Horseracing and Suicide - the Heavy History and Etymology of "Lead-Pipe Cinch"

Horseracing and Suicide - the Heavy History and Etymology of "Lead-Pipe Cinch"

Image courtesy of Lead Pipe Cinch

The idiom, “it’s a lead pipe cinch,” meaning that something is a “sure thing,” is attested from 1888.  The earliest known appearance of the idiom in print is from a cautionary tale about horserace gambling in New York City; beware, not every bet pays off, even if you think that it is a “lead pipe cinch”:

In his third race, when intrusted with thousands of dollars by his stable and the public and looked upon as a “lead pipe cinch” of the best manufacture, tested and warranted in every manner, his dickey leg gives way and the faithful are left to mourn.  The moral is plain.

New York Tribune, October 4, 1888, page 4, column 1.

But how does a “lead pipe” relate to something being a “sure thing”? 

The word “cinch,” meaning a strap for tightening a saddle to a horse, was borrowed from Spanish by western cowboys, and had been used in English since at least 1859,[i] as both a noun and a verb.[ii]  

By 1880, the verb, “to cinch,” had developed an alternate meaning:

Cinch. To get a grip on, metaphorically; to corner and put the screw on any one.

Alfred Trumble, Slang Dictionary of New York, London and Paris, New York, National Police Gazette Office, 1880.
  

Sylva Clapin, A New Dictionary of Americanisms, New York, Louis Weiss & Co. (190-?)

An article from 1878, about the pre-Christmas horse races in Florence, Arizona Territory, illustrates the figurative use of “cinch,” as a verb:

But the “boys” got “cinched” at the races to the extent of their pocket funds, as the Mexicans happened to have the winning horse.

Salt River Herald (Phoenix, Arizona), December 28, 1878, page 3.

An article about racetrack slang, from 1890, illustrates the figurative use of “cinch” as a noun:

A very peculiar but emphatic bit of turf slang is the word “cinch.”  When a person has a cock-sure thing, when he can pick out without fail the winning horse, he is said to have a “cinch.”  This word, taken from the Spanish, is used by cowboys to denote the way in which their saddles are tightened on their ponies.  There are no buckles on the belly-band, but in their place there is a “cinch-strap,” which passes through two rings and is tied by the “cinch-knot.”  The Western phrase, “cinching up,” means simply tightening the girth.  And it is significant that, on the race-track, you hear the expression “an air-tight.”  The most emphatic form is a “lead pipe cinch,” but how that intensifies the certainty I am unable to say.

American Notes and Queries, volume 5, number 17, August 23, 1890, page 197.

Although the writer of the racetrack slang article did not know the origin of “lead-pipe” as an intensifier of “cinch,” an apparently far-fetched, old-wives’ tale about the phrase’s origins appeared a few weeks later:

New Way of Saying It.

When One Has a Dead Sure Thing He Has the Hilton Cinch.

St. Louis Republic.]

“The Hilton cinch” is the latest slang phrase for a dead sure thing, and has grown out of the recent publication of the way Judge Hilton manipulated the Stewart estates to his own advantage.  It has replaced the “lead pipe cinch” in vogue some time ago, which referred to the plumber who, while traveling on East River ferry, fell overboard with a coil of lead pipe around his body.  The “lead pipe cinch” was too much for him, and he never came up again.

Pittsburg Dispatch, April 27, 1890, page 20, column 8 (citing St. Louis Republic).

Etymologists have long been aware of this origin story, but have generally dismissed it as fantasy.  Michael Quinion’s thorough discussion of “lead-pipe cinch” on WorldWideWords.org, for example, recommends taking the drowned-plumber explanation with a “substantial pinch of salt.”  “Some ingenious individual at the time took the idea of a cinch made of lead pipe and cooked up a story to explain where the expression came from.”

Quinion was right.  The story is untrue; the man was a feather merchant, not a plumber.  In all other particulars, the story is true.  In 1883, five years before “lead-pipe cinch” first appeared in print, a man jumped from the East River ferry and drowned.  Only his hat was found.  The insurance companies cried foul and the Pinkerton Agency investigated. 

Would the insurance policies pay off? It was no "lead-pipe cinch" - or was it?

(You can read an alternate origin story, from 1888, in my "Lead Pipe" Update.)

Insurance Fraud - The First Lead-Pipe Cinch

The story was not cooked up.  On June 8, 1883, Robert Cunningham, a feather merchant from Brooklyn, jumped to his death from an East River ferry, weeks after paying up on tens of thousands of dollars worth of insurance policies.  The suicide, the insurance policy, the suggestion of fraud, the missing body and the ten pounds of lead were widely reported for weeks after the incident:   

Investigating a Death.

Robert Cunningham’s Jump from a Ferry-Boat Last Friday.

It was reported on Friday last that an unknown man had jumped overboard from the ferry-boat New-York, of the Hamilton Ferry, on the 11:30 A. M. trip from New York, and that a passenger named Henry Nichols had jumped overboard to rescue the man, but failed in his efforts.  He, however, picked up a hat which was supposed to have been worn by the man who had jumped overboard, and which bore on the inside the name “Robert Cunningham, No. 148 Fourteenth-street, Brooklyn.”  Mr. Cunningham did business as a feather dealer at No. 131 Mercer-street, New-York, and had left home that morning to go to his office, but he has not since returned.

