Lowell family left its mark on the tattoo industry
Book chronicles father and sons’ exploits
lOWSll » Colorful profession. Colorful family.
If someone received a tattoo in Boston, through both World Wars to 1962, there’s a good chance it was performed by a Liberty family member.
The Liberty family, with strong Lowell roots, performed hundreds of thousands of tattoos, especially during the booming World War II period, in the Scollay Square (now Government Center) section of Boston.
“The Libertys made a massive contribution to tattoo history. Now I feel their lega
cy has been properly observed,” historian Derin Bray said.
Six years of research led to the publication of the 159-page book authored by Bray and Margaret Hodges entitled, “Loud, Naked, & in Three Colors,” a richly-illustrated project about a father and his three sons, and Boston’s tattooing history.
At one point, Edward “Dad” Liberty and his sons — Frank, Harold and Ted — all worked in Scollay Square, tattooing soldiers, sailors and anyone else who walked into their rough-and-tumble world.
“It’s really a unique story,” Bray said. “They basically had a stranglehold on tattoos (in Boston) and made it difficult for anyone to move in. If you got a tattoo in Boston, it was known it was going to be from one of the Libertys.”
It was not an easy way to make a living. Completing the tattoo was just half the job. Maintaining peace and order was the other half.
For decades, the name Liberty was synonymous with tattooing in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.
Mary Nora (Liberty) White, the daughter of Harold, enjoyed the book immensely. The 85-yearold New Hampshire resident said, “It was so interesting. There was so much history. It was fabulous.”
She said her father didn’t talk much of his Boston days.
“I would go to Boston sometimes on Saturday nights. Scollay Square was fun. There were a lot of (characters) there, a lot of sailors. He kind of kept me out of it,” she said. “I was a teenager so we didn’t go there much.”
The story has its start in Lowell in 1883 when Edward Liberty was born to parents of French- Canadian heritage.
The family opened a grocery store in the city. His strong-willed mother, Lucy, operated the store at 311 Middlesex St. It was a true family business. The family lived a short distance away on Middlesex Street.
In the late 1910s, Edward Liberty began to perform tattoo. On kids who had been swimming in the nearby Merrimack River. Underneath a tent on July 4 at the South Common. Wherever he could make a buck. Edward and his brother, Henry, landed in newspapers after committing petty crimes.
Not far from their home and the family business was a lively section of Lowell which sprung up around the Boston & Maine Railroad station where Central, Middlesex and Gorham streets converged.
It was like a mini-Scollay Square. Edward Liberty also plied his trade at carnivals and amusement parks in the summer. He travelled to California and worked in the tattoo mecca of Los Angeles. Liberty later claimed he painted temporary tattoos on movie stars such as Lon Chaney.
He returned to Boston and, shortly afterward, a legend in the business, Frank Howard, died, opening the door for Liberty to gain a foothold. There was little doubt Liberty’s oldest son, Frank, would enter the tattoo business after he inked a peacock on Frank’s shoulder.
Frank would later be joined in the tattoo world by his brothers, Harold and Ted. All three were different.
A cigar-chomping exwrestler, Frank Liberty was known as a creative artist who tattooed out of a dark Cambridge Street shop until 1943. Harold, who became known as “Lefty,” was the least raucous of the sons. He didn’t have any tattoos on his body. He and his family had a farm in Lynnfield and led a quiet life.
The youngest, Ted, was a troubled character who often squabbled with his family. He and two accomplices were arrested in Delaware after stealing the car of a Boston cancer surgeon. He also got into trouble in Maine and lived a vagabond life, bouncing around in his later years in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Estranged from his family, he died in 1977.
With a near-monopoly on Boston’s tattoo trade, business boomed for the Libertys during World War II. Sailors and soldiers wanted flags, eagles and, in some cases, their Social Security numbers tattooed on their bodies.
Edward, Frank and Ted Liberty estimated tattooing some 200,000 clients between them. For years, the only son not in the business was Harold. Harold rejected his father’s overtures, saying he felt his contributions to the war effort through his job for Fisher Body, a division of General Motors, were too important.
In 1946, with the war over, Harold returned with his family to the Boston area. He also worked out of a Scollay Square shop. He marketed himself as the only left-handed tattoo artist in the country.
Father and sons saw business dip after the war ended. In 1957, a Massachusetts law raised the legal age for getting a tattoo from 18 to 21. Business took another hit. A year earlier, Frank died at the age of 52.
His legendary father died in 1957 at 74. His obituary celebrated him as “one of America’s oldest practicing tattoo artists.”
By 1958, Harold was the last Liberty still tattooing in Boston. In 1961, he received a letter informing him his shop had been acquired by the city as part of the Government Center redevelopment project. He received $237. A year later, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill to restrict tattooing to qualified physicians.
“They found a way to make a living, no matter what was thrown at them,” said Hodges, the co-author. “They were enterprising. It’s an incredible story of fortitude. I think they enjoyed that feeling of being on the edge.”
A year later Harold Liberty opened a tattoo shop on the sun porch of his new home off Route 28 in Salem, N.H. Always wearing a flannel shirt, he did a brisk business. After nine years, he retired in 1973, at the age of 73. He would be open all hours MondaySaturday. If someone knocked at the door on Sunday, however, the patron would be loudly sent away. Sunday was family time, his daughter recalls.
He moved his family to Lake Massasecum in Bradford, N.H. He died in 1985.
There’s a picture of Mary Nora (Liberty) White with Edward. But she doesn’t have many memories of her grandfather. Growing up, she heard stories about some of the troubles that always seemed to surround her uncle, Ted.
“A colorful family? Yes,” she said with a laugh.