"Wind Blew Through His Whiskers" (1892)

[Gerald Cohen]

My thanks to Barry for this item.  But I'm unfamiliar with the
expression "The wind blew through his whiskers." What exactly does it
mean in its slang sense?

Gerald Cohen, slang historian
University of Missouri-Rolla


At 10:31 PM -0400 7/31/03, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>    For the benefit on any slang historian from Missouri, from ProQuest.
>
>
>    Origin of a Slang Phrase.
>Los Angeles Times (1886-Current File). Los Angeles, Calif.: Jun 12,
>1892. p. 5 (1 page)
>    "'The wind blew through his whiskers' is an expression whose
>origin my town can justly claim," said Anson Talbot of St. Joseph,
>Mo., to a Globe-Democrat reporter.  "It happened this way: Ten or
>twelve years ago a maniac escaped from the State Lunatic Asylum near
>St. Joseph in the night, and the early risers the next morning were
>starled by the presence of a man on the roof of the Tootle
>Operahouse, one of the tallest buildings in the city.  Before the
>day was far spent he was identified as an inmate of the lunatic
>asylum, and the officers of the institution, together with a squad
>of police, soon set about to induce the maniac to come down from the
>roof.  Every harmless device known was exerted to get the man down,
>and finally the officers realized that they would have to go up,
>overpower him and bring him down.  There was only one opening to the
>roof, and the lunatic stationed himself there and kept the officers
>back by pelting every head with a big club as it was poked through
>the hole.  At last three men gained the roof, and, after a terrific
>struggle that was witnessed by thousands of excited people that
>blocked the streets, the lunatic was bound hand and foot and brought
>to the ground.  When he cooled off somewhat from the tussle with his
>captors the man gave as his reason for going to the roof that, his
>whiskers being so thick, he had gone up there to let the wind blow
>through them and cool his face.  The local papers wrote the affair
>up in elaborate style, and acccounts of it were telegraphed all over
>the country.  The headliners made the most of the incident, and in
>the blackest type announced that 'The wind blew through his
>whiskers.'  The expression was so catchy that it flew all over the
>country like wildfire, and that is the way it originated."