Comments on: Black Maria/Paddy wagon

By: Wayne T

Wayne T — Thu, 14 May 2020 19:46:23 +0000

‘ It seems entirely plausible that the name of the horse thereafter would be sardonically applied to the police carriages, usually colored black, which swiftly transported miscreants to jail.’
==
Yes – and the Black Mariah was a police wagon pulled by multiple horses originally – as in Latin ‘Maria':-
‘mare, maris [n.] I – Latin is Simple Online Dictionary
[Search domain http://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/121/

Find mare (Noun) in the Latin … conjugation table: mare, maris, mari, mare, maria, marium’

By: Maria, no H

Maria, no H — Sat, 05 Oct 2019 19:13:32 +0000

I’ve spent a lifetime explaining the pronunciation of my name. Mine’s a familial name from VA in the 1700s. I had heard the Black Maria referred to as a paddy wagon and a hearse. I was looking for information about the connotation and found this article.

By: Sher Burke

Sher Burke — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 17:58:05 +0000

The term “black Mariah” was used in the early 20th century of southern Ohio to describe a police transport vehicle. This wagon also doubled as a wagon to transport injured people and as a hearse.

By: Paul G. Faini

Paul G. Faini — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 06:00:27 +0000

I was born in 1939 Brooklyn, NY, and always remember, as a child back in the ’40s, Police vans called either “Paddy Wagons”, or “Black Marias”, with the emphasis on the “I” as in Rye.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 04:04:29 +0000

The issue of the colour black is of no concern as all of the police containment vehicles where of that said colour but the name maria is still a quandary

By: Kenny Driscoll

Kenny Driscoll — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 17:51:57 +0000

Black Maria was indeed named after a racehorse and it was not due to the speed of the horse-drawn wagon, most of these horse-drawn wagons didn’t come about until after 1885, in fact, Baltimore Police was second to Boston for having the Police wagon and around the same time a racehorse owned by the name of J K Maddux had a horse named Black Maria. The wagon being new at the time and introduced around the same time as the police call box, an officer would escort their prisoner to the call box and call for a police wagon. All of it being new time was indeed something that was being taken into consideration, and with the system not being as fast as they (headquarters) said it would be the patrolmen with a bit of sarcasm nicknamed the wagon and horse after the racehorse. It might also be worth noting at the time most departments in an effort to maintain uniformity used only dark brown or black horses, they trimmed the mains on their horses they called it roaching. As for the term Paddywagon, it doesn’t turn up a lot until after the 1950’s keeping in mind police didn’t have motorized vehicles until sometime between 1910 and 1920 and they continued calling the wagon the Black Maria. But there came a time when we had a boatload of Irish Police in this country, more and more with the motorized vehicles, departments were using vehicles in colors another than black, so Black Maria (as has been stated previously pronounced “Mah-RYE-ah, (Mariah Carey) anyway using the term Black Maria with a blue, tan, green etc. truck made little sense, speaking of which these terms Black Maria and Paddywagon are not official terms, they are nicknames used by police and or public. So when the wagon first began its use in the 1880’s they were simply called a police wagon, I have heard some say Patrol wagon which is odd because they were not used to patrol… but anyway, Police Wagon… then around the time Black Maria stopped making sense. We had an influx of Irish police in Boston, New York, Baltimore, and other big cities with this came a nickname from the public… Like you might have heard London where the police were referred to as a Bobby, US officers were now being called a Paddy. In London, a Bobby’s cap was called a Bobby cap, it only made sense if the officer was a Paddy, his wagon formerly called a police wagon would now be called a Paddywagon. So Black Maria came from sarcasm of the police, and Paddywagon sarcasm from the public. BTW the newspaper report with one of the first Baltimore Police wagons mentioned and the racehorse mentioned on the same page can be found by looking into Baltimore Sun Archives 29 Oct 1885 page 1 it is two article nearly next to each other “Incident of the Contest” and Racing in Virginia”

BTW in 1918/19 the Black Maria was used to transport disabled children to school, making it one of Baltimore’s first School buses

By: Thomas Fitzgerald

Thomas Fitzgerald — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 18:25:05 +0000

From Louis Jordan’s “Saturday Night Fish Fry”:

Now, I didn’t know we were breakin’ the law,
But somebody reached over and hit me in the jaw.
They had us blocked off from the front to the back
And they were throwin”em in the wagon like potato sacks.

I knew I could get away if I had a chance,
But I was shakin’ like I had the St. Vitus dance.
Now I tried to crawl under a bathtub
When the policman said “Where you goin’ there, Bub?”

Now, they got us outta there like a house afire,
They put us all in that Black Mariah.
Now, they might’ve missed a pitiful few,
But they got both me and my buddy, too.