The New York Times, June 14, 1883.

There were no late-night talk shows to make light of the tragedy in 1883, but the New York Sunday Times did its best:

No Money on hats.  

When Cunningham’s hat was found in the East river somebody went to the New York Life Insurance company where Cunningham was insured and said, “Cunningham’s drowned, his hat has been found.”[iii] “You will have to get a body,” said the vice-president.  “We don’t pay on hats.” – New York Sunday Times.

The Bee (Washington DC), July 14, 1883, page 2, column 2.

Too soon?

When the body was recovered later in the week, they found something suspicious tied to his body:

Killed Himself for the Benefit of His Creditors.

Brooklyn, N. Y., June 18. 

The body of Robert Cunningham, the New York merchant, whose suicide was disputed, and whose policies the insurance companies announced they would not pay without positive proof of death, was found Friday floating in Buttermilk Channel.  When sighted by two watermen only the head was found in sight, a bar of lead having been securely fastened to the vest by a piece of wire.  Its weight was about ten pounds.  This left no doubt about the intent of suicide, and overthrew the police theory that there had been no death at all, but only an attempt to swindle the Insurance companies. 

Perrysburg Journal, June 22, 1883, page 1, column 4.[iv]

But in a surprise verdict, the Brooklyn Coroner’s jury could not establish that it was a suicide – in fact, they censured the ferry company:

The Union Ferry Company Censured

The Brooklyn Coroner’s jury in the case of Robert T. Cunningham, whose body was found in Buttermilk Channel, and who is supposed to have jumped or fallen overboard from a ferry-boat on June 8, rendered a verdict last night stating that they were unable to determine whether the death of Cunningham was accidental or suicidal, and censuring the Union Ferry Company “for not using proper means to quickly save persons who have jumped or fallen into the water from their boats.”

The New York Times, June 26, 1883.

Although I could not find an article definitively stating that the insurance companies were made to pay out, the jury verdict suggests that Cunningham’s policies may have actually paid. 

His gamble paid off.

It was a “lead-pipe cinch.”

Racetrack gamblers, who could have followed the events in the New York papers, may have been able to relate to various details of the story.  Several large insurance policies purchased just before an apparent suicide attempt might seem like a man’s biggest and last bet.  Would he actually die?  Would the insurance company pay off?  The lead “bar” tied (cinched?) to his body was certainly intended to ensure the death and make the ‘bet’ pay off.

An interesting wrinkle in the story, about which contemporary accounts leave few details, is that the insurance policies were signed over to creditors before he died.  His family was not going to profit from his insurance policies – all of the money was to be paid to the creditors.  Who were these creditors? Were they feather suppliers?, - shipping companies? – banks?  Or were they racetrack loan-sharks, out to recoup their investment from a man deep in gambling debt?  That’s pure speculation, of course, but it would make a good story.  I wonder whether the records of the coroner’s inquest would shed any light on the issue.

Coincidentally, as reported in the New York Times on the same day that Robert Cunningham, feather dealer from Brooklyn, committed suicide in an apparent effort to receive improper death benefits  – a man named Robert Cunningham had been found not guilty in Philadelphia, just one day earlier, of defrauding the American Legion of Honor out of a $5,000 death benefit.[v]  Hmmm?

But regardless of the precise connection between Cunningham’s tragic death (he left behind a wife and four children)[vi] could have formed the inspiration, at least in part, for the new idiom, “lead-pipe cinch.”  It just seems unlikely to me that a reporter from St. Louis, Missouri would dig up a seven-year old drowning case from New York City to explain the origins of a then-current slang phrase in 1890.   

You be the judge.

It seems plausible that Cunningham’s death could have inspired the phrase.  The “lead bar” might have been a pipe, or the person or persons who coined the expression may have just used the word “lead pipe” because it sounded better, or because they were more familiar with lead pipes than lead bars.  The word, “cinch,” would naturally lend itself to literally describe how the lead bar was attached – it was tied to, or literally cinched to, Cunningham’s coat.  A racetrack gambler, fascinated by the gambling nature of Cunningham’s suicide could well have associated the racetrack slang “cinch” to the actual bar of lead cinched to Cunningham’s coat, to create the expression, “lead-pipe cinch.”

“Lead-Pipe Cinch” is Off to the Races

Whether inspired by Robert Cunningham’s misfortune or not, the idiom “lead-pipe cinch” appeared in print five years later, in 1888.  Many of the early appearances of the phrase relate to horseracing in New York City, but that is not the case for all of them:

The idiom was used in an article speculating, using gamblers’ terms, about who would become the first tenant of the Collier building in Memphis, Tennessee:

Another man had a “lead-pipe cinch” that a big Cincinnati house will take it to make it lively for Lowenstein.  Another fellow was willing to bet $100 to $10 in Pioneer Mills stock that a St. Louis concern had captured the prize . . . .

