Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — Gotham as Applied to New York. [ARTICLE]

Gotham as Applied to New York.

It is a jesting appellation first used In “Salmagundi,” a humorous work by Washington Irving and J. K. Paulding, in making fun of the pretensions of New York to wisdom and smartness. The word was transferred from England, where numerous stories have for centuries been circulated about the people of Gotham, a village in Nottinghamshire. In almost every country some one town is picked out as the butt of ridicule, in folk-lore stories and jests, on account of the reputed foolishness of its inhabitants. Gotham was so branded in English fable, and for that reason New York has been called Gotham by those who wished to ridicule the conceit of its citizens.