"herring-broth" as an ethnic slur?

[Gerald Cohen]

At 10:49 AM -0400 5/14/03, George Thompson wrote:
>John Middleton was indicted for an assault on Mary Gibson.  The
>prosecutrix is a married woman of reputation, a native of Ireland.
>On Sunday the 2d. inst. the prisoner came into her apartment, where
>she and her husband were at breakfast, and enquired if she could not
>give him some herring-broth.  Conceiving this to be a gross national
>as well as personal insult, the prosecutrix threw the contents of
>the slop-bowl in his face, and he departed to all appearance
>perfectly satisfied.  [Later, he meets her in the street, as she is
>leaving church, and kicks her,] telling her at the same time that he
>was giving her a little herring-broth.  [He gets 6 months.]
>New-York Commercial Advertiser, August 18, 1807, p. 2, col. 4 - p.
>3, col. 1
>
>Is this a traditional reflection on the poverty of Ireland?  I
>believe that herrings have in English anyway a reputation as a poor
>sort of food.  No doubt "herring-broth" would be a thin sort of
>broth.  I've never encountered the expression, though Ms. Gibson
>seems to have understood it readily.

****

    I asked the expert on Irish matters at my campus (John Morgan,
English Dept.) about this. He told me that when he was a child, if he
or one of his siblings asked their mother what was for dinner, the
standard answer they received was "Tea, bread and herring." In other
words, "Don't bother me, you'll see what's for dinner at dinnertime."

    Herring was regarded as a very prosaic food. The request for
"herring broth" was no doubt an allusion to the poverty of the Irish
(hence the furious reaction), although this was probably not a
traditional taunt.

Gerald Cohen
University of Missouri-Rolla