redhanded

Lady Macbeth examining her hand, believing it to be bloodstained, after the killing of King Duncan. A painting of a woman in a darkened room looking at her hand. An oil lamp burns on a table next to her.

23 September 2021

To be caught redhanded is to be caught in the act of some crime or mischief. The underlying metaphor is rather obvious upon a bit of reflection; it’s the imagery of a murderer’s bloody hand. The term arises in late medieval Scottish law to distinguish the procedures that should be followed when a person is caught in the act versus being caught at a later time. If a murderer was caught redhanded, many of the evidentiary hurdles could be dispensed with and sentence brought summarily.

The term is first recorded in a statute passed c.1430. The law is written in Latin, but uses a few English words, fang (plunder, stolen property) and redhand:

De recenti crimine quod dicitur redhand

Si latro comprehensus fuerit cum fang hoc est hande habande aut homicida redhand si hoc fuerit in burgo surgant hii qui tenent in baronia infra burgam per sectam calumniatoris et statim de ipso malefactore siue de die siue de nocte faciant justicie complementum pro baronibus enim in tali casu reputabuntur.

(Regarding an immediate indictment that is described as redhand

If a thief should be caught with the fang [i.e., plunder] in his hand or a murderer redhand, if this is in the jurisdiction of a city let those arise who live in the district within the city, dispose of false accusations and immediately, whether it be day or night, perform complete justice for the barons, that is to say, in such a case to decide the case.)

And a 1432 Scottish statute reads as follows:

Quhare ony man beis slane within the realme, als wele within regalite as within rialte, in borowis as to lande, that in continent, without delay, als fast as the sheref beis certifiit thareof, outhir be party or be ony uthiris, he sal pass and persew the slaaris, ane or maa, ande raiss the kingis horne on hym and raise the cuntre in his suppowell quhil he be ourtane. Ande gif he may be ouretakyn he salbe put in sikkir festinens quhil the law be done on hym. Ande that salbe within fourty dais at the ferrest. Ande be it red hand it salbe done within that sone.

(Where any man is slain within the realm, both within and outside regality, as in a royal estate, in boroughs as to land, that immediately, without delay, as fast as the sheriff is certified thereof, either by party or by others, he shall pass and pursue the slayers, one or more, and raise the king's horn on him and raise the country in his support while he [the slayer] is overtaken. And if he may be overtaken, he shall be put in a secure fastness until the law is done on him. And that shall be within forty days at the latest. And if it is red-handed, it shall be done within that sun.)

By the second half of the next century, redhanded becomes metaphorical—but still limited to legal usage—and applied to crimes other than murder. This 1578 Scottish statute refers to being caught carrying firearms to be a riedhand crime:

It sall not be lefull to beir, weir, or use in schuting or utherwayis the saidis culveringis, daggis, pistolettis, or ony sic uther ingyne of fyre werk upoun thair personis, or in cumpany with thame oppinlie, with thame outwith houssis in tyme cuming, under the pane of impresonment of thair personis for yeir and day, and forder induring the Kingis Majesteis will,—togidder with the pane of escheting of the culveringis, daggis, or sic uther ingynes of fyre werk to the use and behuif of the juge executor of the jugement heireftir ordanit. And for executioun heirof, that the offendouris sall not eschape unpuneist, gevis and grantis full power and commissioun, be vertew of this present Act, to all Shereffis, Stewartis, Baillies and thair deputtis, Lordis of Regaliteis and thair Baillies, Provestis, Aldermen, and Baillies of Burrowis, makand thame our Soverane Lordis justices in that part, to tak and apprehend the contravenaris heirof, beand found reidhand berand or werand the saidis culveringis, daggis, pistolettis, or utheris ingynis of fyre werk, and keip thame in ward quhill justice be execute upoun thame, providing the same be done within sic space as be the law and custum is appointit for personis takin reidhand in thift.

