Funny you should mention this.

The American Dialect Society has a very active list
(archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/ads-l.html )
, and on August 29, 2004, there was an antedate (an earlier citation) of the Oxford English
Dictionary's entry on "Moving Day" (qv), May 1st in New York and New Jersey.

The OED had 1850s. The researcher was able to find a reference in 1830 which also explains the
custom, and which you might be able to cite.

Flinders should have an unabridged OED somewhere on campus, if you can't cite the 1830 reference
for reasons of scholarship. However, the poster of the 1830 antedate (Barry Popick, a judge in New
York's traffic court) is a well-respected avocational researcher. Others trust his posts. (He does
get a little testy when people don't fully research their antedates, however.)

Here's the entry I found, but that was only a quick search:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0408E&L=ads-l&P=R1295

I recommend you check also the pre-1999 ADS-L archives from the link on the home page's recent
archive.

You might also have a linguist on campus whom you can bother to search the "Early American
Newspaper" archives. I am not familiar with them, but I understand they are subscription-only, and
have some quirks that make researching them a challenge.

Gwyn Alcock
Statistical Research, Inc.
Redlands, California

--- Susan Briggs <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Could any one please help me? I remember reading about May Day in New York
> in the mid 19th century when tenants would move en masse and I thought some
> one said of this that labourers/working classes moved so frequently because
> they felt it was one of the few areas of their lives they had full control
> over. At the time I thought it was interesting but not relevant to what I
> was doing, well now I think it is and I can't find were it was. Does any
> one know? I thought it was in an article on the Five Points but having
> scoured all that I can get my hands on maybe not... It has been driving me
> mad and I have finally chopped that paragraph out of my PhD but I really
> don't want to let it go.
>
> While I am here are there any more references on tenant mobility in urban
> situations? Unfortunatly they need to be references that I can get in
> Australia...
>
> Cheers
> Susan Briggs
>