slum

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Since the text must have been set from handwriting, typewriters
>being essentially nonexistent in 1863, a misreading of "clams" is
>certainly conceivable. The catch is that "clam" (dollar) seems, at
>the moment, to be a somewhat later coinage. Nor do I notice any
>obvious typos in the book (available at Live Search Books).
>
>   A misreading would also imply that though the putative "clams"
> was familiar enough to be put in a vaudeville song, the typesetter
> (and possibly a proofreader) preferred the otherwise nonsensical "slums."

The word is rhymed with "fun" in the song. So "clams" is unlikely.
"Shun" however would fit, and would provide a much more likely
transcription error (maybe only off by a dot, depending on the hand),
especially if "shun" was a little-known term itself (it's surely
little-known to me). Possibly the "s" was added by an editor who took
the word to be a plural ... or maybe not. This may be a bit of a reach ....

I'm not too sure exactly how things were done back then, but it seems
that for $300 or so one could buy his way out of the military draft;
the fee was called "commutation money" sometimes, and was sometimes
paid to a proxy or replacement draftee, I think. Possibly "shun"
could be an abbreviation for "commutation" (or "exemption" or
"conscription" or "compensation" or ...). So the handwritten original
might have had <<got three hundred 'shun>> = "got three hundred [in]
commutation [money]" or something like that.

Newspaperarchive apparently has crapped out, so I can't look there
for instances of such a "shun" right now.

-- Doug Wilson


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