drunk and disorderly

[Ronald Butters]

I remember this term very well. 55 years ago in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at midnight behind Danceland Ballroom, I was arrested with my best for being "drunk and disorderly" and spent the night in jail in a cell by myself; I remember being horrified that the toilet had no wooden seat. The judge gave me a directed verdict of "not guilty," which I do think was fair and just (the arresting officer testified that he knew I was drunk because I told him, "I have not indulged in promiscuous consumption" to deny the putative cause of my alleged drunkenness, and "Thoreau would be proud of me" as he clanked the lock-up door shut. Smart-assed little twit!). I  learned my lesson and have not been in a jail cell since (not sure if Thoreau would be proud of me for that, considering what all the Yankee college students were doing in the South for civil rights in the 1950s). Not sure that I am not still a smart-assed twit.


On Jun 28, 2011, at 11:34 AM, George Thompson wrote:

> My father used to speak of someone being arrested for "drunk and disorderly"
> -- indeed, he might have had the experience himself, in his youth in
> Brooklyn, in the 1910s & 1920s.
> 
> I dare say that it is cop-talk: Your honor, I saw him coming down the
> street, and he was drunk, and disorderly.
> 
> Searching a dozen or so of the Proquest files available to me, I see that
> there are a number of appearances in the mid & late 1820s of phrases like
> "he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in the streets", all either
> from English sources, or from an American source that is quoting an English
> source.  The first home-grown appearance I notice is:
> . . . Jerry Duggin, an old acquaintance, being placed at the bar before
> Alderman Thorp as drunk and disorderly, Jerry, before the evidence could be
> given against him [began bantering with the Judge].
> 
> *Atkinson's Saturday Evening Post (1831-1839); *Oct 22, 1831; Vol. X., Whole
> No. 534.;
> 
> American Periodicals Series Online
> 
> 
> There's no indication that this story is copied from another paper, but
> looking it over, I'm a bit suspicious: there's a reference to "the officers
> of the New Police", which sounds like an allusion to the Peelers, and Jerry
> addresses the Judge as your Honor, but also as your Worship.  Your Honor was
> the usual mode in NYC courts at this time, but I don't think I've
> encountered "your Worship".  But maybe that was the usage in Philly.
> 
> In any event, I'm suspicious that this is copied from an English
> publication, which either was uncredited, or the acknowledgement has been
> cut out of the on-line version.
> 
> GAT
> 
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 10:38 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> 
>> At 6/27/2011 08:16 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>> 
>>> this doesn't answer your question, but "drunk and disorderly" goes back a
>>> while, at least to early 19th C. in England, if I recall.
>>> 
>> 
>> In the OED, I find quotations from 1340, 1489, and 1585 (as well as
>> 1830), but all as an adjectival phrase.
>> 
>> Joel
>> 
>> ------------------------------**------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
> Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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