Entrance to the Krazy Kat speakeasy, Washington, DC, 1921
11 October 2023 (Update 14 October: striped pig added)
You don’t hear about blind tigers, blind pigs, or striped pigs much anymore. Occasionally, one may happen upon a bar or tavern with the name Blind Tiger or see the terms in historical fiction, but that’s about it. They are old slang terms for establishments that sell illicit liquor. The names arose in the days when sideshow or roadside attractions offered a glimpse of exotic or weird creatures. The two names come from the signs advertising the establishments, offering a peep at said animal but actually delivering a drink instead in an attempt to evade laws restricting the sale of alcohol.
The terms were not only differentiated by the title animal, but by region as well. Blind tiger was more common in the American South and West Midlands. Blind pig was primary found in the Inland North and West Coast. But the granddaddy of them all, the striped pig, got its start in Massachusetts.
Striped pig started when the Massachusetts legislature passed a law on 1 July 1838 prohibiting the sale of liquor in quantities less than fifteen gallons (the act was repealed in 1840) on days when the militia mustered. The original striped pig sprang up on the muster field in Dedham, Massachusetts on 11 September 1838:
YANKEE SHREWDNESS.—Coming it over the fifteen gallon law.—We understand that previous to the Division Muster at Dedham, yesterday, a shrewd one hit upon the following novel expedient to evade the license law. He made application to the Selectmen for a license to exhibit a striped pig during the parade day, which was granted.—He accordingly procured a pig, and with a brush painted some stripes on his back, and yesterday morning he had a tent erected on the field, with due notice on the exterior, that a striped pig was to be seen within: price of admission, six and a quarter cents. The rate being so low, numerous visitors were induced to call upon his swinish majesty, and, every one on coming out appeared highly gratified with the kind and courteous reception he met with from the keeper of the remarkable pig, for each comer was treated to a glass of brand and water or gin, or whatever liquor he might prefer, without any extra charge. Some were so well pleased that they were induced to take a second look at the animal, and were as kindly and liberally treated as at their first visit. At the last accounts the exhibitor was driving a brisk business, and was likely to make a profitable day’s job in exhibiting his “striped pig.”
The striped pig was a nationwide sensation, widely reported in newspapers throughout the United States. The America’s Historical Newspaper database records nearly nine hundred articles referencing striped pigs appearing between 1838 and 1840, when the law was repealed. And uses continued well beyond that date.
According to the Massachusetts’s Gloucester Telegraph on 22 September 1838, bars in New York were serving drinks called the striped pig:
A new beverage, called the “Striped Pig,” is said to be all the go at the Astor and other fashionable hotels in New-York.
And Rhode Island’s Providence Daily Journal of 28 September 1838 reports a stage show of that name being performed in Boston:
A new burletta, called the “Striped Pig,” has been performed at the National, in Boston, to full houses. The Gazette says it was written by one the first men in Boston, and is said to be a SQUEALER.
Dedham’s Norfolk Advertiser of 6 October 1838 tells of a political “party” being formed dedicated to the repeal of the law. Evidently this was not a formally organized party, so much as a caucus of candidates opposed to the law:
The Striped Pig Party in Hampden Co. have nominated for the Senate George Ashmun and Matthew Ives Jr.
And by the end of October, copycat striped pigs were in place. From the Norfolk Advertiser of 20 October 1838:
Not less than four “striped Pigs” were brought before Mr Justice Wells last week, and fined for violating the laws of the Commonwealth. One of these “poor shoats” has been shut up in the county “pig pen.”
But elsewhere in the nation, other animals took the place of the swine, and instead of being striped, they were blind. From Tennessee we have mention of a blind tiger in a debate in the state House of Representatives on 13 October 1841. On the agenda was a bill to repeal the state’s strict liquor laws, with proponents arguing that the ban was ineffective and only served to promote illicit trade in booze and all the societal ills that accompanied it:
The gentleman from Henry, who introduced that bill, had told the House about a Blind Tiger in Henry, that people went to see and got something to take on his premises. He knew of one of these destructive Blind Tigers in Cannon county, which was terrible enough. This question should not be made a theological one. Bad[?] as he was himself, he was a member of a church and was repealing the present law. So were the preachers in his county.
Another early example of blind tiger, also from Tennessee, comes in the Memphis Daily Eagle of 29 December 1849:
On the subject of Sunday tippling, or of selling spirits to negroes, it appears necessary that a witness shall testify that himself or other person actually paid down at the time for what he drank, although in a house notoriously open for tippling purposes. We believe that all “Blind Tiger” artifice, and other cunning evasions should be circumvented by the higher skill of a virtuous and patriotic Legislature.
By 1855 blind tigers were appearing in Texas. From the Texas State Gazette of 26 May 1855:
The liquor sellers at Marshall are seeking to evade the law by the game of the Blind Tiger. The council are expected to make it the dead tiger shortly.