The Memphis Appeal, January 6, 1889, page 4.

The idiom appears to have been familiar to readers in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1890 when the following double, or is it a triple, pun appeared in a piece about the plumber’s union:

Could the agreement which the master plumbers are trying to saddle upon the journeymen be denominated a “lead pipe cinch?” 

St. Paul Daily Globe, May 4, 1890, page 12.

In 1890, sixty years before Mr.Ed made talking horses cool, famed, thoroughbred racehorse, Salvatore, gave an “interview” to a reporter from the Herald, from his stables in New York City.  In the course of a wide-ranging discussion, Salvatore “discussed” the topic of race-fixing and “lead-pipe cinches”:

CALLING ON A KING.

A Photographic Interview With a Monarch of the Turf.

New York, Sept. 25, 1890 – [Special correspondence of The Herald.]

[Interviewer] “I’ll be as delicate as possible.  You have said nothing which justifies the conclusion that races are run on their merits.  Are horses in the habit of coming to what you call an understanding with each other?”

[Salvatore] “Why, my dear boy, your guilelessness is perfectly refreshing.  Can’t you see that we are the real protectors of the public? Everybody knows that owners combine, that races are fixed in advance, that in other words, the trusting public has no show unless we take the matter in hand.  We are constantly trying to preserve the purity of the turf.  You’ve heard of a lead pipe cinch?  Well, if you haven’t its time you did.  I could tell you of a dozen cases in which either owners or jockeys have put up a job, and in which their calculations were upset.  When you hear of another sure thing gone wrong you can make up your mind that nothing but an honest horse broke the combination.  You didn’t know, I suppose, that I am the president of our anti-crookedness society?”

The Salt Lake Herald, September 28, 1890, page 14.

Salvatore, The Salt Lake Herald, September 28, 1890

The idiom, “lead-pipe cinch” appeared in print only infrequently from 1888 through 1890.  In 1891 and thereafter, the phrase appears frequently in papers in all corners of the United States.

In 1895, a popular novel, set in the world of horserace gambling, used the term "lead-pipe," standing alone without the word "cinch," as an adjective indicative of a sure thing:

If I can see you somewhere just before the race I'll put you on.  It'll be a 'hot' one. . . .
The owner himself is going to 'put me next' . . . , it'll be a lead pipe.

Henry Blossom, Checkers: a Hard Luck Story, Chicago, Herbert S. Stone & Co. (1896), page 19.

(The book Checkers also introduced the idiom, to be "on the wagon," in the sense of abstaining from alcohol.  See my post on the History and Etymology of Getting on and Falling Off the "Wagon.")

Other Factors

 Weight

One factor that could have played a role in the origin of the phrase, “lead-pipe cinch,” is the importance of weight in horse race handicapping:

Secretary Mcintyre has furnished the patrons of the Brooklyn Jockey Club with a most excellent programme for its fall meeting . . . .  The Oriental Handicap was a grand race last year when Kingston won with 127 pounds up, with four others at his neck.  Mr. McIntyre has again adjusted the weight very nicely, giving Kingston and Tenny the top weights, 127 pounds, the others ranging down to 90 pounds for Anaconda, a three year-old in Senator Hearst’s stable, who was most promising as a two-year-old.

The Sun (New York), September 15, 1890, page 5.

In handicap races today, “lead pads” on a horse’s saddle carry the appropriate weight, as determined the racing secretary for a particular horse, in a particular race.[i]    I imagine (mere speculation), that someone out to fix, or affect the outcome of a race, might strap extra lead onto a horse between the weigh-in and the race, perhaps, slipping lead in some form (a pipe?) onto the cinch strap when cinching the horse’s saddle prior to the race, much like Robert Cunningham strapped ten pounds of lead to his coat to affect the outcome of his suicide and insurance payments.  If so, the idiom might have developed independently of Cunningham’s suicide.

Or maybe not.  I have no idea how race preparations were controlled in 1883.  I have no idea whether it would have been possible to unobtrusively cinch lead onto a horse.  But I do know that Robert Cunningham cinched ten pounds of lead to his body in 1883.

Strength

Michael Quinion, writing in WorldWideWords,org, suggests that “lead pipe” may refer to the strength of a lead pipe.  “The idea was presumably that if a leather cinch was effective, one made of lead would be even more so.” He based the suggestion on an early sense of "lead-pipe cinch," illustrated in Jonathon Lighter's Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang; namely of having an especially strong grip on something.  This suggestion may have merit.  If a cinch is a sure thing – and lead pipe cinch is stronger, then a “[fill-in-the-blank] lead-pipe cinch” might naturally be stronger:

In race course language, the owners look on it as a copper-lined lead-pipe cinch.

The Sun (New York), November 22, 1891, page 3.

– well, the sporty writers on the St. Louis papers at the beginning of the season just ended heralded [the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team] as a world-beater; a blown-in-the-bottle, air-tight, copper-riveted, lead-pipe cinch for first honors in the highest crust of baseball society.  St. Louis finished sixth in the race.

