A National Practical Joke: The Sons of Malta [published July 3, 1881]

      Fifteen or sixteen years ago New York went wild over a big “sell.” New York wasn’t quite as large as it is now in the way of people, and it was possible then for one man or one joke to get the hold of it agoin’, for awhile.

      This joke or a sell I speak of was of the “tallest” kind, and it spread like the measles or the Chicago fire. Whoever took it, or rather it was “taken in” by it, set right to work at once to take in somebody else, and so the “sell” widened, like a circle in the water, or a German’s corporosity with Sunday beer.

      I allude to what was known at the time and is still remembered as the “Sons of Malta.” This was probably the biggest sell of its kind ever gotten up in New York, bigger even than the Ku Klux scares durin’ the war.

      The Sons of Malta idea really originated, I believe, in New Orleans, but it was introduced into New York very soon after it’s startin’. Captain Leonard (afterwards Inspector Leonard) and Captain Dilks (afterwards Inspector Dilks) had a hand in it. So had John Brougham, the actor, and Dolly Davenport, who was almost as popular in his day as John Brogham himself.

      The main thing in the sons of Malta was the burlesquin’ the rites of Freemasonry, and this was about the sum and the substance of it, besides havin’ a good time generally, and havin’ no end of fun in seein’ otherwise smart people make fools of ‘emselves.

      The thing “took,” as I have just said. Everybody went Sons of Malta crazy. It hit Philadelphia pretty bad, but it reached a head in New York. There were three “lodges” or branches of it in New York, each lodge or branch havin’ its own separate “hall.”

      The lodges all had high-soundin’, highfalutin’ Latin names–plain English wasn’t good enough for ‘em. There was one lodge called, I believe, “Pro Patria” on Broadway, and another lodge called “Ecce Signum” on the Bowery, near Delancey street. Then there was a third, the location of which I don’t remember. Of course the Broadway lodge was a little more aristocratic than the Bowery one, but then there wasn’t much difference between ‘em after all. A practical joke makes all parties concerned in it pretty democratic. John Hardenbook was connected with the Ecce Signum concern. So was Hills of the Evening Post. Tom Munday, the lawyer, was one of the high-cockalorums of the Broadway concern. Many prominent local politicians got “roped in” the affair. Judge Barnard for one, ex-Judge Phillips for another, Judge McCarthy and others. If it had kept on long enough there would have been “millions in it;” as it was there were several thousand.

      You see everybody who once got into the thing himself, and found out that he had been sold, at once did all he could to get somebody else, to have the laugh on him, as he had had to stand the laugh himself. Each new convert–or victim–brought in two or three other new converts or victims. So, like a snowball, it grew bigger as it rolled.

      One man, Dick Gilbert, a sport…must have contrived one way or another to victimize at least fifty men on this Sons of Malta racket. One night Dick got a friend of his, named Mahone, to be initiated.

      Mahone was a high-toned chap, and thought that he was very literary and wise. He wore a Byron collar and quoted poetry, and was a very serious fellow, indeed. He had always wanted to join a secret society, and thought that secret societies were tremendous affairs, destined, sooner or later, to rule the world, and Dick Gilbert, havin’ told him that the Sons of Malta had for its object the revolutionizin’ of society, and was by far the best and most important secret society on the face of the earth, Mahone was eager to join it. So a night was appointed at the Ecce Signum Lodge to initiate Mahone.

      And they put him through a course of sprouts.

      Dick Gilbert walked with Mahone solemnly and slowly, as if he was goin’ to a meetin’ of his creditors. When they got to the hall where the lodge met, Dick went to the door of the lodge room and gave first a rap and then a scrape–this was one of the mystic signs, and was considered very important. It had to be a peculiar kind of a rap, and then a peculiar kind of a scrape. After this mystic rap and scrape business the door of the large room partly opened, and somebody on the inside of the door put out his ear to Dick, and Dick whispered somethin’ in his ear. Then the man inside the door whispered somethin’ into Dick’s ears. Mahone of course thought that this whisperin’ was mighty solemn and important, but in reality was very simple. Dick merely whispered “Jack” and the other fellow merely whispered “ass,” both referrin’ to Mahone, of course, and then the door was opened wide and Dick Gilbert and his “jackass” entered.