It isn’t until the eighteenth century that the word moved south into England. It’s found in a 1759 edition of Spenser’s Fairie Queene, where the editor, Ralph Church, uses it to gloss ruddymaine. In the passage, the Knight Guyon finds the woman Amavia dying. Her husband had been seduced by the evil enchantress Acrasia, and Amavia had poisoned him and then killed herself. Guyon takes her infant boy and swears to bring it up avenge his parents’ deaths:

Then taking Congè of that Virgin pure,
   The bloody-handed Babe unto her truth
   Did earnestly committ, and her conjure
   In vertuous lore to traine his tender youth,
   And all that gentle nouriture ensu’th:
   And that, so soone as riper yeares he raught,
   He might, for memory of that daye’s truth,
   Be called Ruddymaine; and thereby taught
T’avenge his Parents death on them that had it wrought.

Church’s note reads:

8 ——Ruddymane;] i.e. Red-handed

From this point on, redhanded becomes widely used, and not just in legal or homicidal contexts.

Discuss this post

Sources:

The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. 1. 1844. Appendix V (c.1430). 375. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Burton, John Hill, ed. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, first series, vol. 2. (12 April 1578). Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 682. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified September 2019, s.v. red-handed, adj., red-hand, adj. and n.

 “Perth, Parliamentary Commission, Parliamentary Records, 10 March 1432.” Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707. University of St. Andrews, 2021.

Spenser, Edmund. The Fairie Queene, vol. 2 of 4. Ralph Church, ed. London: William Faden, 1759, 3.2, 46–47. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: Alfred Stevens, before 1906, oil on canvas. Musées Communaux de Verviers. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of an original work that is in the public domain.

red tape

US pension documents bound with red tape. A sheaf of papers, folded, and tied with red cloth ribbon. The top document is dated 1 October 1904.

22 September 2021

Red tape is the mindless adherence to bureaucratic rules and niceties that, to outsiders at least, seem pointless and time-wasting. The term comes from the red, cloth tape that was once used to bind stacks of papers in offices. A note in the 11 May 1861 issue of Notes and Queries discusses the origin of the practice in Britain:

Red tape appears to be used exclusively in the public offices of this country, and is probably of no great antiquity. It may have been originally imported from Holland, but there is no reason for connecting it to William III. Tape was a convenient and cheap material for tying up loose papers; and as white tape soon became dirty, coloured tape was preferred. Why the colour red was preferred for tape, as for sealing-wax and wafers, depended on some accident which is not easy to trace. On occasions of public mourning, black tape is sometimes served out in the government offices.

That same article in Notes and Queries includes a transcription of the earliest known appearance of the term, used in its literal sense, from 1658:

From the following advertisement in the Public Intelligencer for Dec. 6th, 1658 (No. 153), it would appear that red tape was used by London lawyers two centuries ago:—
“A little bundle of Papers tied with a red Tape, were lost on Friday last was a seven night, between Worcester-house and Lincolns-Inn. Also a Paper-Book bound in Leather and blue coloured Leafs. If any one who hath found them, will bring or send them to Mr. Graves his Chamber in Lincoln’s Inn, they shall receive satisfaction for their pains.”

It would seem that stacks of papers bound with red tape had a penchant for being lost on public transport, for this advertisement appeared in the Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence for 22 March 1681:

A Pocket Book bound in Vellom, tied about with a piece of red Tape, was lost on Wednesday night last, about the hour of Nine, between Fleet-Bridge and East-Cheap, with sev ral [sic] Bills of Parcels of Linnen, and Bone-Lace, and Receipts for fever2l [sic] Sums of Money; the Receipts are made to one Hugh Anderson. Whoever hath taken up this Pocket Book, they are Desired to bring or send it to the Publisher of this Intelligence, or to John Damm’s Coffee-House in the Mint in Southwark, and the Bearer shall have 5 s. reward.

And we get a reference to government documents bound with red tape being lost on public transport in the London Gazette of 13–17 December 1694:

Dropt the 23d past, between Tooteing and Clapham, in the County of Surry, 3 Exchequer Orders in parchment, tied up with red Tape, for payment of the Interest of 300 l. unto John Coldham of Tooteing aforesaid. Whoever brings the said Orders to Mr. Smith, Goldsmith, at the Grasshopper in Lombard-street, or to the said Mr. Coldham at his House in Tooteing, shall have a Guinea reward.

