Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 14:57:00 -0500

From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM

Subject: "NO TICKEE, NO SHIRTEE!"--an antedate



The earliest citation had been 1931.

This is from The Brooklyn Times, 29 July 1886, pg. 2, col. 2:



"NO TICKEE, NO SHIRTEE!"

The New York Board of Aldermen, having been shorn of its powers for good

or evil in other directions, is naturally exercising its activity in new and

strange ways. Yesterday, for instance, the following startling resolution

was passed:



_Resolved_, That hereafter all proprietors of Chinese laundries, in giving

receipts for the reception of goods left to be laundried in their respective

establishments shall, in writing such receipts, use either the English

language or the language understood and spoken by the person to whom every

such receipt is given, under a penalty of $10 for every violation of the

provisions of this resolution.



A Chinaman who should have Irish, German, Bohemian, French, and Russian

customers would need to be something of a linguist to make out checks which

all customers could understand. The resolution was introduced by Alderman

Robert Lang, who if report be true had eleven laundry checks in his hat when

it blew overboard on a recent trip to Long Branch, thereby causing him to

lose twenty-two shirts and other articles in proportion. And yet the rule

"no tickee, no washee" is a perfectly good and vaild one, which is paralleled

in many other lines of business besides that of cleansing Aldermanic linen.

If Alderman Lang's head was swelled so that his hat wouldn't stay on, that

surely wasn't the fault of the eleven industrious Chinamen.

Of course such an ordinance won't hold water if any Chinaman has

gumption enough to make a test case of it even if Mayor Grace don't veto it

which he doubtless will. But the asinine qualities which occasionally come

to the surface even in a New York Alderman were never better illustrated than

by this resolution.