![\"sam1a_web\"](\"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/sam1b_web.jpg\")
<\/a>For thirteen months between February 1885 and February 1886, a tabloid publication in Cincinnati published a wide range of articles, cartoons, editorials, and stories that lampooned American life.\u00a0 No topic or person escaped the sharp wit of Sam the Scaramouch<\/em>, and for the short time this weekly newspaper was in existence, its editors took on national tariffs, elections from Cincinnati to Washington, the temperance issue, urban sophisticates and country bumpkins, race and ethnicity, and, a growing national obsession with sports.\u00a0 Grover Cleveland was president.\u00a0 European colonization of Africa was in full force.\u00a0 The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York, and Ulysses S. Grant died.\u00a0 And, in many ways, Sam<\/em> was like other newspapers around the country in covering these events, carrying local advertisements and notices, and publishing occasional doggerel and short fiction, and reflecting the \u201cnew\u201d journalistic Realism.<\/p>\nSam the Scaramouch <\/em>was the brainchild of three Cincinnatians: Peter Gibson Thomson, C.V. Van Hamm, and Absalom. H. Mattox.\u00a0 Thomson was a manufacturer of toys, toy books, and games, as well as a printer.\u00a0 Mattox was a commercial clerk, while Van Hamm\u2019s regular occupation is unknown.\u00a0 Altogether, the three of them incorporated their little newspaper, and published it out of a building on Vine Street in Cincinnati\u2019s Over-the-Rhine, a predominantly German neighborhood at the time.<\/p>\n <\/a>Their pieces in Sam<\/em>, either written by themselves or solicited from other like-minded gentlemen, were sharply written, disrespectful, irreverent, and funny \u2013 everything one could ask of satire.\u00a0 They took their title from a stock character in 19th<\/sup> century Italian theater: \u201cScaramouch\u201d referred to a boastful, cowardly buffoon, and by the latter part of the century, the term had also come to mean a rascal or scamp.\u00a0 Where the \u201cSam\u201d part came from, no one knows, Perhaps the editors were just taken with the nice alliteration.<\/p>\n There are 432 pages of Sam the Scaramouch, <\/em>measuring 8 \u00bd\u201d x 10 3\/4\u201d, or, 28 cm. \u00a0It is heavily illustrated with both editorial cartoons and general caricatures.\u00a0 Just twelve libraries, including the University of Cincinnati, report having copies though it is uncertain whether the copies other than UC\u2019s are complete.\u00a0 There is a microfilm of Sam the Scaramouch<\/em> made in 1983 by the New York Public Library but this microfilm is incomplete and does not include the period from February to June 1885.\u00a0 SpecCol RB F499.C5 S16 1885-1886<\/strong><\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0 Kevin Grace<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For thirteen months between February 1885 and February 1886, a tabloid publication in Cincinnati published a wide range of articles, cartoons, editorials, and stories that lampooned American life.\u00a0 No topic or person escaped the sharp wit of Sam the Scaramouch, … Continue reading <\/a>In addition to political issues and international affairs, the editors also directed their barbs at the differences between urban and rural America and at the racial and ethnic groups dwelling in the nation\u2019s cities.\u00a0 As one might expect in a city that was heavily German in 1885, that particular ethnic group came under a great deal of lampooning, with cartoons and dialect stories emphasizing every stereotype from shabby, lecherous Germans accosting young girls outside saloons, to the beginning of various \u201csausage\u201d seasons.\u00a0 But African Americans, Jews, the Irish, the English, and the Italians were all subject to weekly barbs.\u00a0 The intended readership appears to be those citizens who were educated, politically informed, socially aloof, white, male, and professional.<\/p>\n