      The room was full of men, dressed all in white robes, with cowls, like so many monks, their faces hidden–an air of mystery pervadin’ all.

      The first thing Mahone had to do, however, wasn’t a bit mysterious. It was as prosaic and practical as it could possibly be, bein’ simply the handin’ over by Mahone of a five dollar bill as an initiation fee.

      This five dollars went towards the expenses of the hall, etc., and part of it went to a charity fund. After all there was no swindle about takin’ this five dollars. The fun was worth the money, and the money was legitimately expended, and there were no further dues or assessments, and no fines.

      Having “ponied up,” the initiatory ceremonies began. These ceremonies were under the control of the grand chancellor, who was seated on a sort of raised chair.

      Tom Munday was the grand chancellor on this occasion, and he looked as grave and dignified as if he was a Napoleon, a Frederick the Great, and a Count Joannes, all three rolled into one. He spoke slowly, in a majestic Edwin Booth sort of a voice, and rolled his eyes about as if he was goin’ to have a fit. And he did have a fit after a while–of laughter.

      The very first thing in the ceremonies of initiation was the blindfoldin’ of the victim, Mahone, They bandaged his eyes thoroughly and tight, so that he couldn’t see–no make-believe blindfoldin’.

      Then, when they had him fixed so that he couldn’t possibly see anythin’ if he tried, they made him swear a solemn oath not to divulge anythin’ he might see. This was, under the circumstance, a most unnecessary oath, and was really part of the joke, but Mahone had to take it now nevertheless, and took it most seriously. He had to raise his right hand, and swear, by fire and water, by sea and land, by light and darkness, by Heaven and earth and by a lot of other things, equally majestic and solemn, not to divulge the secret of the initiation to any outsider, under the most terrific penalties. The oath, with all its frills, was propounded in his most sepulchral voice by Chancellor Munday, and then one Son of Malta, in one corner of the room, cried out in a low, deep voice, “Swear.” And then another Son of Malta cried out in another corner of the room, in a low, deep voice, “Swear.” And then a third Son of Malta roared in from a third corner, “Swear,” and a fourth Son of Malta from the last remainin’ corner of the room, growled out “Swear,” and then every Son of Malta in the room called out all together “Swear,” and then under these, to him, most solemn ceremonies, poor Mahone was sworn.

      “Now,” cried the grand chancellor, Tom Munday, like a judge sentencin’ a prisoner to be hung. “Let the errin’ mortal, who would become a Son of Malta show his sincerity here in the presence of this august assemblage by endurin’ the ordeal that is required of him as a test of his sincerity–let him go over the rugged path.”

      As the last words, “the rugged path,” were pronounced, the blindfolded Mahone was suddenly seized by three or four men, who divested him of his clothes, or the greater part of ‘em, and then took him and rubbed him against somethin’ that was alike very sharp and very rough. Mahone, of course, couldn’t tell what it was, but it really was a big wash bowl with which his body was thoroughly scraped. It was, indeed, “goin’ over a rugged path,” so “rugged” that Mahone was sore for a week afterwards.

      When he had been rubbed and scraped till he was exhausted, the Sons of Malta in the room meanwhile makin’ all sorts of hideous noises, partly to frighten him and partly to keep down the sound of the involuntary laughter which every now and then would seize somebody who was lookin’ at poor Mahone bein’ rubbed down, or curry-combed, one of the Sons, in a gentle whisper, said to the victim:

      “You must be tired.”

      Of course poor Mahone said he was tired, very tired, of this sort of thing, indeed.

      “Then, walk upstairs and rest,” said the whisperer, softly.

      Rest was exactly what poor Mahone wanted–rest to smooth down his own back awhile, rest to ease his achin’ limbs.

      So he asked, for Heaven’s sake, to be led upstairs. And he was led up–to the next racket–to his next agony.

      He was conducted upstairs, bein’ made to tumble down once or twice on the way up, so as to bruise his shins and stub his toes, and then led into a room where he was gently told to “rest here awhile, and lean his weary back against the wall.”

