Mickey Finn (drugs)

A Mickey Finn (or simply Mickey) is a slang term for a drink laced with a drug (especially chloral hydrate) given to someone without their knowledge in order to incapacitate them (see drink spiking). Serving someone a Mickey Finn is most commonly referred to as slipping a mickey, sometimes spelled "slipping a mickie".

The Chicago bartender Michael "Mickey" Finn
The Mickey Finn is most likely named for the manager and bartender of a Chicago establishment, the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden Restaurant, which operated from 1896 to 1903 in the city's South Loop neighborhood on South State Street. In December 1903, several Chicago newspapers document that a Michael "Mickey" Finn managed the Lone Star Saloon and was accused of using knockout drops to incapacitate and rob some of his customers. Moreover, the first known written example (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) of the use of the term Mickey Finn is in 1915, twelve years after his trial, lending credence to this theory of the origination of the phrase.

The first popular account of Mickey Finn was given by Herbert Asbury in his 1940 book Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. His cited sources are Chicago newspapers and the 1903 court testimony of Lone Star prostitute "Gold Tooth" Mary Thornton. Before his days as a saloon proprietor, Mickey Finn was known as a pickpocket and thief who often preyed on drunken bar patrons. The act of serving a Mickey Finn Special was a coordinated robbery orchestrated by Finn. First, Finn or one of his employees, which included "house girls", would slip a drug (chloral hydrate) in the unsuspecting patron's drink. The incapacitated patron would be escorted or carried into a back room by one of Finn's associates who would then rob the victim and dump him in an alley. Upon awaking the next morning in a nearby alley, the victim would remember little or nothing of what had happened. Finn's saloon was ordered closed on December 16, 1903.

In 1918, Mickey Finn was apparently arrested again, this time for running an illegal bar in South Chicago.

The Chicago restaurant poisonings
On June 22, 1918, four people were arrested and over one hundred waiters taken into custody over the apparent widespread practice of poisoning by waiters in Chicago. Guests who tipped poorly were given "Mickey Finn powder" in their food or drinks. Chemical analysis showed that it contained antimony and potassium tartrate. Antimony is known to cause headaches, dizziness, depression, and vomiting and can be lethal in large quantities. W. Stuart Wood and his wife were arrested for manufacturing the powder, and two bartenders were arrested for selling the powder at the bar at the waiters' union headquarters. Wood sold packets of the powder for 20 cents and referred to it as "Mickey Finn Powder" in a letter to union bartender John Millian. A followup article mentions the pursuit of a man named Jean Crones who was believed to be responsible for poisoning over 100 people at a Chicago University Club banquet at which three people died.

Tracing usage of the phrase "Mickey Finn"
The Oxford English Dictionary gives a chronology of the term, starting in 1915. The 1915 citation is from a photo of a saloon in the December 26 edition of the Los Angeles Examiner. In the photo is a sign that reads "Try a Michael Finneka cocktail". The first listed reference as a knock-out drop in the OED, "Wish I had a drink and a Mike Finn for him", is from a March 11, 1924 article in the New York Evening Journal. A description of a Mickey Finn is given in the January 18, 1927 issue of the Bismarck Tribune, "a Mickey Finn is an up-to-date variant on the knock-out drops of pre-war days". In the September 3, 1927 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, the phrase appears in an article on the use of ethylene for artificial ripening of fruit, "Applied to a human, ethylene is an anaesthetic as the old-time Mickey Finn in a lumber-jack saloon". The phrase also appears in the January 13, 1928, issue of Variety, "Mickeyfinning isn't describable, but it's easily worked, leaving its victims miserable. The work is accomplished mainly by bartenders... Mickeyfinning has been behind some of the nite club liquor trouble, with the victims so sore they don't care what their revenge might bring".

As a plot device, Mickey Finning first appears in the 1930 film Hold Everything and the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. Since that time it has been used many times in books, film, television, often occurring in detective stories and comedy scenes.

Other possible origins
Starting in the 1880s, the author Ernest Jarrold published a series of fictional stories about a boy named "Mickey Finn" growing up in the Irish section of bucolic Rondout, New York. The "Mickey Finn" stories were published in newspapers across the United States, bringing nationwide fame to Jarrold. Mickey is also a very old slang term for Irishman. The Oxford English Dictionary entry for mickey n1 lists the term as derogatory slang for an Irishman, with first known written usage in 1851. From these facts, some argue that by the time the term entered popular usage, Mickey Finn had become something of a generic Irish name, making any specific origin difficult to pin down.