[Ads-l] "paddy wagon" antedated

[Jonathan Lighter]

Fascinating.

I have seen 19th C. cartoons that depict victims of a donnybrook being
hauled away semiconscious in a wheelbarrow. Hence "paddy wagon."

Since 19th C. police in Boston and NY were also stereotypically Irish....

My grandparents (b. NYC in the 1880s) used the word exclusively in the
modern (er, I mean "more recent") sense.


JL

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 6:20 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      "paddy wagon" antedated
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Though "paddy wagon" came to be associated with police vehicles, some
> early=
>  uses associate it with wheelbarrows. OED (via Sam Clements) has 1909 for
> "=
> paddy wagon."
> Two newspapers via
> http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/
> involve election bets where the loser must ride in a wheelbarrow.
> 1908, May 29. St. John's Review [Ont.]
> "There is a Paddy-wagon ride coming in any event."
> 1896, Nov 8. Houston Daily Post
> "Sioux in a Paddy Wagon" [headline]
> 1868, Nov. 5 Milwaukee Daily Sentinel [19th. c. news.] "Wheelbarrow...one
> l=
> ittle thought its symmetrical proportions deserved the vulgar epithet of
> "p=
> addy wagon" of a by-standing Democrat of the old school."
> Three more from Milwaukee Daily Sentinel: December 6, 1869  [Two men,
> recen=
> t arrivals, charged with drunkenness] "having just come across the
> Herring-=
> pond in a Dutch shallop on wheels [sic]. The assertion the the boat was a
> p=
> addy-wagon, and its occupants Fenianers, is groundless, [disproved by
> their=
>  names]
> June 29, 1872  "... borrowed a wheelbarrow....accordingly wheeled to town
> a=
> nd barrowed into the station [and] ...court room.His little scheme to
> becom=
> e possessed of a "paddy wagon" of the first order led to an expense of $15
> =
> and costs."
> July 12, 1876 "William Brotherhood mourns the loss of a one-wheeled
> carriag=
> e of the pattern known as a "paddy-wagon." The bow wheeler was stolen...."
>
> Gleanings in Bee Culture 1903, Dec. 1 v. 31, page 1021 [Google Books] "Try
> =
> the experiment some time with a small paddy wheelbarrow, with a small
> wheel=
> , and then with a modern wheelbarrow with a large wheel."
>
>
> Stephen Goranson
>
> http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
>
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