The St. Louis Republic, January 8, 1901, page 4.

Another early variation of the phrase, the “grapevine cinch,” also appears to have been intended to emphasize the strength of the figurative binding material of the thing being metaphorically cinched.  An example of the idiom (one of only two examples I could find outside of slang dictionaries - the phrase does not appear to have ever been very common) illustrates the allusion to strength:

The feature of yesterday’s moves on the political checker board was the inception and partial execution of a plan to mass the personal following of Senator Washburn in a direction which would have a tendency to unwind the grapevine cinch which Knute Nelson had enjoyed for the preceding twenty-four hours.

St. Paul Daily Globe, January 21, 1895, page 1.

The “unwind the grapevine” is suggestive of unwinding a tangle of vines which, wound together like a grapevine, would have been stronger than a single-strand cinch.

The strength imagery continues, unabated.  If you watch or listen to ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning, you may be familiar with the modern equivalent of an “air-tight, copper-riveted, lead-pipe cinch,” the very loud “stone cold, lead-pipe lock.”  A lock is one step up from a cinch, and a cold stone is hard to break, I guess.  Of course, a steel lock would be much stronger than a lead lock – lead being a relatively soft metal, but I guess idioms do not have to make sense.

Weight or Strength?

Was the idiom, “lead-pipe cinch” inspired by weight? – the weighing down of a feather dealer or a horse, to affect the outcome of a bet?  Or inspired by strength? – the strength of the strap used to “cinch” the win.  Or both?  The later modifiers, “grapevine,” “copper-riveted,” and “copper-lined”[ii] all seem to suggest an association with strength.   

The place of origin, in and around racetracks, as well as the origin story told when the idiom was still new, seem to suggest weight.  But in either case, perhaps the combination of allusions strengthened the idiom, making it successful.  

Even if the originators of the idiom intended a reference to Robert Cunningham or fixing races, people who heard and repeated the reference later might understand the “lead-pipe” reference to allude to strength, and then use it with that in mind.  The originator of the idiom have no control over how it is understood or used by people who hear it and repeat it. 

Conclusion

It is impossible to divine the intention of the person or persons who coined the expression, “lead-pipe cinch.”  But the drowning story, first reported in 1890 and long thought to be just a cooked-up old-wives’ tale, seems a much more likely candidate as the origin of the expression, in light of the notoriety of the actual suicide and resulting insurance controversy just a few years earlier.  And even if the idiom had developed independently, before Robert Cunningham’s suicide, his suicide may still have played a role in the creation or early spread of the phrase, as metaphor.  

If cinching lead to a saddle had been the source of the phrase, such use would have been, more or less, literal.  Jokingly referring to Cunningham’s insurance payout as a “lead-pipe cinch,” may have been the first metaphoric used of the phrase, outside the possibly literal, original meaning of the phrase in horseracing.  The fact that the story persisted, seven years later, suggests that the drowning may have been at least one of the early, well-known uses of the idiom outside the world of horseracing. 

In either case, Robert Cunningham’s suicide was not entirely in vain.  Whether he inspired its creation, or inspired its early, non-race-related metaphoric use, he enriched the language with a long-lasting idiom.

Maybe.

But it’s no “lead-pipe cinch.”

But he did ensure that his family would not be saddled with debt.

Now, that was a “lead-pipe cinch.”

----------------------------
UPDATE: Please read my follow-up to this article, Lead Pipe III - the Final Chapter, for additional insight into why a "lead pipe" might be used to intensify "cinch."

UPDATE-Update: See also, my Final-Final Chapter -  Lead Pipe IV; A Lead Pipe Could Be a Sure Thing Even Before it was a "Cinch".

---

[i] Etymonline.com

[ii] The Weekly Arizona Miner (Prescott, Arizona), June 27, 1879. “Now is the time for you to go and conceal yourself while I am cinching up the animal.”

[iii] Cinephiles may wonder whether John Ganty, one of the Black Lectroids form Planet 10, wrote this article: “John Valuk is dead, he fell on his head.” The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension (1985).

[iv] The same article appeared in the Barbour County Index (Medicine Lodge, Kansas), June 29, 1883, page 2.

[v] The New York Times, June 8, 1883.

[vi] The United States Census for 1880 lists Robert Cunningham (b. Ireland, age 45), feather dealer, living at 148 Fourteenth Street, Brooklyn, Ne w York, with his wife Mary and four children, between the ages 13 and 20.

[vii]Mathew Will D. Holden, Horse Racing Handicapping – The Perfect Neutralizing Yardstick, Ezinearticles.com,  September 25, 2010. “The saddle pads have pockets called lead pads, which hold the balancing lead weights.”

[viii] Lead pipes lined with copper “will stand ten times greater pressure than ordinar Lead Pipe.” S. Barlow Bennett, A Manual of Technical Plumbing and Sanitary Science, London, B. T. Batsford, 1910, page 73.