Red tape, the literal kind, appears in the Americas by 1 July 1696 with the passage of this this law governing how records of the boundaries of public land in Annapolis in the colony of Maryland were to be kept:

And for the Ascertaining of the Bounds and Limits of the said Town-Pasture and Common, and the several Lots and Dividends in the same contained; be it Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, by and with the Advice and Consent of the aforesaid, That the Dimensions, Bounds and Courses thereof, shall at all Times hereafter, be adjudged, held, taken and reputed, according to the Map and Platt thereof, being drawn up and presented by Richard Beard, Gent. by Order and Directions of his Excellency, carefully Examined, and Sealed with the Great Seal of the Province at the Fore Side thereof, and upon the Back Side thereof seal’d with his Excellency’s Seal at Arms, on a Red Cross with Red Tape, and remaining in the Secretary’s Office, or to be hung up in the Court-House.

Figurative use of red tape to mean adherence to bureaucratic rules is in place by 1736, when John Hervey includes the following passage in his satirical Poetical Epistle to the Queen on Her Commanding Lord Hervey to Write No More:

What others dictate, let great statesmen write,
And we Gold Keys learn all to read at sight:
Let Wilmington, with grave, contracted brow,
Red tape and wisdom at the Council show,
Sleep in the senate, in the circle bow.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“An Act for Keeping Good Rules and Orders in the Port of Annapolis” (1 July 1696). Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland. Annapolis: William Parks, 1727, 14. LLMC Digital.

“Advertisement.” Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence (London), 22 March 1681, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection.

Hervey, John. “Poetical Epistle to the Queen on Her Commanding Lord Hervey to Write No More” (1736). Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, vol. 2 of 2. John Wilson Croker, ed. London: John Murray, 1848, 156. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Multiple Advertisements.” London Gazette, 13–17 December 1694, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified March 2019, s.v. red tape, n.

“Red Tape.” Notes and Queries (London), 11.280, 11 May 1861, 375–76. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals

Tréguer, Pascal. “Origin of ‘Red Tape’ (Obstructive Official Rules).” Wordhistories.net, 1 January 2018.

Photo credit: Jarek Tuszyński, 2011. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

red herring

One of the more famous red herrings in literature, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 A Study in Scarlet, the first print appearance of the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Holmes, not wearing his trademark deerstalker cap, uses a magnifying glass to examine the word “Rache,” which has been scrawled on a wall of a murder scene. Watson and two police detectives look on. The caption reads, “He examined with his glass the word upon the wall, going over every letter of it with the most minute exactness.”

21 September 2021

A red herring is something that distracts or is misleading, especially a false clue in an investigation or an ancillary issue that keeps people from focusing on the primary issue. It is also a fish, a smoked kipper that has turned red during the curing process.

Literal use of red herring referring to the fish dates to the fourteenth century. The figurative sense comes from the world of hunting and the practice of dragging a red herring along a trail in order to train or exercise hounds and horses. The hounds would follow the scent of the fish as if it were prey. Thomas Nash mentions this practice in his 1599 essay The Praise of the Red Herring:

Next, to draw on hounds to a sent, to a redde herring skinne there is nothing comparable.

This practice would later be misunderstood to be one used by poachers or others intent on disrupting a hunt. There are several humorous stories about people using a red herring to distract hounds, but if this ever actually happened it was a rare occurrence. Rather, it seems the stories were invented to connect the idea of distraction with the hunting practice in order to make the metaphor more apparent on its face.

A fuller description of the actual hunting practice is given in Gerald Langbaine’s 1685 The Hunter. A Discourse of Horsemanship:

Now that I may not leave you in ignorance what a Train scent is, I shall acquaint you that it has its Name, as I suppose, from the manner of it, viz. the trailing or dragging of a dead Cat or Fox (and in case of Necessity a Red-herring) three or four Miles, (according to the Will of the Rider, or the directions given him) and then laying the Dogs on the scent.

Langbaine’s book, written anonymously, was published for the bookseller Nicolas Cox, who would go on to reprint the book under his own name.

The figurative use also appears by the 1680s. From John Northleigh’s 1682 A Gentle Reflection on the Modest Account in a discussion of dissenters (i.e., Roman Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants) in England:

Your business in the next Paragraph, is to make the discover'd Association a Popish Hobgoblin too, a Mormo conjur'd up at White-Hall; or to use your own expression, The keeping Hounds in full cry with a Red-Herring, out of their own Kitchin, trail'd through the Kingdom to make a noise.