By: Jose

Jose — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 01:42:08 +0000

Lived in boston mass large Irish population 1950.s era lot of Irish cops every one called it the paddy wagon no PC back then hit you with the Billy club throw you in the paddy wagon

By: Gordon Foster

Gordon Foster — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 05:09:57 +0000

I was born in Glasgow Scotland in 1953 and as a child can remember clearly that the black mariah was indeed what we now refer to in Canada as a paddy wagon or prisoner transportation vehicle. Used to transport multiple prisoners from say a crime scene or from jail to the courthouse.

By: Quinn

Quinn — Sun, 20 Nov 2016 12:41:44 +0000

Not an Americanism at all… In this context it’s Irish! And more broadly, of northern Europe, as Topi Linkala’s post reflects.

What name is there for a marooned/drifted boat in modern parlance? I can’t think of one, but my Irish Grandfather would most certainly refer to such a thing as “a Mariah”. As Maurice Clark Scott suggests, “Myrhia” might be a more accurate spelling and certainly reflects how my Granda’ would have pronounced it.

The notion of a black mah-ree-ah is just wrong; it’s never properly pronounced so.

SJ Tuznik is very close to the truth too I think…

A vessel (ship) used to take people away to a place from where they may never return. – During an outbreak of disease for instance, an old ship might be moored (marooned – a Myrhia) just offshore or even loaded up(with people)and set adrift. Thus the [I]Black Mariah[/I] emerges.

This will in all probability have morphed into other things… A wheeled vehicle used to transport the sick, dying or dead became part and parcel of the “Black Mariah”. Often these were contained and then eventually enclosed – a vehicle you could not escape from.

Useful for policing when there was no disease about… John O’Brian’s input is also very familiar!

“Paddy” may well be a racial slur; but in some contexts it’s one that those to whom it applies take ownership of. And the Irish certainly had ‘ownership’ of the early New York Police force. And so they brought their “Black Mariahs” with them!

The term was common in other places too… Most certainly in Scotland and England – particularly London where there was a fair old Scottish influence.

In Glasgow – where I was brought up – the Black Mariah was what all the older generation called prisoner transport vehicles – particularly those belonging to the police.

This baffled a lot of youngsters as Police vehicles generally started to be painted white sometime in the 60’s. Only prison transport remained dark blue/black and was known as the Black Mariah, the term gradually falling into almost complete disuse in the late 80s as did the dark coloured vehicles.

By: Keith Smith

Keith Smith — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 01:09:39 +0000

I surfed in here looking for what all have commented on…

I recently came upon the term “Black Maria” in a small leaflet about the Quakers of Chester County, PA that would help escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad with a “specially outfitted wagon” with quilts covering their cargo of “escaping slaves” they called their wagon “Black Maria”

Simon Barnard and his wife Sarah Darlington Barnard were conductors along the Underground Railroad operating a waystation in Newlin Township, Chester County. [Pennsylvania]The two were Quakers and as such were Abolitionists. The couple received hundreds of passengers from a farm owned by John and Hannah Pierce Cox near the area that is today Longwood Gardens. Simon and Sarah achieved this task with a specially outfitted covered wagon called “Black Maria”, hanging a quilt to conceal their dozen person cargo; swiftly moving them along to the next waystation.

Perhaps this will ad a new theory as to the usage of the term

By: SJ Tuznik

SJ Tuznik — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 18:19:59 +0000

The racehorse explanation makes no sense to me. I can’t see a horse known for speed having its name connected to a police transport which was never known for swiftness. With no phones, you could rarely ‘send for the wagon.’ Instead, you would march your prisoner(s) through the street to jail with, if necessary, citizen assistance. The police wagon would be brought out in expectation of trouble or mass arrests. And once the prisoner is in the wagon, there’s no need for speed.

As “paddy” is a racial slur well established before the 1800s, the term “paddy wagon” must definitely mean the vehicle delivering or carrying away “paddies.” I can more easily see it meaning the delivery of police (mostly Irish in New York) to a scene, rather than the more socially conscious reference to the amount of Irish taken away by it.

Between 1803 and 1853, convicts were shipped from England to Australia. It is possible that “Black Mariah” as a police prisoner transport may refer to the name of a ship that carried prisoners overseas to an unknown fate, just like the police wagons.

With a further Irish connection, “Black Mariah” might also refer to a ship conveying the Irish (and other Europeans) to the United States in record numbers during the great potato blights beginning in the 1830s.

(Of course, Black Mariah may be a reference to some unrecognized death figure from myth, legend or song…)

Anyway, to me, “paddy wagon” refers to cops coming onto a scene, and “Black Mariah” refers to people being taken from the scene.