Beer Wagons, Water Wagons, Temperance Wagons and Bandwagons - a Sobering History and Etymology of Getting on and Falling off "the Wagon"

Beer Wagons, Water Wagons, Temperance Wagons and Bandwagons - a Sobering History and Etymology of Getting on and Falling off "the Wagon"

The idiom, to “go on the wagon,” means to give up drinking alcohol.  Someone who has gone “on the wagon,” but starts drinking again, is said to have, “fallen off the wagon.”  Both idioms, “getting on” and “falling off” the wagon, are also used with respect to any habit, addiction, or routine activity.  “Do you still exercise every day?” “No, I fell off the wagon.”  Since wagons and alcohol seem to have little to do with one another, the literal meaning underlying the idiom is opaque.  

The original form of the phrase, however, is less opaque.  When the phrase was first introduced (1896), and for many years thereafter, the phrase was generally rendered as, “to go on the water wagon.”  Since the phrase was used to refer to the act of giving up alcohol, the “water wagon” alludes to the alternative – water.  Going “on the water-wagon” meant to drink water, instead of alcohol. 

But why go on a wagon? Why not just go on water?  In 1896, the idiom, to jump on, or get on, the “bandwagon” was relatively new.  It was coined in about 1884, and was widely used, in all parts of the country, by 1890. Going on or getting on the “water-wagon” appears to be an alcohol-specific modification of the then-relatively new idiom.  

 [(See my earlier post about the History and Etymology of "Jump on the Bandwagon")]

The substitution of “water-wagon” for “bandwagon” may be an allusion to temperance wagons, used by temperance societies to spread their anti-alcohol message, and/or water-wagons, which were a common sight on the street in 1895.  “Water-wagon” may also be a sly nod to “beer wagons,” which were also a fixture on city streets in the 1890s.  To “get on the water-wagon” was to give up alcohol, and jump on the “bandwagon” of the temperance movement, and to drink water from water wagons, as opposed to beer from beer-wagons.  Early humor pieces describe, and illustrate, people climbing aboard metaphoric “water-wagons,” much like getting on (and falling off ) metaphoric “bandwagons”:

The water wagon started on its annual trip at midnight Wednesday [(New Year’s Eve)] and up until a late hour this morning was traveling well under weight.  When the wagon started it was loaded to the guards.  Men were struggling for positions on the seats, the roof was crammed with passengers and a friendly competition was held for the reins and the brake of the vehicle.  

. . . A trip over the path of the wagon would have been ruinous to shoes and dangerous to bicyclists.  The path was literally strewn with broken glass and demolished bottles.  Those fat, square-faced bottles in which is kept, and more often poured out, gin, were there.  The long, thin-necked bottles familiar to the young man who tries to be a good fellow and spends his daily pay for one of them were there.  Large “schooners,” known to the man who believes in quantity and is not insistent on quality, blocked the road in places and the thin, shell glasses from which “here’s luck” is drawn helped to add to the litter.

The Indianapolis Journal, January 2, 1903, page 8, column 4.

Origin of the Phrase

Bicycle Business.

W. L. Baby Says It Is in Better Condition than Ever Before.

“The bicycle business is in better condition to-day than it has ever been,” said W. L. Baby, of Chicago, at the Denison last night. . . .

“The bicycle is no longer a fad – it is a business proposition with all purchasers, and for this reason the market is in its present gratifying condition.” 

Mr. Baby is well known in this city, as he makes frequent trips here and has been in his present line for several years.  He enjoys the distinction of being the man who originated the much-bandied phrase expressive of total abstinence, “on the water wagon.”

The Indianapolis Journal, December 5, 1902, page 4, column 4.

The article does not prove that W. L. Baby coined the expression, but the article has the ring of plausibility – if not truth.  The article is about “W. L. Baby of Chicago.”  The United Stated Census lists William L. Baby (b. 1875) and his wife Evalyn living in Cook County, Illinois in 1900.  In the article, W. L. Baby was a businessman from Chicago, visiting Indianapolis to talk about bicycle sales.  A separate article, written just a few weeks earlier, relates a story told by William L. Baby, a traveling salesman, and how he and another salesman relentlessly teased a newlywed couple on the train between Martin and Wabash, Indiana. Earlington (Kentucky) Bee, October 23, 1902.

It may be telling that the writer of the story does not question the truth of the assertion that Baby coined the phrase.  The story merely reports that Baby, “enjoys the distinction.”  There is no suggestion that Baby claims the distinction or boasts about it; it is presented almost as though it were a well-established fact.  In 1902, the idiom, “get on the water-wagon,” was a well-established slang phrase that had regularly appeared in print, in all corners of the country, for more than six years.  Being associated with the origins of the phrase may well have been a source of pride for the person involved, and may have been known to those around him. 

But W. L. Baby was an admitted practical joker who tormented a blushing bride and her new husband on the train for several hours.  Was his claim to be the originator of the phrase also a practical joke?  Or was he connected in some way to the Chicago-based novelist who first exposed a national audience to the expression? 

We may never know for sure, but Baby's biography is similar to that of the main character in the book that introduced the phrase to the masses; the book that includes the first-known appearance of the phrase in print.

