Mickey Finn (1918)

[Mullins, Bill]

The Quincy Ill Daily Whig has several "Mickey Finn" stories, apparently
syndicated from the NY Evening Sun, in 1888 and 1890.

>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Erik Hoover <grinchy at GRINCHY.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Mickey Finn (1918)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
> A fictional Mickey Finn is indexed by Cornell's Making of
> America, in the story "A Stray Cremona" - author S.R. Elliot,
> found in the Sept
> 1897 issue of The New England Magazine:
>
> "Mickey Finn, the blind fiddler, who supported himself by
> playing planxties and jigs at all the weddings and wakes..."
>
> Not the same humorous character, perhaps, but a
> characterization of Irish stereotype as an object of crude humor.
>

> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Mickey Finn (1918)
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

> >
> > The earliest appearance of this incident in the Chicago Tribune was
> > also June 23, 1918.
> >
> > Evidently a writer named Ernest Jerrold had been writing a
> series of
> > no doubt comic stories about a character named Mickey Finn
> who lived
> > in an Irish district (in the U. S., I think).  Evidently
> this lead to
> > the name being the stereotype name for a stereotype Irisher.  The
> > Chicago Tribune also ran occasional comic strips featuring a
> > troublesome little boy -- in the one I looked at, the boy
> chased a cat
> > onto a pump; the cat climbed onto the pump handle which
> caused water
> > to come out into the boy's face.  This seemed to be unsigned.
> >
> > My recollections of seeing this term in print when a boy
> was that it
> > was used as if synonymous with knockout drops -- as if it produced
> > unconsciousness.  My father occasionally used the term in
> its correct
> > meaning: a quick-acting laxative.  (Sorry to introduce a touch of
> > prescriptivism here.)
> >
> > GAT
> >
>