All Tricks and No Treats: Mischievous Imps on the Prowl in Manassas
By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director
“Black cats peeping from the dark;
Scat! Meow!
Each eye gleaming like a spark;
Biff! Wow!
Owl a-hooting in the lane,
Tick-tack on the window pane –
Is the universe insane?
S-a-h-h! S-a-h-h!
It’s Halloween!”
(Source: The Manassas Journal, Friday, 11/05/1920)
While children in Dumfries managed to stop traffic in Northern Virginia with their Halloween mischief, Manassas had its’ fair shares of woes. Notably in October 1910 and October 1911, “Halloween Imps” took it upon themselves to transform the actual town – from destroying property to decorating the streets with merchant’s wares, Manassas was the scene of some serious Halloween scandal.
Trick-or-treating blends different cultural traditions stemming from the Middle Ages when children and adults used Halloween as a chance to earn money and/or food in exchange for songs and prayers. People baked “soul cakes”, small little round sweet cakes with a cross on top representing a soul released from Purgatory once consumed. One popular song associated with souling goes as follows: “A soul! A soul! A soul-cake! Please good Misses, a soul-cake! An apple, a pear, a plum, or cherry, Any good thing to make us all merry. One for Peter, two for Paul. Three for him who made us all.” This evolved to “guising” in Britain in the 19th century as children started to tell jokes, play an instrument, and offer performances for money and/or food. Scottish and Irish immigrants brought the various traditions with them, and by the end of the 19th century, American towns experienced different levels of tricks – from tying opposite apartment doorknobs together to 200 boys attacking people with bags of flour in streetcars in Washington, D.C. 1894.
(Halloween Postcard, Published by Raphael Tuck & Sons, Series 150. Postmarked 31 October 1908. Source: Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol)
While the Manassas and Prince William County newspapers do not report biological attacks with gluten, they do illustrate the damage determined children can do to property. “Down in the business district, doors of shops were barricaded with all manner of heavy commodities that were tributes to the muscular strength of the merrymakers.” Children allegedly coated businesses with paint and signs, and managed to move a bandstand. “The bandstand that has occupied a conspicuous position in the landscape at the corner of Center and Main streets is no more. It transferred its location to the middle of the street during the night, refused to be moved back, and was torn to pieces, after impeding traffic by its obstinacy.” The following year, the children once again “ruled with a reign of topsy-turvy in the old town”, the author noting, “Wraiths and witches, some of them angelic, were abroad when shades of night fell, vanishing on the stroke of midnight when imps of his Satanic majesty held sway.” This time, people found the antic more annoying than destructive, although they still removed and exchanges gates from different houses, and decorated storefronts with merchandise scattered in the street. The author ended the piece noting a little scrying, “Sentimental maidens gazing into mirrors saw visions of their future husbands.”
(Center Street, Manassas, Va, 1915-1916, Manassas Museum)
The holiday transformed as people moved from more rural landscapes to urban cities and WWI and WWII affected available foods and mindsets. While the early 1900 newspapers might have joked about the children soaping the windows (a practice reportedly done in Dumfries), editors lamented the waste of resources and time during WWII. Although President Harry Truman attempted to curtail and change the holiday by introducing “Youth Honor Day” in 1950 (you can see how successful that was), society cleverly started advertising “trick or treat” in magazines, newspapers, and even movies starting in the late 1930s building momentum into the 1950s.
So what would you have bribed children with the in the early 1900s? The Wunderle Candy Company created candy corn in 1880 and you could have also shopped for tootsie rolls, Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum, and Candy Floss. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars and kisses, NECCO wafers, and Chiclets all appeared in the very early 1900s.
Note: Ready to put away Halloween and turn your attention to holiday baking? Join us for a free virtual November Member cookie swap on Saturday, 11/07 @ 10am! Meet with us virtually to share and discover new recipes, along with recipes dating from the 18th and 19th century! Click here for free tickets.
(Sources: The Manassas Journal, Reign of Topsy-Turvy in the Old Town By Mischievous Imps of Halloween, 11/03/1910; The Manassas Democrat, Hallowe;en Imps in Merry Mischief: Wild Reign of Topsy-Turvey, 11/02/1911; Hiskey, Daven. Today I Found Out Feed Your Brain: How the Tradition of Trick or Treating Got Started, 10/17/2012; Bannatyne, Lesley. When Halloween was All Tricks and No Treats, Smithsonian Online Magazine, 10/27/2017; Candy Favorites: Retro Candy Timeline)
