Query: "I scream for ice-cream"

[George Thompson]

An additional citation.

The NYTimes online file from 1851, through Proquest, gives the following, not, of course, an antedating to 1825, but still:

   The ice-cream tickets called forth the inquiry from some of the boys, "What do you do when yer mother licks yer?" followed immediately by the answer "I scream."  The application to the ticket is easily seen.
   New York Times, July 13, 1873, p. 8.  From an article headlined "The Fourth Excursion", regarding a picnic for poor children sponsored by the Times.  This is the only item retrieved from before 1901 by searching "ice cream" and "I scream".

GAT

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

----- Original Message -----
From: George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
Date: Thursday, August 29, 2002 1:20 pm
Subject: Re: Query: "I scream for ice-cream"

> I posted the following items a year or so ago, and a lively if
> uninteresting (to me) discussion followed regarding the niceties
> of the pronunciation involved.
>
> 1825:   Met a strong-lunged fellow with a large tin bucket,
> shouting with hideous gesticulations, “I scream!”  Found he had
> ice-cream for sale.
> Bayrd Still, “New York City in 1825: A Newly Discovered
> Description,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, 46:2 (April,
> 1962):151, quoting a newspaper of 1825.
>
> 1872:   [it would] cause the warm blood to freeze in thy veins
> even like unto that of skimmed milk in an I scream freezer.
> Isaac S. Lyon, Recollections of an Old Cartman  [Old New York
> Street Life]  Graham Hodges, ed., N. Y.: New York Bound, 1984, p.
> 6 [misnumbered as p. 9]
>
> 1997:   In "I Scream for Ice Cream," a nine and a half foot tall
> [statue]. . . .
> New York Times, June 2, 1997, Section B, p. 9, in a story headed
> "In Texas, a Celebration of the Ephemeral Spirit."
>
> [David Crystal, in his  Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and
> Languages, under "Juncture" cited apopular song of the 1930s/1940s
> "I Scream for Ice Cream".]
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African
> Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gerald Cohen <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
> Date: Monday, August 26, 2002 10:51 pm
> Subject: Query: "I scream for ice-cream"
>
> >   I've received a request for the earliest datings of "I scream for
> > ice-cream" and its variants. I remember hearing this at the Concord
> > Hotel (Catskills) in the late '50's or early '60's but suspect it's
> > older. Barry? Fred?
> >
> > Gerald Cohen
> >
>