A Portland, Oregon police paddy wagon from 1912
23 October 2020
A paddy wagon is a police van used to transport criminals. The name is commonly thought to come from an association with the Irish, because in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a disproportionately large number of Irish were police in North American cities. This supposition is only partly true. The paddy is indeed a reference to the Irish, but it comes from an unexpected direction.
The first paddy wagons were wheelbarrows, especially small or shoddily made ones. The earliest association of paddy with wheelbarrows comes, surprisingly enough, from Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his 1850 collection of lectures Representative Men, Emerson writes:
But great men: the word is injurious. Is there caste? is there fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. “Generous and handsome, he says, “is your hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of Paddies.” Why are the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder? The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, and self-devotion, and they make war and death sacred;—but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill?—The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.
Exactly what did Emerson mean by his “country is his wheelbarrow”? We can’t be sure, but he was writing at the end of the Great Famine (a.k.a. the Irish Potato Famine), and he could have been referring to the Irish diaspora, with Irish people emigrating abroad with all their possessions in a wheelbarrow. Or he could be referring to a poor Irish farmer, who depends upon his wheelbarrow for his livelihood. In any case, in the years following Emerson’s lecture, we see a spate of references to wheelbarrows being called paddy wagons. Emerson may have created the association of the Irish and wheelbarrows, or perhaps he was just echoing one that was already in circulation. And while Emerson was clearly not using the allusion as a slur against the Irish, others that follow clearly would.
On 9 November 1868, the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel ran this article about a political rally that featured wheelbarrows:
WHEELBARROW
We found the barrow a marvel of the carriage-makers’ art. It was finished in the highest manner. The trunk of a mighty oak had been cleft to provide material for the body of the carriage. As it stood exposed to the admiring gaze of those assembled, one little thought its symmetrical proportions deserved the vulgar epithet of “paddy wagon” of a by-standing Democrat of the old school.
The next year, on 6 December 1869, the same paper runs another story that clearly associates a paddy wagon with the Irish or “Fenianers”:
James Jones and John Wood were each fined ten dollars and costs, for drunkeness. In anticipation of a call for an explanation as to the individuality of the said Jones and Wood, we will state that they are not persons of “long standing” in the community, having just come across the Herring-pond in a Dutch shallop on wheels. The assertion that the boat was a paddy-wagon, and its occupants Fenianers, is groundless, and contradicted in the fact that the parties signed their names Yahmes Yohnes and Hannes Holtz.
And on 12 July 1876, the Milwaukee paper again uses paddy wagon to refer to a wheelbarrow:
William Brotherhood mourns the loss of a one-wheeled carriage of the pattern known as “paddy wagon.” The bow-wheeler was stolen from his new building on Sixth street, near Spring.
Moving west, there is this delightful story in the 1 November 1895 issue of the Idaho Avalanche:
Seventeen years ago, in 1878, Lyman Potter, of New York state, performed the prodigious task of pushing a common “paddy” wheelbarrow across the continent. He started from his home on Dane street, Albany, N.Y., on the morning of April 10, 1878, and arrived in San Francisco on the afternoon of October 5 of the same year, being almost exactly one hundred and seventy-eight days (five hours and three minutes over), in performing the wearisome feat. Potter was a shoemaker, and the trip was the result of a wager made by some friends who believed that such a trip would occupy at least two hundred days. The wager was one thousand dollars, but Potter made between three and five times that sum advertising for different parties along the route. The wheelbarrow was made specially for the use to which it was put and weighed but seventy-five pounds. The distance traveled by Potter was exactly four thousand eighty-five and three-quarter miles.
A paddy wagon is featured again in this Houston Daily Post article from 9 November 1896 that combines a bet with an electoral politics (I have no idea what the Sioux in the sub-headline is supposed to refer to):
ELECTION BETS
Sioux in a Paddy WagonHempstead, Texas, November 7.—The town people at 10 o’clock this morning were treated to an extraordinary free show, the outcome of an election bet. Mr. Ed Jones, an ardent Bryan man, was pushing around the square a wheelbarrow, wherein was located Mr. Deran, the venerable war correspondent of the Galveston News, who had backed up in his judgment the cause of William McKinley. According to the terms of the bet, Mr. Jones not only had to push the wheelbarrow, with a clown cap on his head, but had to continually yell “Hurrah for McKinley!” This, coupled with the fact that about 100 yelling kids followed the procession, made the affair laughable indeed.
The farming journal Poultry West of November 1898 had this advice:
First take everything moveable in hour hen house, then, if the floor is of dirt, get your neighbor’s wheelborrow [sic]; Paddy’s wagon, as a friend of mine always names it, and into it shovel a load of the filthy soil from the hen house floor and wheel it away.
And paddy wheelbarrows were also useful in beekeeping, as evidenced by this from Gleanings in Bee Culture of December 1903:
Try the experiment some time with a small paddy wheelbarrow, with a small wheel, and then with a modern wheelbarrow with a large wheel. I think you will find the push or pull, or, technically speaking, the "draw-bar pull," would be much greater in the first case mentioned than in the last; so that what you actually save in weight would be more than counter-balanced in the extra strength exerted to push the small wheel over obstructions.
