Henry Pierce is elected mayor of Boston.

Pierce (R), with 8,877 votes, narrowly defeats William Gaston, with 8,798, and others. The election is not decided until 400 votes for Gaston in the North End are judged to have come in after the polls had closed. The Boston Evening Transcript subsequently reports, “[Votes were] apparently manufactured to meet the emergency [in a] ward that has always been noted for its elastic majorities.” Pierce, who lives on Washington Street in Ward 16, inaugurated on January 6, 1873 and proceeds to reorganize the Health and Fire departments. Wendell Phillips later remarks, that if Diogenes came to Boston searching for an honest man that year, he would find him in the mayor’s chair.