A pleasant Metaphor, I confess, in comparing a piece of Rebellion with a Red-Herring; somewhat a more apposite Allegory, even upon this account, because both are great Commodities in the Dutch Common-wealths; but I fancy, my Lord, could your Party but have kept this Herring close, and drying in their own Chimney, till the Nations Palate had been a little better disposed to relish such a salt Bit, the Dogs that would have follow'd the scent then, I am afraid would have shown themselves a thirsty sort of Blood-Hounds, and took some of the King's best Subjects for their Prey; but now this dried Fish has took a little Air, and rank Treason stunk and offended the whole Kingdom, ’tis no wonder if your Party won’t allow the Dish to come out of their Kitchin, when it looks as if it had been drest in Hell, and had the Devil for its Cook.

And also in 1682, Thomas Shadwell uses the metaphor in his satire The Medal of John Bayes, albeit without explicitly referring to the hunting practice:

But we doubt not but if you had found or put the Libel your Poet was Cudgell’d for (though few of your Loyal Closets, perhaps, are without that, and other Libels upon the King) into the Earls Closet, ye would have set up an abhorrence of that, rather than not have kept up the Fermentation and Division amongst the people. When this is run out of breath, we suppose ye will set up the Ticket for the Forbidden Dinner, and ye will abhor Factious, Schismatical, Seditious, Fanatical, and Rebellious Dining, or some new Red-Herring out of his Lordships Kitchin will come forth.

These two appearances in the same year strongly hint that the figurative use was already established by this date.

A neat, little story about the death and estate of Jasper Mayne, a seventeenth-century cleric and playwright, that uses the red herring metaphor in a very inventive fashion appears by 1691. It is found in Gerard Langbaine’s, the same man who wrote the above treatise on hunting, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Mayne had died in 1672:

He had a Servant who had long liv’d with him, to whom he bequeath’d a Trunk, and in Somewhat (as he said) that would make him Drink after his Death. The Doctor being dead the Trunk, was speedily visited by his Servant with mighty Expectation, where he found this promising Legacy to be nothing but a Red-Herring: So that it may be said of him, that his propensity to innocent Raillery was so great, that it kept him Company even after death.

Apparently, there was an actual dead fish in the trunk, so it’s both a literal and figurative red herring. But also, red herrings, being salty, make one crave a beverage. The metaphors and humor are operating on several, albeit all low, levels here. The story has been reprinted multiple times over the years and was especially popular in the mid nineteenth century.

The metaphorical use gets going in earnest in the mid eighteenth century. There is this dialogue about the good and bad effects of the pursuit of fame that was printed in Lloyd’s Evening Post for 20–22 June 1763:

L[ord]. G. It is right, however, that mankind should persue it. It is productive of many good effects. The trumpet of Fame rouses great minds to great actions.

Lord O. And to many bad ones too. Fame, you know, my Lord, has too trumpets. And though the persuit of it may be good exercise for the general pack of mankind, and keep them in breath, it seems (to speak in my favourite language of a sportsman) to be only hunting a trail, to catch a red herring at last.

And a Nathanael Freebody uses the metaphor of dogs on the scent of a red herring to criticize skepticism in the 24–26 March 1767 issue of the St. James’s Chronicle:

One is not at all surprised that this Word should be disliked by the Sceptic, who hath no Notion of the Thing signified by it; “whose judgment, set afloat, (to use the Language of Mr. Hume) is carried to every Side, as it is pushed by the Current of his Humours and Passions.” He is the very Reverse of the Halcyon, and loves to make his Nest in the Ocean, when it is all over Storm and Tempest. He neither hopes nor desires to find Truth and Certainty, but employs his Powers in Quest of Probabilities and Appearances only, like a Pack of Dogs, in full Cry, after the Trail of a Red Herring.

A 21 March 1782 article in London’s Morning Chronicle uses the metaphor to criticize those who advocated for continuing the fight to keep the American colonies British:

Though he had not the honour of being one of those sagacious country gentlemen, who had so long vociferated for the American war, (a war which he should ever think impolitic, unjust, and inexpedient) who had so long run on the red herring scent of American taxation, before they found out there was no game a foot.