This description from a 1904 catalog obliquely refers to paddy wagon without explaining what is meant, but it seems likely that it refers to a wheelbarrow:
The 1904 catalog of the Electric Wheel Co., of Quincy, Illinois, is a handsome and profusely illustrated pamphlet of 50 pages showing almost every variety of wheels for almost every conceivable purpose from light steel wheels for the farm, “paddy wagon,” to heavy, wide trucks for moving the “monarchs of the forest.”
And finally, another election bet involving a wheelbarrow, this time from St. Johns, Oregon on 19 May 1908:
P.J. Peterson and J.S. Downey no [sic] wishing to gamble on the election entered into an agreement that if Word was elected Peterson should give Dawney [sic] a ride in a one-wheeled automobile from Prall’s corner to the post office and return, while if Stevens wins the race Downey is to treat Peterson to a similar ride. There is a Paddy-wagon ride coming in any event.
Meanwhile, municipal services in North American cities were using patrol wagons. These could be for fire departments, as evidenced by this 29 November 1859 article in the New York Herald:
In going to the fire engine No. 38[?] went down Thames street, and becoming unmanageable, ran into the Fire Insurance patrol wagon, whereby James E. Morgan, one of the insurance patrolmen, was knocked down, his right arm was broken, and his face and head badly cut and bruised.
Or they could be for police departments, as this 14 January 1881 article in the Chicago Daily Tribune shows:
The new police patrol wagon for the West Lake street district was exhibited at the City Hall yesterday. It is a strongly-built vehicle, somewhat similar to that used by the fire patrol. It has a gong, steps in the rear, and a large brass rail on each side. It is provided with lamps, lanterns, stretchers, etc., and is a complete and ready police out[fit?]. Superintendent McGarigie[?] is well pleased with it.
And the 1895 financial report for the city of Augusta, Georgia refers to expenses for the maintenance of police department pat. wagons:
Lowrey Wagon Works, stretcher for pat. wagon and repairs............ 28 50
This is obviously a reference to patrol wagon. But this clipping seems to be for brevity in a long list of expenses, and it there are no other uses of pat wagon to be found.
Finally, in the opening years of the twentieth century these separate threads come together. The association of Irish wheelbarrow blends with the patrol wagon driven by Irish-American police officers, and the latter becomes the paddy wagon. It seems likely that patrol wagon gave way to paddy wagon first in jocular speech, referring to the Irish police officers driving it.
From the Menasha Record of Wisconsin of 4 October 1906:
Adrian Clark a resident of Kaukauna at [indistinct] to commit suicide at Appleton yesterday. He doffed his wearing apparel and stutteringly announced his intention to a local bridgetender when the patrol arrived and he was taken in the “paddy wagon” to the police station where he regained his senses.
We get this bit of dialogue from the Chicago Daily Tribune of 12 September 1909:
They had fire sale over to Meals & Keerey’s the other day, and for two bits I got all the good poetry ever writ from Homer to George M Cohan. I think Homer’s swell, don’t you? Gee, where he gets off that spiel about “Now clashed the chariots to the fray”—don’t it make you think of the paddy wagon going down the street to pinch a gambling joint?
And paddy wagon for a police van would quickly become a fixture in English slang.
Sources:
“Catalogs Received.” Michigan Farmer, 27 February 1904, 201. ProQuest Magazines.
“City Hall.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 14 January 1881, 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“City Matters.” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (Wisconsin), 6 December 1869, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
“Election Bets.” Houston Daily Post (Texas), 9 November 1896, 4. Newspapers.com.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Uses of Great Men.” Representative Men. Seven Lectures. London: George Routledge, 1850, 34. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Fire in Trinity Place—Two Firemen Badly Injured.” New York Herald, 29 November 1859, 5. ProQuest Civil War Era.
“For Cold Weather.” The Poultry West, November 1898, 16. Newspapers.com.
“General Correspondence.” Gleanings in Bee Culture, 31.23, 1 December 1903, 1012. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. Paddy, n.
“In the Twin Cities.” Menasha Record (Menasha, Wisconsin), 4 October 1906, 1. Newspapers.com.
Liberman, Anatoly, with comments by Stephen Goranson. “Monthly Etymology Gleanings for March 2015, Part 2.” OUPblog, 8 April 2015.
“Local Miscellany.” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (Wisconsin), 12 July 1876, 8. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
“Long Trip in a Wheelbarrow.” Idaho Avalanche (Silver City, Idaho), 1 November 1895, 4. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
“Official Reports, City of Augusta, Ga. 1895” (6 January 1896). The Mayor’s Message, Department Reports, and Accompanying Documents for the Year 1895. Augusta, Georgia: John M. Weigle, 1896, 29. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2005, s.v. paddy, n.2.
St. Johns Review (Oregon), 29 May 1908, 3. Newspapers.com
“South Side Wheeling Tour.” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (Wisconsin), 9 November 1868, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.
Stockyards Freddie. “‘Beautiful Day in the Country’ Empty Phrase Without the Jug.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 12 September 1909, E3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo Credit: unknown photographer, 1912, City of Portland, Oregon Archives.