joppa to "any gaol he may think fit in Balti-
more Town" until the new prison was finished. The commissioners were to sell
the Court House, jail, and land at Joppa to the highest bidder (pp. 442, 445).
Joppa was soon to become only a memory. The removal of the records from
Joppa "was attended with some violence and outrage" (Griffith's Annals of
Baltimore, 1833, p. 45).

BALTIMORE TOWN NUISANCE

At the November—December, 1766, session, an act was passed providing for
an addition to Baltimore Town to be created by the filling in of the salt marsh
to the east of the town, lying south of Gay Street and extending to the Harbor
between Frederick Street and Jones Falls. This matter had come before the
May, 1766, session, in the form of a petition from the inhabitants of Baltimore
Town, but consideration had been deferred until the next Assembly (pp. 6,
28, 55, 62). The act, as passed, bears the entirely inadequate title "An Act
to Remove a Nuisance in Baltimore Town in Baltimore County and for
other purposes therein mentioned", the addition to the town being merely cov-
ered by the phrase, "the other purposes therein mentioned" of the act. The
"Nuisance" to be removed is here rather vividly described as "a Large Miery
Marsh Adjoining the said Town [which] is by the Noxious Vapours and putrid
Effluvia arising therefrom very prejudicial to the health of its Inhabitants, and
that the proprietors of the said Marsh have by their perverseness or Dilatoriness
hitherto refused or neglected to remove the said Nuisance." This marsh land,
known at this date as Harrison's Marsh, was, at the time of the passage of the
act, owned by three prominent residents, Thomas Harrison, Alexander Lawson,
and Bryan Philpot, although Harrison was the principal owner. Harrison's
name has been perpetuated in the rather unsavory street still bearing his name,
bisecting the tract from north to south, while the southern end, that below
Baltimore Street, by its present name, Marsh Market Space, reveals its origin.
At frequent intervals, when the tide was high, or Jones Falls in flood, the marsh
was inundated, nor, it may be added, was it until nearly a century and a half
later, when the Fallsway was constructed over Jones Falls, that occasional
flooding of cellars in this neighborhood ceased.

Nine commissioners named in the act were appointed under it to see that
the nuisance was abated. The owners or proprietors of the Marsh were offered
the choice of two alternative methods by which this might be done, and between
which they must decide within thirty days of its passage. They might either
themselves fill in the swamp, or have this done under powers given to the com-
missioners to do so. In either event, however, the commissioners were to lay
out streets; lanes, and alleys, and to see that the reclaimed land was divided into
lots of not more than one-eighth acre each. On the harbor and Jones Falls sides,
the latter at this point being a tidewater estuary, the banks were to be "wharfed
in" with a stone wall at least two feet wide (or to the same width by closely
placed hewn logs), extending at least two feet above common flood tide, the
marshy ground thus enclosed to be filled in with stones, gravel, sand, or dirt,
to the height of at least two feet above flood tide. When these various conditions