Getting On the Water Wagon

The novel, Checkers: a Hard Luck Story, was released in June, 1896.[i] By October, 1896, it was in its fourth printing.[ii] The book was well received on both coasts.  The book’s colorful, slangy language was one of its key selling-points:

This was Checkers, penniless, slangy and illiterate; and yet he possessed a charm which made a friend of a business man, whose life was quite outside the gambling circle with which Checkers was familiar.

The San Francisco Call, July 26, 1896, page 23, column 2;

“Abounds in the most racy and picturesque slang.” – N. Y. Recorder 

“If I had to ride from New York to Chicago on a slow train, I should like half a dozen books as gladsome as ‘Checkers,’ and I could laugh at the trip.” – N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.

The Sun (New York), October 3, 1896, page 7, column 5;

“Checkers” himself is simply delightful.  He handles an enormous vocabulary of slang with a more expert tongue even than that of his predecessor, “Chimmie Fadden,” and for individual cleverness he certainly takes the palm away from our friend of the Bowery.

The Saint Paul Globe, August 30, 1896, page 14, column 2.

One example of the “slangy” language in the book is the idiom, to be “on the water-wagon.”  This is the earliest-known appearance of the idiom in print:

Checkers felt apprehensive for Arthur, when he noticed three different glasses at each plate; but Arthur took early occasion to state that he was “on the water-wagon” . . . .

Henry Blossom, Checkers: a Hard Luck Story, Chicago, Herbert S. Stone & Co. (1896).

Ironically, or appropriately, or both, the author, Henry Blossom, who was born in St. Louis, dedicated the book to another favorite son of St. Louis, Ellis Wainwright, heir to a brewery fortune and president of the St. Louis Brewing Company.  You heard me right, the man to whom the book in which the idiom, to be “on the water-wagon,” made its national debut was the president of a brewery.  You can’t write this stuff.

If W. L. Baby did, in fact, have a role in coining the phrase, perhaps he was the model for the title role of Checkers:

“Checkers” is too absolutely life-like a character to have been invented.  He was obviously studied from the living model with patience and enthusiasm, and Mr. Blossom is to be congratulated both upon his choice of a character to transcribe and his accuracy of method in making the transcription.

The Saint Paul Globe, August 30, 1896.  

Did Henry Blossom know William L. Baby and base the character on him?  It's possible.  Checkers was published in Chicago six years before William L. Baby is known to have been a traveling salesman from Chicago.  The title-character, Checkers, was a down-and-out racetrack “tout” from Chicago, who comes into an unexpected inheritance, marries a good woman, and moves into a big house; only to see his wife die, his bank fail, and lose all of his money.  After he loses his money, Checkers finds work – as a TRAVELLING SALESMAN based out of Chicago. 

Just a coincidence?  You be the judge.  But all of the evidence is consistent with the 1902 report that W. L. Baby “enjoyed the distinction” of having coined the phrase, “on the water-wagon.”  

But whether he coined the phrase or not, its inclusion in a popular novel that found success all across the country introduced to idiom to a wide audience.  Five years later, the idiom appeared in print regularly in all corners of the country.

But wide distribution is not the only ingredient necessary for a successful idiom.  The idiom must be useful, evocative, and resonate with the people who use it, or it would just die out.  Bandwagons, beer wagons, water wagons, temperance wagons and the relatively new idiom, “get on the bandwagon,” likely contributed to the quick acceptance and rapid dissemination of the new idiom. 

Wagons of the 1890s

To be on the water wagon is to avoid alcohol.  The “water-wagon” seems to be a non-alcoholic counter-point to the common beer wagon.  Beer wagons were a common sight on city streets in those days.  Budweiser still uses an old-fashioned beer wagon, drawn by a team of majestic Clydesdale horses in its advertising campaigns.  In 1911, when motorized trucks were replacing horse-drawn beer wagons, Budweiser was already striking a nostalgic chord with its less than majestic, eight-mule team beer wagon.

Budweiser Beer Wagon - The Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA), August 30, 1911, page 3.

Water wagons were also a familiar sight in the 1890s.  Water wagons were used for a variety of purposes: to water-down unpaved streets to inhibit dust; to deliver water to steam-powered machinery; to transport water to homes where water main distribution service was not available; and to provide water to thirsty workers at job sites without running water.  Soda water wagons, used to transport bottled soda water to homes, restaurants, and bars, were a frequent target of petty-thief bottle snatchers; stealing a soda water bottle (the empties could be redeemed for cash at a junk dealer) was seen as a sort of gateway-crime for young street urchins.[iii] 

Water Wagon - Omaha Daily Bee, December 28, 1902

Water wagons were everywhere. 

"Peerless" Steam Engine Water Wagons

Water wagons, water wagons everywhere, but not a drop of alcohol to drink.  At least that is how the temperance societies and missions like the Salvation Army would have had it.  Temperance wagons and mission wagons, like Salvation Army wagons, were also seen on city streets in the 1890s; cruising the streets, seeking to reform sinners and drinkers. 

