Messing with Sunday rituals is risky:'Riots are now chronic in New York, and both mob and authorities fight with fire-arms. The last two sectional insurrections were an attack by the oystermen on the quarantine station, and a rising of the Germans against a prohibition to vend their beloved lager-beer on Sundays. In all these rows the insurgents attain at least one common end — they combat the detested "new police." '
Dundee Courier - Wednesday 05 August 1857, page 4.
Fire-arms? That's serious rioting. I'd love to learn more about these disturbances. I guess stupid licensing laws weren't uniquely British.
I couldn't imagine a Sunday in Bavaria without beer. Few Bavarians could either.
I'll be there soon. In beer's heartland. Two Sundays I'll get. Beer? Sure, there'll be beer. Along with impractically large chunks of pork, rustling trees, laughing kids, chatty blokes, dirndled waitresses and absolutely no stress at all. Can't wait.
No wonder they got so angry in New York.
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The Dead Rabbits Riots, made famous in Martin Scorese's "Gangs of New York" happened a month earlier. Something like 1000 people were involved and the National Guard were called out. A month earlier two opposing police (yes police) forces—the Municipal and Metropolitans—rioted, and 53 people were injured. Both of those instances paled in comparison to the Draft Riots of 1863. Those lasted for three days and 1,500 people were killed—along with upwards of 8,000 wounded.
It wasn't just new york. 2 years earlier in chicago, a police officer lost his arm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lager_Beer_Riot
Hmm, I seem to have read about that Chicago riot somewhere....
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