ritual consisting of a procession in which effigies of the Pope and other figures were paraded through the streets; a battle between the processions from the North and South Ends; and the burning of the effigies by the victors. Locals would spend weeks preparing their effigies for the celebration. The processions were organized by elected officers who, unlike traditional political leaders, came from the lower classes. One such leader was Ebenezer Mackintosh of the South End, a shoemaker who was also the town's official sealer of leather. Procession The procession was led by young boys who carried small effigies of the pope. According to a 1768 broadsheet sold by the "Printers Boys in Boston": The little Popes, they go out First, With little teney Boys: In Frolicks they are full of Gale And laughing make a Noise. The boys carved the heads of their "popes" from potatoes, and mounted the effigies on shingles or boards, some small enough for a single boy to carry in his hands, others requiring two or three boys to carry through the streets. During the day they went door to door with their popes, demanding tributes from the neighbors in a tradition very similar to trick-or-treating. Next came the large effigies, which were mounted on wheeled platforms, like parade floats. The publisher Isaiah Thomas, who took part in the Pope Night celebrations as a child in the 1750s and 60s, described the floats in his memoir: The effigies' heads could also be raised, appearing to peek into second-story windows of nearby houses. The crowd shouted insults at the figures as they passed: The floats were typically about ten to twelve feet long, although there are accounts of much larger ones. One float in Newburyport was forty feet long, and so heavy it had to be drawn by several horses; it carried additional effigies of monks and friars as well as several dancers and fiddlers. In Boston, the floats were pulled through the narrow, winding streets by men and boys. During the 1760s, when Ebenezer Mackintosh was in charge of the South End procession, he would march ahead of the float, dressed in a blue and gold uniform with a lace hat, carrying a speaking trumpet. Besides being festive, the gaudy uniform was intended as a mockery of Boston's elites. The "pope" was dressed in ornate, antiquated garb, and had an exaggerated Roman nose. Behind him,