I had mentioned that the idea of poachers or others who used a red herring to disrupt a hunt was in itself a red herring of sorts, but there are some stories about it happening. Here is one that was printed in the Manchester Herald on 28 April 1792. Given that it is citing another paper (a “friend of a friend” as they say in urban legend circles), there is good reason to question whether or not it actually happened. I have been unable to locate the story in archives of the Norfolk Chronicle:

The Norfolk Chronicle informs the world, that a party of the Sons of Nimrod, with the hounds belonging to a subscription hunt in that county, had a most excellent diversion; the dogs were never at fault for many minutes; one continued the case lasted for forty miles:— rewarded for their toil, the object of it took cover in a public house: the shouts of the hunters echoed through the air, whilst the horns sounded the triumph to the woods: when lo! upon searching the house, not Reynard, but a RED HERRING, was found, which a Wag had trailed before the hounds!

Another account of a red herring being used to distract the hounds on a hunt, this one a first-hand one, was given by William Cobbett in his Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register of 14 February 1807. Cobbett is a fascinating fellow, a politically radical pamphleteer and propagandist—at one point he had to flee to the United States to avoid prison in England—a journalist, briefly a member of Parliament, and a best-selling grammarian. What’s not to like about the man? But Cobbett was not one to let truth get in the way of a good story, so he may have been making up the bit about his using a red herring to distract a hunt:

When I was a boy, we used, in order to draw off the harriers from the trail of a hare that we had set down as our own private property, get to her haunt early in the morning, and drag a red-herring, tied to a string, four or five miles over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppices, till we got to a point, whence we were pretty sure the hunters would not return to the spot where they had thrown off; and, though I would, by no means, be understood, as comparing the editors and proprietors of the London daily press to animals half so sagacious and so faithful as hounds, I cannot help thinking, that, in the case to which we are referring, they must have been misled, at first, by some political deceiver.

[...]

Alas! it was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone; and, on the Monday, the Morning Chronicle solemnly assured its readers, that the little bulletin, which it had published itself under the name of Lord Howick, never had been promulgated by, or received the sanction of, his Majesty’s Ministers!

The Oxford English Dictionary, and others, credit Cobbett with inventing the idea of distracting hounds as the basis for the metaphor. The OED also lists him as the earliest citation of the figurative use. But, as we have seen, both the figurative use and the idea that it is grounded in distracted dogs predates his use of it by a considerable period.

I’ll conclude with two slightly later uses of red herring. The first is an impoverished, retired, English general in India who uses a red herring at the breakfast table as an excuse to change the subject when the topic of his paying for a niece’s marriage arises in conversation. From the Asiatic Journal of July 1816:

Here the General coughed as if the tail of his red-herring had got down this throat, and I really thought it was so; but his sister was much more keen-sighted, and notwithstanding the General’s groans about those times being past, and stammering about alteration of circumstances, she appeared to conceive no small hopes that he had motives more of policy than necessity for giving out that he was poor; and seemed as little inclined as the General to pursue the subject, and another red-herring coming in, the General took the opportunity of giving an entire change to the conversation.

And the second is another description of using a red herring on a hunt, here to provide something for the hounds to follow when there is no fox to be hunted. It’s interesting primarily for the mythological reference to the story of Actaeon. From London’s Morning Chronicle of 25 March 1818:

Lord ELL—NB—II attended, but the exercise of stag hunting was too severe; and he went out with a dozen dogs in pursuit, as it was pretended, of a fox, but it was only a red-herring dragged for scent. His Lordship did not long appear to relish the sport, was uneasy in his seat, and it not being a private Pack, the dogs were unmanagable, and he was at last completely thrown out. He exclaimed frequently
           “Actæon ego sum, dominum cognoscite vestrum,” [I am Actæon, recognize your master]
but all in vain.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“A Dialogue Between the late Earls of Orford and Granville.” Lloyd’s Evening Post (London), 20–22 June 1763, 587. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Cobbett, William. “Summary of Politics.” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 9.7, 14 February 1807, 232–233. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/

“Dispatch Extraordinary.” Morning Chronicle (London), 25 March 1818, 3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Freebody, Nathanael. “The Miscellany, Number XIII” (26 March 1767). The St. James’s Chronicle; or the British Evening-Post, 24–26 March 1767, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

