I Have Some Business in Bolton...

[Sir Wulf]

I was framing out a scenario set in and near the mill town of Bolton, Massachussetts.  There was some mention of the town in the scenario Freak Show (from Tales of the Miskatonic Valley), but I don't recall any other sources detailing the place.  Has Bolton come up in any other scenarios or sourcebooks? 

(My initial take on Bolton was based on Lowell, Massachussetts, a former mill town along the Merrimack River.  When I was last there, way back in 1986, it was a forlorn place, with most of its mills shut down and high unemployment.  In its heyday, Lowell was a bustling center of industry, with dozens of cloth mills and shoe manufacturers.)

[Lloyd Dupont]

Yes.. and what are the hidden secret of Bolton, dear sir?
What is it that *they* don't want you to find?! 😅

[Sir Wulf]

The Bolton described by Lovecraft in "Herbert West - Reanimator" has little resemblance to the actual town.  In the 1920s, Bolton, Massachusetts, was an agricultural hamlet of about 700 souls, about 25 miles from Boston. The Central Massachusetts Line of the Boston and Maine Railroad provided easy transportation into the city for those who wished to visit.

In Herbert West – Reanmator, Lovecraft described a very different sort of town. The text mentions immigrants living in the town from Italy, Ireland, and Poland (At the time, immigrants from other Baltic states were often misidentified as Poles, so the description could have been loosely applied). The Bolton Worsted Mills are repeatedly mentioned:

“... A factory town near Arkham, the seat of the college. The Bolton Worsted Mills are the largest in the Miskatonic Valley, and their polyglot employees are never popular as patients with the local physicians. We chose our house with the greatest care, seizing at last on a rather run-down cottage near the end of Pond Street; five numbers from the closest neighbour, and separated from the local potter’s field by only a stretch of meadow land, bisected by a narrow neck of the rather dense forest which lies to the north. The distance was greater than we wished, but we could get no nearer house without going on the other side of the field, wholly out of the factory district.”

“In Bolton the prevailing spirit of Puritanism had outlawed the sport of boxing—with the usual result. Surreptitious and ill-conducted bouts among the mill-workers were common, and occasionally professional talent of low grade was imported."

“Bolton had a surprisingly good police force for so small a town...”

Lovecraft's Bolton seems to have instead been inspired by one of the boroughs of Manchester, in England. England's Bolton was a center (or should that be “centre”?) of textile manufacture, a mill town almost exactly matching Lovecraft's description.

Edited December 10, 2019 by Sir Wulf