      Well, of course, he tried to “lean his way back against the wall,” and bent back against that part of the room where he would naturally suppose the wall to be.

      But, alas! there was no wall ther–that was part of the agony of racket number two. There was instead of a wall an open space, through which, of course, poor curry-combed and bruised Mahone fell over backwards and then downwards into a space beneath, where he was received in a blanket held in the hands of about a dozen frolicsome Sons of Malta, who proceeded forthwith to toss him up and down in their blanket as if he was a ball.

      This was the way the “tired” broker was allowed to “rest.” Mahone thought it was worse than the rubbin’ and scrapin’. But he took it all in good part. He had expected somethin’ out of the way and mysterious. It was all right, he thought. Every secret society must have similar rites of initiation, else it wouldn’t be a secret society. The severer the rites of initiation the more honor and value the bein’ initiated, of course. Just so.

      Thinkin’ after this fashion, Mahone was just the kind of man to “give it to,” and they “gave it to” him. They tossed him up and down in the blanket till the fellows tossin’ him got tired of the exercise and the laughin’. Then they began another racket, agony number three or four, the torture by question.

      He was taken from his blanketin’ hall which was in every way different from a banquetin’ hall, and led downstairs, more dead than alive, and stood up–they wouldn’t let him sit down–before the grand chancellor, who stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth to keep himself from burstin’ laughin’ out loud at the sight of him, puffin’ and pantin’ in his shirt.

      The grand chancellor asked him all sorts of questions, pertinent and impertinent–all kinds of questions. You see, they had got this question business down to a very fine point. They had a committee on examinations appointed, who, the moment a man expressed his wish to join the Sons of Malta, made it their business to go round to find out all the possibly could about him, his habits, his family matters, his business, his politics, his peculiarities, everythin’, in short. Sometimes they even went so far as to engage a regular detective to find out points on the party, but this was only in the case of some very important individual, so as to impress even him with a sort of awe and wonder how they knew so much about him.

      All the information thus obtained about the party was communicated to the chancellor, who, thus posted, knew what questions to ask to impress the victim or to make the boys laugh.

      Now, Mahone was, as I said at the beginnin’, high-toned, literary and serious. So of course Munday, the chancellor, asked him everythin’ that was slangy, course and funny, by way of contrast, to shock Mahone and to give the boys a laugh at the shock.

      He asked Mahone if he hadn’t been engaged in a street fight once at the corner of Bond street and the Bowery. Now Mahone had, years before, got into a row just at this corner, had been forced into it, and had got licked in the fight besides. He of course wondered how on earth the chancellor knew anythin’ about this occurrence, and, bein’ “on oath,” on this “solemn” occasion, he had to own up to everythin’ about the row.

      Then the chancellor asked him if he hadn’t once courted a pretty milliner girl in Division street. Mahone pretended to be very high-toned and never to have anythin’ to do with women, but the fact was that he had a flirtation years before with a good-lookin’ Jewess on Division street, who had jilted him. Mahone at first got mad at bein’ asked about such a “private” matter as this, but his gettin’ mad only made him all the more funny. A man can’t afford to put on any “virtuous indignation” with nothin’ but his shirt on, so he bottled up his wrath and owned up to the pretty milliner girl. And as fast as he answered the questions that were put to him, a voice cried out, sternly, clearly and solemnly, throughout the hall, “Let it be recorded.” And, naturally enough, the bare idea of recordin’ these long forgotten scrapes of his “riled” Mahone more than all his previous “circus.”

      Then they put Mahone through some other rackets after this question business was over. They made him dance, in imitation, the grand chancellor said, of King David, in the scriptures, before the ark. Now Mahone wasn’t very graceful, and he tried to beg off this dancin’, but the grand chancellor said it was imperative–couldn’t be dispensed with–and so Mahone danced, blindfolded and barefooted, in his airy garment, and made the boys laugh till they cried. They laughed so long and loud that all the other noises they made couldn’t drown it, and this laughin’ reachin’ the ears of Mahone gave him his first idea that perhaps after all he was bein’ “guyed.”

