As he swallowed the money, Paddy rolled his eyes in delight
Among the collection of 19th-century antiques in a house I visited a while back was a magnificently racist piggy bank from 1882. Made in Connecticut, it was officially the “Shamrock Bank”. But its inspiration was another, unlovelier Hibernian stereotype.
Anyone for Tennyson? Frank McNally on the lesser-known Charge of the Heavy Brigade, 170 years ago this weekend Commercial value aside, the antique may also serve a social role these days: a useful reminder that for many in Donald Trump’s New York, not so long ago, Irish immigrants were as much despised as Puerto Ricans and others are by some people now.The piggy bank is doubly apt this week because October 31st is World Savings Day, aka World Thrift Day, an event still marked in many countries, although no longer – it seems – here.
Alas, Ireland’s wise virgins were already a threatened species by then. A motion to the congress warned of “serious, if not fatal, results to the national thrift movement . . . from the stimulus to gambling given to all classes of our people by the recently organised sweeps.” This depicted a down-and-out porcine family whose fortunes are changed when the feckless father wins the “Irish Sweepstakes”.
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