“The High-Mettled Hunters.” Manchester Herald (England), 28 April 1792, 3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Jacob, Giles. “Jasper Maine, D.D.” The Poetical Register: or, the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets. London: E. Curll, 1719, 167. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Langbaine, Gerard. An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Oxford: L.L. for George West and Henry Clements, 1691, 338. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. The Hunter. A Discourse of Horsemanship. Oxford: L. Lichfield for Nicholas Cox, 1685, 65. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Nash, Thomas. “The Praise of the Red Herring.” Nashes Lenten Stuffe, London: Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes for Nicholas Ling and Cuthbert Burby, 1599, 70. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Northleigh, John. A Gentle Reflection on the Modest Account. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1682, 4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Original Communications.” The Asiatic Journal, 2.7, July 1816, 10–11. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified June 2020, s.v. red herring, n.

“Parliamentary Intelligence. House of Commons. Change of Ministry!!!” Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, 21 March 1782, 3. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Shadwell, Thomas. “Epistle to the Tories.” The Medal of John Bayes: A Satyr. London: Richard Janeway, 1682, 4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Tréguer, Pascal. “The Authentic Origin of ‘Red Herring.’” Wordhistories.net, 6 July 2017.

Image credit: David Henry Friston, 1887. From Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, published in the 1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Public domain image.

real McCoy, the

Black and white publicity photo of actor Deforest Kelly as Dr. Leonard McCoy from the television show Star Trek (1966–69). A man in a Star Fleet uniform from the show standing in front of a control panel on the bridge of the starship USS Enterprise.

20 August 2021

[22 August: deleted several lines regarding the speculative origin of the phrase coming from the Scottish title Reay Mackay, which lacks evidentiary support.]

The real McCoy is the genuine article, the actual thing itself, not a fake or pretender.

The origin of the phrase is unknown, and hypotheses as to the origin abound, most of which can be dismissed because the phrase antedates the events in the explanation. Those that cannot be immediately dismissed have no evidence supporting them, being mere speculation.

The earliest known instance of the phrase is in the form the real Mackay and appears in the Scottish newspaper the Arbroath Guide of 12 February 1848. The story is about a con man who took a man’s hat, presumably an expensive one, ostensibly to refurbish it, but returned a cheap imitation:

The hat was shining and glossy, and, like the renovator, sleekit; and though some doubts were at first entertained as to its being the real Mackay, the lining having been recognized, all seemed right, the hat was accepted of, the shilling paid, when Quin with pantomimic rapidity disappeared. The sequel of the story of the hat need hardly be told. The hat given Ross as his own on farther examination proved not to be it at all, but a very inferior article, indeed not calculated to grace either kirk or market; but in which the ingenious Quin had contrived to place, we fear with a view to deceive, the lining which had appertained to that of which he had deprived his unlucky customer.

The phrase is unmarked (meaning the editor did not put it in italics or quotation marks), and the story is not about anyone named Mackay, so it appears that the phrase was at least somewhat common and familiar to Scottish readers by this date.

An 1856 news story about a different con game was widely reprinted in British newspapers. The version here is from the West Yorkshire Huddersfield Chronicle of 14 June 1856, but the original appears to have been in the Dundee Advertiser (Scotland), but I have been unable to locate that appearance. In the story, a man named M’Kay died leaving a sizeable fortune but apparently no heirs. A woman, Margaret M’Kay, claimed to be his out-of-wedlock daughter, and had the body exhumed so that the relationship could be determined through their similar facial features. This was done and the woman declared to be his daughter, when:

The churchyard tragedy turned out to be but a farce after all, for William, from Australia, stepped in and proved himself to be the old man’s only son and child now alive. The proofs produced by William were the letters which he had sent to his father from Australia, and the letters which he had received in return. From these letters it was perfectly apparent that he was the only surviving child of his father; and Margaret, who had so warmly wept over her father’s grave, was obliged at last to yield the day in favour of William, the “real M‘Kay,” who has now been decerned sold executor to his father by the sheriff.

Usually, when quotation marks are placed around a word or phrase, they indicate that the term is new, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar. But here, given that the protagonists are actually named M’Kay, the quotation marks seem to be a case of signaling a known phrase being used to label a particularly apt use of it.