Salvation Army Wagon

Finally, the metaphoric “bandwagon” was also heard on the streets in the 1890s.  The idiom, “get on (or jump on) the bandwagon,” first heard in 1884, had become a common, widely known idiom by the mid-1890s. 

Bandwagon - the Ringling Circum Museum

Mission/Temperance Wagons

During the late 1890s, when the temperance movement was in full swing (full prohibition would become the law of the land in 1920), anti-alcohol mission wagons and temperance wagons were frequently used to drum up support, and to encourage drinkers to give up the “demon rum.”  The wagons plied the streets, sometimes with a Salvation Army band, or the like, onboard, preaching the gospel of temperance with religious zeal:

Mr. J. J. Blick, in his address, said he hoped sincerely that the temperance orders could get a mission wagon, and like the Central Union Mission, go and preach the gospel of temperance and grace in the highways and alleys.

The Washington Times (DC), May 27, 1895, page 6, column 2.

References to “temperance wagons” appeared in print as early as 1885.[iv]  There were also “temperance wagons” in England:

English Good Templars are fitting out temperance wagons and sending them off on tours through Great Britain.  Good speakers and singers go with the wagons, who hold meetings and distribute literature wherever possible.  The idea is an excellent one.

The Anderson Intelligencer (Anderson Court House, South Carolina), January 29, 1891, page 1, column 7.

A story of a day-in-the-life of a “habitual loafer” described a typical mission wagon on a Sunday afternoon (when the bars were closed) in Washington, DC:

The sound of many voices singing – most of the female voices – came floating through the air, and four horses dashed in the space drawing an immense wagon full of men and women, old and young.

In the midst of the crowd the horses were hauled up, the wagon stopped, a red-whiskered man jumped out and scattered printed circulars with hymns on them among the assembled multitude.  Every one in the wagon was singing.  The habitual loafer rushed ahead of the rest, and got close to the wagon.  At first he stood on his tiptoes.  Then he got on the wheel, and his eyes rested on a young singer, who sang very loud and with her face in her book while his gaze was upon her, but stopped singing and followed his every movement when he turned away for a moment.  Sometimes their eyes met.  They all sang: “Glory, glory, how the angels sing” . . . he sang with peculiar impressiveness.  The singing ceased.  The boy t the organ in the back end of the wagon leaned his elbow on the keys, and the red-whiskered man began to address the people.  The habitual loafer stood watching the angel who peeped at him from behind her book.

As the sun threw one last blush over the maiden’s cheek and dropped down behind Arlington the four horses were whipped up, and the wagon, glorious in song, passed out of sight down the street.  The habitual loafer placed his hat over his eyes and lost himself in the crowd.

Evening Star (Washington DC), October 2, 1886, page 2, column 2.

The image of a temperance wagon, driving through town, recruiting followers like a circus bandwagon recruits customers, naturally lent itself to the “jump on the bandwagon” idiom:

The band of the temperance wagon is moving, and it is better to move along with the procession instead of meeting it and be run over. 

Phillipsburg (Kansas) Herald, October 5, 1901, page 3, column 5.

Getting on the “water-wagon,” fits the same mold, but takes it one step further.  It replaces “temperance wagon” with “water-wagon,” to create a humorous allusion that ties up bandwagons, temperance wagons, and water-wagons in a pretty little bow, evocative of the purpose of temperance wagons, the metaphorical “bandwagon” of the temperance movement, and the image of the common water-wagon.   

As the years passed, water distribution systems displaced water wagons, internal-combustion engines eventually replaced steam engines, and motorized delivery trucks replaced the horse-drawn water-wagons.  Eventually, the word “water” was dropped; perhaps because it was too wordy, or perhaps because no one could remember what a “water-wagon” was.  The surviving idiom, “to go on/fall off the wagon” left later generations to wonder how getting on or falling off wagons related to drinking alcohol.

Now you know.

Early examples

The “water-wagon” idiom was quickly circulated to all corners of the United States.  Temperance, prohibition, and other long-forgotten alcohol-related issues were at the forefront of domestic politics at the time.  Many people considered joining the temperance movement and giving up alcohol was on many people’s minds.  To “go on the water-wagon” provided a handy, efficient, evocative way to express it.  

The expression was soon seen in print in all corners of the country:

The minute I got into that new sack suit I fell off the water wagon with an awful bump, although I hadn’t touched a drink for thirty-seven days.  Oh, but I got a lovely bun on!  That’s the last.

The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer (West Virginia), December 1, 1898, page 4.

 Sometimes the idiom was delivered using a smaller wagon, more of a “water cart”:

“You don’t say?” said Kennedy, throwing ice out of the shaker.  “I kinder thought you ought to get on the water cart.  Tough ain’t it, to have the shakes, and not to have had the drinks that caused them?”

Kansas City Journal (Missouri), November 19, 1899, page 7 (crediting the Chicago Inter-Ocean).

If getting “on the water-wagon” was to stop drinking, “falling off the water-wagon” naturally referred to starting up again:

I also caught a rumor of an accident: some one had fallen “off a water wagon.”  On inquiring into the disaster I learned that the extent of the misfortune was that the person in question had taken to drinking again.