And we see this fuller description of a blind tiger in Porter’s Spirit of the Times of 23 May 1857. This account is supposedly from a traveler passing through the state of Mississippi:
After a while I goes up in town, leavin’ Ben in charge of the boat; and after crusin’ around a little, I sees a kinder pigeon-hole cut in the side of a house, and over the hole, in big writin’, “Blind tiger, ten cents a sight.” I walks straight up, and peepin’ in, sees a feller standing’ inside, stirrin’ somethin’ with a stick. I immejiately recognised a familiar kinder menajery smell about the place. “Hello, there, you mister showman,” says I to the feller inside, “here’s your ten cents, walk out your wild cat.” Stranger, instead of showin’ me a wild varmint without eyes, I’ll be dod-busted if he didn’t shove out a glass of whiskey. You see, that “blind tiger” was an arrangement to evade the law, which won’t let ’em sell licker there, except by the gallon. It is useless to say that my visits wur numerous to that animal what couldn’t see.
Blind pig appears a decade or so later. There is this account in David MacRae’s 1870 The Americans at Home that describes a blind pig without using the term (he uses blind and pig, but not blind pig) in a section of the book that details prohibition laws in New England:
It was a new thing for me to walk for hours along the streets of a large and populous city like Boston and not see a single spirit-shop. That is one point gained. The traffic, no doubt, goes on. But it has to creep away into back streets, or conceal itself behind window-blinds that offer nothing but cigars, or soda-water, or confectionary, to the uninitiated passerby. When the people become more vigilant, it has to supply its customers through clubs or city agencies, or under medical prescription. In desperate cases it has to betake itself to the exhibition of Greenland pigs and other curious animals, charging 25 cents for a sight of the pig and throwing in a gin cocktail gratuitously. Natural history, in such cases, becomes a study of absorbing interest. People have no sooner been to see the Greenland pig once, than they are seized with an irresistible desire to go back and see him again.
And we see the phrase blind pig complete in a 27 February 1878 article in the Minneapolis Tribune:
At Rochester, an establishment known as “Blind Pig,” where the law was evaded and liquor sold, has been broken up and a young man named Charles Hall arrested, tried, and found guilty. He was fined $100 and costs, and in default sent to jail for ninety days.
There is this from the Tacoma Weekly News of 23 July 1886 in the then territory of Washington:
About half past 8 o’clock this morning there was considerable excitement among the habitues of Pacific avenue. It was caused by the appearance of a body of laboring men strolling along the sidewalks having come from the wharf. After they reached the Halstead house, they divided into squads and then circulated through the city taking in all the sights that included tips to the “blind pig.”
And this delightful story in the same paper two weeks later, on 6 August 1886:
A day or two ago at Puyallup, a sow’s six piggies ran under a coach of the train bound for Tacoma, while stopping at the depot. After the train started the pigs trotted along under the car, for nearly a block, while pig mater stood behind looking for her offspring with surprised alarm. The youngsters desiring to learn the significance of “blind pig,” and having heard of such an asylum for the distressed, rushed into a saloon and stayed there until driven out by the bar keeper. It was a thrilling pig’s tale all around.
Finally, there is this excerpt from a sermon printed in the Boston Herald of 24 January 1887:
Now, in Kansas, after prohibition had been carried, they found all the old topers were as drunk as before. Finally, one fellow with a nose went peeking around, and he found there was a place where a man was running what he called a blind pig.
These exotic animals and the beverages served to those who viewed them are things of the past, although there are present-day equivalents, only they don’t advertise animals and liquor is not the intoxicant they serve. Such establishments are a product of prohibition.
Sources:
Thanks to Peter Reitan for alerting me to the existence of the phrase striped pig.
“Additional Laborers for the Front.” Tacoma Weekly News (Washington), 23 July 1886, 3/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Brevities.” Tacoma Weekly News (Washington), 6 August 1886, 3/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. blind tiger, n. also attrib., blind pig, n., striped pig, n.
Gloucester Telegraph (Massachusetts), 22 September 1838, 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v blind pig, n., blind-pigger, n., blind tiger, n.
A History of the “Striped Pig.” Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1838, 9–10. Gale Primary Sources: American Fiction.
“’Lige Simmons of Sinkum.” Porter’s Spirit of the Times (New York), 23 May 1857, 182/1–2. American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 4.
MacRae, David. The Americans at Home: Pen-and-Ink Sketches of American Men, Manners, and Institutions, vol. 2 of 2. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1870, 315. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Norfolk Advertiser (Dedham, Massachusetts), 6 October 1838, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
———, 20 October 1838, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Our Table.” Texas State Gazette (Austin), 26 May 1855, 309/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. blind pig, n., blind tiger, n.
“Presentments.” Memphis Daily Eagle, 29 December 1849, 6/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Providence Daily Journal (Rhode Island), 28 September 1838, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Small, Sam. “Liberty for All. How the Fetters of Sin Can be Broken.” Boston Herald (Massachusetts), 24 January 1887, 3/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“State News.” Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 27 February 1878, 2/6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Tennessee Legislature. House of Representatives” (13 October 1841). Daily Republican Banner (Nashville), 15 October 1841, 3/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Yankee Shrewdness.” Columbian Centinel (Boston), 12 September 1838, 2/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Cleon Throckmorton, 1921. Library of Congress, LC-F8- 15145 (P&P). Public domain image.