G. Mackay and Co. was also the name of a Scottish distillery, and a use of the phrase makes reference to that in an 1856 poem, Deil's Hallowe'en by a poet using the pseudonym Young Glasgow:

A drappie o' the real M'Kay.

In 1870, the distillers adopted the phrase as an advertising slogan, but it was, as we have seen, already firmly established as a catchphrase by this date.

The spelling real McCoy is first recorded in Canada, in James Bond’s (not that one) 1881 book The Rise and Fall of the “Union Club!”:

“But even if we get up the Club, where’ll we have it, Ned?”

“Where? Why over behind our place of course; you couldn’t find a better place. Don’t you mind the little beaver-meadow where got the white haws?—that’s where I’d laid out to have it.”

“By jingo! yes; so it will be. It’s the ‘real McCoy,’ as Jim Hicks says. Nobody but a devil can find us there.”

There are any number of other suggestions for the origin, and most commonly the names of boxer Norman Selby “Kid” McCoy (1873–1840) and Canadian-American inventor Elijah McCoy (1844–1929) are proffered as the putative origin. But as can be seen from the dates, not to mention the spelling of their names, they are too late and on the wrong continent to be the origin.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Bond, James S. The Rise and Fall of the “Union Club!” or, Boy Life in Canada. Yorkville: Royal Publishing, 1881, 1. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“County Court at Huddersfield” (syndicated). Huddersfield Chronicle (West Yorkshire, England), 14 June 1856, 8. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. real McCoy, the, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2001, modified December 2020, s.v. McCoy, n. and adj.

“Police Court.” Arbroath Guide and Weekly Advertiser and Reporter (Scotland), 12 February 1848, 667. The British Newspaper Archive.

Scottish National Dictionary, 2005, s.v. Mackay, prop. n. Dictionaries of the Scots Language / Dictionars o the Scots Leid.

Photo credit: NBC Television Network, c.1966. Public domain image in the United States because it was published in the United States prior to 1977 without a copyright notice.

read the riot act

17 September 2021

The Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819. The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry cavalry regiment violently disperses a crowd of peaceful demonstrators and attempts to arrest its leaders at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, England. Eighteen people were killed and hundreds injured. The Riot Act of 1715 was not read on this occasion, although it had been for previous demonstrations at that location where the crowd had dispersed peacefully. Saber-wielding cavalrymen charge into a crowd of demonstrators, while six men and one woman, bearing banners with Phrygian caps atop them, look on in horror from the speakers’ platform.

To read the riot act is to issue a reprimand and warning—cease what you’re doing or else—but it once meant to issue an official, and much more serious, legal notice. The British Riot Act of 1715, or giving its official title An Act for Preventing Tumults and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectual Punishing the Rioters (Anno primo Georgii I. Stat. 2. C. 5.), was passed in the first year of the reign of George I. At its heart, the act said that when a government official told a crowd of twelve or more to disperse, they must do so within an hour or face the death penalty. The key portion of the act reads:

That if any persons to the number of twelve or more, being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace, at any time after the last day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, and being required or commanded by any one or more justice or justices of the peace, or by the sheriff of the county, or his under-sheriff, or by the mayor, bailiff or bailiffs, or other head-officer, or justice of the peace of any city or town corporate, where such assembly shall be, by proclamation to be made in the King's name, in the form herin after directed, to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, shall, to the number of twelve or more (notwithstanding such proclamation made) unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously remain or continue together by the space of one hour after such command or request made by proclamation, that then such continuing together to the number of twelve or more, after such command or request made by proclamation, shall be adjudged felony without benefit of clergy, and the offenders therein shall be adjudged felons, and shall suffer death as in a case of felony without benefit of clergy.