The San Francisco Call, December 3, 1899, page 23, column 5.

The idiom had taken root and continued to grow.  In the early 1900s, several newspapers used the “getting on” and “getting off” of the “water-wagon” imagery in long, comic stories making light of the common practice of swearing off alcohol for the New Year, only to start drinking again – often during the same New Year’s Eve party.  The text of the articles, and images accompanying some of the articles, support the connection between “bandwagon” and “water-wagon”:

A good old lady who reads the daily papers and is not versed in modern parlance, especially slang, wants to know what a “water wagon” is! Her attention was called to the matter by recurrent remarks about a ride on said wagon along about January 1, 1903.  What in the world any man wanted to ride on a sprinkling cart for she couldn’t understand, especially in zero weather.  She wonders, therefore, if there isn’t some other kind of a water wagon!  . . .

We understand, however, that a water-wagon is what drinkers say they are on when they have quit drinking. . . .

Many a man who has pickled himself in whisky and delirium tremens in the days of your, might have been saved by a water wagon, then undiscovered.  To get onto the wagon all one has to do is to stop drinking at midnight December 31 and hang on all through the year.  The water wagon is like perpetual motion.  It never stops.  The man who rides on the wagon and stops to take a drink always gets left.  This is one of the rules and regulations.  A water wagon is a good thing.  It should be popular all the year round as it is January 1.  Usually it starts out heavily loaded like a Chicago street car the day before Christmas, but when it arrives at the Rubicon of the new year there is left only the driver and a few “dead soldiers” [(empty bottles)]  This is easy on the horses, but it is confounded hard on the passengers.  “Long live the water wagon!”

The Coalville Times (Coalville, Utah), January 23, 1903,  page 3. 

The water-wagon silliness reached its apex (or nadir) in the New York Evening World at the start of 1905.  For several days leading up to the New Year, and for several days after, cartoonist T. E. Powers painstakingly “built” a “water-wagon” for his readers to get on as part of their New Year’s resolution.  He tricked it out daily, with more-and-more seating and more-and-more accessories.  The elaborate “water-wagon” looked like a bandwagon, but with rows of seats arrayed atop a large, cylindrical water tank, instead of the standard, big, boxy wagon.  Despite his best efforts, the ride was a bumpy one, and most of the passengers fell “off the water-wagon” within just a few days:

The Evening World (New York), December 26, 1904

The Evening World (New York), December 28, 1904

The Evening World (New York), December 29, 1904

The Evening World (New York), December 30, 1904

The Evening World (New York), December 31, 1904

The Evening World (New York), January 2, 1905

The Evening World (New York), January 4, 1905

Rube Goldberg, whose name is synonymous with overly complex machinery (Rube Goldberg machines) drew his version of the "water wagon" in 1912:

San Francisco Call, December 31, 1912, page 8.

 

The Water-Wagon Bandwagon

If "get on the water wagon" was a temperance-specific modification of the earlier idiom, "get on the bandwagon," the two wagons came full circle in 1917, when political opportunists sensed the prevailing "dry" mood of the country, and jumped aboard the water-wagon bandwagon, and rode it to the passage of, and right through to the ratification of, the 18th Amendment to the United States' Constitution - prohibition.  William Jennings Bryant, who had been driving the water-wagon bandwagon, could not quite ride it all of the way to the White House:

The Washington Times (Washington DC), September 22, 1917, page 16.

 

Conclusion

 I imagine that when W. L. Baby, Herbert Blossom, or whoever else may have coined the idiom, to get on "the water wagon," in 1896, they probably never expected so many people to jump on the "water-wagon" "bandwagon," or that their turn of phrase would last for so long.  "Jump on the wagon" has outlasted beer wagons, water-wagons, temperance wagons, and even wagons, generally, and survives today, more than a century later. 

The water-wagon is still a safe haven for many people to go when alcohol threatens to get the better of them.  Thank Baby, or Blossom, or whoever else, for providing a quick and efficient means to express it.  It's even quicker now; it's just a plain old wagon.

But don't fall off!!!

Albuquerque Evening Citizen - January 2, 1906

---

[i] The San Francisco Call, May 24, 1896, page 23, column 6. “H. S. Stone & Co. of Chicago announce for publication early in June a story whose title is, ‘The Boy Called Checkers, a Hard-luck Story.”

[ii] The Sun (New York), October 3, 1896, page 7, column 5.

[iii] Jacob A. Riis, The Making of Thieves in New York, The Century Illustrated, volume 49, number 1, page 109.  A grocer’s stand is handy, or a pie wagon; better still, a soda water wagon.  The bottle is worth so much cash at the junkshop.  The driver’s back is turned.  The boy “swipes” one.  It is not a very great crime, but it is the stepping stone to many greater.

[iv] The Abbeville (South Carolina) Press and Banner, October 14, 1885, page 1, column 8.  An English paper once published a picture of the wagon of the state drawn one way by twelve horses and the other way by eight, and our temperance wagon can show the same phenomenon.