This week in Philly history: Mischief Night escalates into mayhem across the river
In 1991, the Halloween Eve festivities devolved into destruction in Camden.
Throwing eggs graduated into splashing gasoline, and mischief escalated into mayhem.
On Oct. 30, 1991, across North and East Camden, troublemakers set 150 fires, igniting 86 mostly vacant buildings, 25 of which were irreparably burned, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Two families lost their homes, and a discount business was reduced to ashes, leaving six workers without jobs.
Fifty-seven people, 41 of them juveniles, were charged, appropriately, with criminal mischief.
Locals know the night before Halloween as Mischief Night. And though “mischief” has long been a part of Halloween, with U.S. newspapers in the 1920s even referring to the main holiday by the same name, a holiday devoted solely to the high jinks apparently started in England.
According to the Guardian, the earliest recorded use of the term dates to 1790. A headmaster at St. John’s College in Oxford put on an annual school play that ended in “an Ode to Fun which praises children’s tricks on Mischief Night in most approving terms.”
The tradition followed Irish and Scottish immigrants as they moved to the United States. And the use of the term in its modern form, describing the events of Halloween Eve and calling it “Mischief Night,” started popping up in The Inquirer as early as the 1930s, mostly followed by descriptions of various examples of pranks and vandalism.
Ringing doorbells and running away, wrapping toilet paper around leafless trees, and throwing eggs on vehicles and at front doors have traditionally been the methods of celebration, with more damaging antics peaking in Camden’s 1991 firestorm.
But it has mostly been observed in areas along the Northeastern corridor. A University of Pennsylvania study found the term is most common in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware.
» READ MORE: Who calls it Mischief Night?
For the remainder of the 1990s, parents and officials in towns in Camden and elsewhere in New Jersey took precautions in the wake of the widespread destruction. Yearly police patrols, curfews, and other neighborhood initiatives in Philadelphia and the suburbs were employed in an effort to prevent problems like the Camden fires, and those tactics have mostly been effective, as area communities have succeeded in preventing mischief from escalating into much worse.