Back in the 1800s, the name “Maria” was roughly as common as it is today, but it was pronounced “mah-RYE-ah” instead of what’s common today, “mah-REE-ah.” We still use the old pronunciation, but only when the name is spelled with an “h:” “Mariah.”
But if you were in New York City around the 1830s, and you saw the police haul some miscreants off to jail in a wagon built just for that purpose, you’d probably hear say “they’re being hauled away in the Black Maria.” And you’d be put in mind, naturally, of Mariah Carey and how her song “Can’t Take That Away” doesn’t always apply. And then you’d probably think “why are these 18th century New Yorkers calling the paddy wagon a “Black Maria”? And “how do I know about a famous singer almost two centuries in the future?”
While nobody knows for sure how police wagons got the name “Black Maria,” it probably wasn’t an act of foreshadowing. Instead, the name likely came from people reading the newspapers. In 1826 a horse was born in Harlem, and grew up to be quite famous as a racehorse. The horse’s name was “Black Maria.” The police wagons were typically painted black, and since their function was to take people to jail as quickly as possible, the black wagons were probably seen rushing at top speed through the city streets. It’s possible that people drew the analogy between the big black wagon speeding past them and the famous black horse speeding past all the slower horses. Maybe it isn’t that likely, but it’s at least plausible. Police wagons were called “Black Marias” long after the racehorse was forgotten; it’s even still occasionally used today, although it’s pretty rare.
But speaking of police wagons, they were (and still are, once in a while) also called “paddy wagons”, a term that arose nearly a century after “Black Maria.” It’s unfortunate (because it would be such a good story) that this is not because of a famous race horse named “Paddy.” Again, the origin of the term involves a bit of guesswork, but “Paddy” was a familiar form of the name “Patrick.” “Patrick” was a very common name in New York because so many people immigrated there from Ireland, where “Patrick” (or “Padraic,” the Irish version) was one of the most common male names. Police wagons could have acquired the name “paddy wagon” in two ways. Around the turn of the 20th century the Irish immigrants faced a lot of discrimination, and “Paddy” was used as a derogatory term for them. There was also institutional discrimination that meant that Irish immigrants were probably arrested for “walking while Irish” and similar crimes. So “paddy wagon” might have referred to the people inside the police wagon. But on the other hand, the New York City police department employed a large contingent of Irish officers in that era, so “paddy wagon” might have referred to certain people outside the police wagon — the police themselves. Either way, “paddy wagon” is just not as interesting or evocative a term as “Black Maria”.
As to where the people inside the van were headed, well, it was jail. The pokey. The hoosegow. “Hoosegow” first appeared in print in 1908, roughly the same time as “paddy wagon.” And while the Irish arrived in New York from the east, “hoosegow” came from the west. The western US, being close by Mexico, also turned out to be close to the Spanish language, and in Mexican Spanish the word “juzgado” means “jail.” In Spanish the letter “j” is pronounced with an “h” sound, so “juzgado” sounds very close to “hoosegow” (and has a more interesting spelling). “Pokey,” though, comes from English; it’s a form of “pogey,” which in England in the 1800s meant a poorhouse. As for “jail,” it’s from the Middle English “gaile,” which in turn came from Norman French. From the 1500s on it used to be spelled “gaol,” and you occasionally still see that spelling today in Commonwealth countries. In the US though, it’s always been “jail.” Just how you pronounce “gaol” has been in question for a long time, according to Visions, written in 1668: “…they cannot come to a Resolution, whether they shall say Face or Visage; whether they shall say Jayl or Gaol…”. It’s just like the 1937 George and Ira Gershwin song Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off with the lyric “…you say po-TAY-tow and I say po-TAH-tow…”. Mariah Carey has probably sung that at least once in her career. And just by the way, Carey was born in New York City, which is where the Irish immigrants went to escape the potato famine, and her mother’s name was “Patricia,” the feminine form of “Patrick” that has to do with this expression people had for police vehicles…
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