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the order and form of the proclamation that shall be made by the authority of this act, shall be as hereafter followeth (that is to say) the justice of the peace, or other person authorized by this act to make the said proclamation shall, among the said rioters, or as near to them as he can safely come, with a loud voice command, or cause to be commanded silence to be, while proclamation is making, and after that, shall openly and with loud voice make or cause to be made proclamation in these words, or like in effect:

Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

The law went into force in 1715, but the phrase read the riot act did not appear for some decades. The first recorded instance that I’m aware of is in a pamphlet, An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Manager, published in 1763. The pamphlet was produced in response to riots that occurred in January of that year at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and the Drury Lane Theatre. Such public disruptions at theatrical appearances were hardly unusual, occurring around once every couple of years during this period. But this pair of riots was occasioned by the raising of ticket prices. It had been customary to charge late arrivals to a performance half price for their tickets. But in January 1763, the managements of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, the only fully licensed theaters in London, altered the practice and began charging full price regardless of when the person entered the theater. David Garrick ran the Drury Lane Theatre, and John Beard was manager of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden:

The passages here meant, are those which suppose Mr. Garrick would not appear the first night of the disturbance, to speak to the audience, though he was in the house.—That a message was sent to Mr. B—d, to persuade him to join with the manager of Drury-lane, in opposing force to force, and compel the audience to a submission;—which suppose a Justice of peace was proposed being sent for to read the Riot-act;—which make some of the performers insult and threaten the audience in the Green-room;——And which suppose Mr. G——k never intended to keep his word with the public, though he promised them an acquiescence with their terms.

This instance, of course, is a literal use of the phrase, calling upon a magistrate to read the proclamation and order the rioters to disperse.

The sense of a severe reprimand or warning, not the official legal proclamation, appears a couple of decades later. From M.P. Andrews’s 1784 play The Reparation, a scene in which two men are getting up the gumption to fight a duel before a third man tells them to cut it out:

Sir Gregory.    I could not break through forms for the universe.—Single combat, to be sure, may be maintained, but always with proper decorum. You state your grievances—I reply—preliminaries are broken—and then war is declared in due course.

Swagger.         Devil burn me, but we’ll do as the French do—declare war without saying a syllable of the matter. So come on, Sir Gregory—by St. Patrick, I’ll bother bother both sides of your ears with nothing but war! war! (bellowing).

Enter COLONEL QUORUM.

Col. Quorum.  Peace, I say, or I’ll read the riot act—Gentlemen, your most obedient.—and now, what is the matter.

A jocular, but literal use, of the phrase can be found in satirist John Wolcot’s 1795 poem The Convention Bill, an Ode. Wolcot wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar:

And, when our KING to Weymouth shall repair,
Forget not thou an order to the MAY’R,
When in the tub the ROYAL LIFE embarks,
To read the Riot-Act to shrimps and sharks!

A distinctly figurative sense of read the riot act appears in a letter from Martha Wilmot Bradford to her sister Alicia from Vienna on 17 December 1819, in which her husband the Rev. William Bradford added the following paragraph after Martha described the dress she had been wearing:

Matty with that delicate reserve so natural and so becoming  would have omitted to say what was most to the point on this subject, and as she has just run out to read the riot act in the Nursery, I beg to add the essential paragraph to the above, viz that at a little family supper at the Ambassador’s after the first reception, there was as is usual a good deal of discussion of the Ladies dresses, and would you believe it Ma’am that it was unanimously voted that the Chaplain’s Lady was the best dressed in the room.

The modern equivalent would be a husband picking up his wife’s smartphone as she left the room to send a text complimenting her to a friend. In any case, reading the riot act to naughty children in a nursery is a far cry from the legal sense.

The Riot Act remained on the books until 1967, when its primary provisions were repealed, and the remainder of act was repealed in 1973. But the phrase lives on.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Andrews, Miles Peter. The Reparation, a Comedy. London: T. and W. Lowndes, 1784, 48–49. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Manager. London: Wilson and Fell, 1763, 22–23. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Bradford, William. Letter, 19 December 1819. In Martha Wilmot. More Letters from Martha Wilmot: Impressions of Vienna, 1819–1829. Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart and Harford Montgomery Hyde, eds. London: Macmillan, 1935, 39.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. read, v.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2010, modified December 2019, s.v. Riot Act, n.

Pickering, Danby, ed. The Statutes at Large, vol. 13. Cambridge: Joseph Bentham, 1764, 142–43. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Pindar, Peter (pseudonym of John Wolcot). “The Convention Bill, an Ode.” Works of Peter Pindar. London: J. Cundee for J. Walker, 1802, 500. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Today in London’s Theatrical History: Riot at Covent Garden Theatre Against Ticket Price Rises, 1763.” Pasttenseblog, 24 February 2017.

Image credit: Richard Carlisle, 1819. Manchester Libraries. Public domain image