Autographed copies of Scollay Square (Arcadia Publishing, 2004) and Always Something Doing: Boston's Infamous Scollay Square (Northeastern University Press, 1999) can be purchased on our home page.

Francis Dahl was a cartoonist for the Boston Herald beginning in 1930.  His wry perceptions of Boston and its people were a staple of New England breakfasts for over three decades.  It was inevitable that Scollay Square and its denizens attract his eager pen, as we can see in these two classic examples from the 1940s.
 


 
 


 

Mr. Dahl received a great number of suggestions from his loyal readers,
such as this one, sent in September of 1945, by Mrs. Willis H. Grinnell of Newton Center.
This wonderful letter also includes a wry reference to Roald Dahl...
 

What, More Dahl!, a collection of the cartoonist's wartime efforts,
featured an introductory poem by Ogden Nash which mentions Scollay Square:

I sing this tome of Francis Dahl's,
Whose pencil never spits or snahls,
Who in the kindliest of humors
Surveyeth Boston's beans and bloomers,
And leaveneth the Cambridge dons
With antic squirrels, cows and swans,
And Brookline couples torn asunder
By slamming doors at Park Street Under.
Like anthropoids to Doctor Hooton
To him ar e Beacon Hill and Newton,
And fun is fun and folly's folly,
Whether in Louisburg Square or Scollay.
However it would be erroneous
To term these pictures just Bostoneaous;
Gaze into this book, O human race,
And giggle at your foolish face.

Ogden Nash
September 21, 1944

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