      This idea was pretty soon made a certainty to him, for in a solemn voice, commandin’ silence, the grand chancellor said: “Now, brother, you, havin’ been duly initiated, are constituted a Son of Malta, and are endowed hereby with all the privileges appertainin’ to a true and accepted Son of Malta. And the first privilege you are thus entitled to enjoy is the rare and inestimable boon of, in the words of the poet, ‘seein’ ourselves as others see us.’ So remove the bandage from our brother’s eyes and let him see himself as he is seen.”

      Thereupon the bandage was removed from the newly made Son of Malta’s eyes, and he found himself standin’ face to face before the head of a stuffed jackass.

      Then the boys all roared, and Mahone for the first time saw the joke and the jackass together. Then he was presented with a badge in the shape of a six-pointed star. In the centre of the star was an “eye,” an all-seein’ eye, and in each of the six corners was a letter. The six letters were arranged as follows: D. L. A. S. O. M. These letters had, like the religious inscriptions of the ancient Egyptians, two meanin’s–a public and a private one. The public one was supposed to be that each letter stood for the sentence “I (represented by the eye in the middle) Dearly Love A Son Of Malta. But the private meanin’ for the boys was simply “I–am–sold.”

      Mahone took the latter meanin’ to himself very quietly and ordered drinks for the crowd. And within a week he had got two of his bosom friends initiated and helped to bounce ‘em in the blanket. There was no end to the fun of the Sons of Malta had amongst ‘emselves. Of course they varied these initiation ceremonies occasionally, and when they got hold of some very high and respected citizen, like Recorder Tallmadge, they “let him down” comparatively easy. Sometimes they carried the joke too far. Once they nearly broke the neck of Jim Hall, the music publisher, with their blanket business; but on the whole the sell was very well managed, better than any other “sell” I ever heard of.

      Sometimes they crowned the newly-made Son of Malta with asses’ ears–the jackass bein’ considered the patron saint of the order, and held in great respect. Sometimes they presented him with a fig leaf as “the apron of innocence.” In fact, they did almost anything which made a laugh, or had any point to it at all.

      Sometimes they would pretend to a victim, in the blindfold stage of his agony, that Rev. Dr. Chapin, or Henry Ward Beecher, or the President of the United States and other distinguished personages had just stepped in.

      Then they had a lot of mystic signs of greetin’, rubbin’ the nose, puttin’ the hand to the mouth as if they wanted to take a drink, and so on. In fact, it was a big thing every way.

      Alderman Reed once got up a Sons of Malta Lodge one night on his own hook somewhere on the Bowery. He got a lot of roughs together and pretended to give the Sons of Malta away to ‘em, inventin’ everythin’ as he went along, and sousin’ the roughs in a tub of ice-cold water as part of the initiation ceremonies.

      By the bye, talkin’ of ice water, the Sons of Malta sometimes initiated their victims by slidin’ ‘em down an inclined plane, landin’ ‘em at last on a bed of solid ice, which, applied as it was, direct to the bareback, was very invigoratin’, and made the victim move about and swear very lively. Sometimes “the rugged path” was represented by a treadmill, which would make the poor victim think he had been walkin’ six miles, when he hadn’t really gone six feet, the boys all the while encouragin’ him at his “exercises,” cryin’ out, “One more step, brother,” till he keeled over exhausted.

      The Sons of Malta took immensely for a while. The order gave a midnight parade once which was a tremendous affair. About a thousand men walked the streets of New York in white robes, as if they were angels or ghosts. But after a while the thing became an open secret and died out. But it left a jolly memory behind it.

[Editor’s notes: In the column above, the writer makes a remark that implies that the Ku Klux Klan of the post-Civil War era was considered to be a hoax. That implication is made more than once in the Harry Hill’s “Thirty Years in Gotham” columns. It was certainly very real in Tennessee; but in the Northeast, did many people discount the reports of Klan actions?

Another reason for the demise of the Sons of Malta was the death of an initiate in a midwestern city lodge from a heart attack during the hazing. Also, the whole joke was exposed early on, in the February 18, 1860 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (the source of the illustrations above):

Though parodying the juvenile nature of “secret societies” was a public service, too many hazing accidents have occurred to find much humor now in the Sons of Malta (though the “Let it be recorded” refrain is pretty good).]