This 1947 Milwaukee headline celebrate a relatively damage-free Halloween Eve.
You’ll probably hear the words “trick or treat” quite a bit this time of year, but the phrase is unlikely to register as the kind of threat that it reads as when stripped of its context. It’s doubtful that many people think of it as anything but a harmless trio of words, part of the – when you think about it – pretty weird ritual that is our annual end-of-October candy spree. According to Wikipedia, trick-or-treating is a tradition that dates back to 19th century Britain, where people would go to homes in disguise and recite verses in exchange for food—a lack of which could bring about some kind of reprisal.
But locally, the origins of trick-or-treating are something closer to “treats-instead-of-tricks” or, to put things more bluntly, “candy to distract teenagers from setting fires and cutting down phone lines.”
By the 1920s, Halloween eve vandalism by Milwaukee youngsters had become enough of a problem that local business owners sought some kind of official remedy. In 1922, the Milwaukee Real Estate Board organized a Halloween parade, the aim of which was to busy children who might have otherwise been damaging local property. It was reported afterward that the number of signs torn stolen from local offices and shops had dropped considerably because of the event. But rowdyism still remained and, just a few years later, the Saxe Theater chain began a series of free Halloween eve movie screenings to draw young people off of the streets and away from potential trouble.
Riotous Orgy of Violence
Despite these efforts, the Halloween eve problem continued to get worse. In 1938, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported “one of the most riotous orgies of Halloween violence ever recorded here.” The police received 209 calls in just four hours—a record—for vandalism that included uncovered manholes, trash cans thrown into traffic, homes set on fire or pelted with stones and at least parked car pushed into the path of an oncoming trolley car. One boy nearly killed himself attempting to cut a power line that he mistook for a telephone wire. In the end, several thousand dollars in damage had been done.
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In 1939, however, it seemed that more children were being coaxed into the somewhat-obscure “beggar’s night” tradition of going door-to-door asking for handouts of candy or fruit. Problems with vandalism continued but seemed to roll back with the emergence of the new trend. But door-to-dooring had now become common enough that it was causing troubles of its own, mostly related to kids falling while wearing “false faces” (the term the city safety used for “masks”) or burned while lighting jack-o-lanterns. By 1943, the phrase “trick or treat” appeared in the paper for the first time, and soon after stores were running ads for trick or treating candy and other supplies.
Sugar rationing during the war curtailed trick-or-treating, but when the rations ended in the summer of 1947, the practice began a national boom in popularity. That Halloween also saw what everyone swore was the worst spree of vandalism the city had ever seen. Broken windows, streets clogged up with trash cans and construction barriers, firecrackers thrown at cars, mailboxes blown up, fire hydrants turned on and – on the corner of 55th and Hampton—a gang of boys spray red ink on passersby with a squirt gun.
But overall, the increasing popularity of trick-or-treating met with a decline in Halloween eve trouble. When the city finally adopted an officially-designated trick-or-treating time in 1972, it was held in the daylight rather than in the evening. It was hoped, the papers said, that this would eliminate the last of the “tricksters” which had once so threatened the public order.
