jinx

[George Thompson]

       James A. Landau asks:
> There was a woman known to history and contemporaries as "Calamity
> Jane" (one of Wild Bill Hickock's wilder sidekicks) who was at the height of her
> notoriety circa 1880.  Was she well-enough known in the East, or  wherver PUCK
> was published, that "Calamity W. Jinx" was a play on her name?
>
 Rlin indicates that  Edward L.  Wheeler,  1854 or 5-1885, published  "Deadwood Dick on deck; or, Calamity Jane, the heroine of Whoop-Up. A story of Dakota ..." in 1878, with reprints in the 1880s and after.  This was from Beadle and Adams, of New York, 15 pp. & 1 illus, in Beadle's half dime library, no. 73.

Puck was published in NYC.  The Puck Building still stands, with a gilded figure of Puck over the door, on the south side of Houston street, a block or so east of Broadway.

Was there perhpas a stock phrase among printers "the devil in the office"?  Referring to the "printer's devil".  The following is from a story related to the trial, conviction and nominal fine of a woman in NYC for being a common scold:
 The Common Scold, convicted at the present court of sessions, not relishing the paragraph in our paper, called at our office to prove that she was an injured woman, by giving us "a touch of her condition."  Being unfortunately out, she commenced with the clerk, and after giving him a specimen of her melting powers, she concluded by scolding the devil in the office, and then took her departure, announcing her intention to pay me a visit; which, if she is bent upon doing, we shall return the compliment by putting her to press, and taking a fair impression of this singular virago, for the benefit of the sex generally.
National Advocate, September 10, 1821, p. 2, col. 5

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.