Why is baltimore called mobtown

With 4, slaves and 10, free blacks, more people of color resided in Baltimore than in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, or New Orleans.

With white skin offering no immunity from drudgework and with German redemptioners indentured servants arriving through the s, the boundary of slavery and freedom blurred further. By the end of the s, Baltimore leaders had devised several means of stemming disorder. New ordinances banned boys from throwing rocks, female hucksters from selling food door-to-door, and people of color from assembling after curfew.

Benevolent societies provided religious schooling to impoverished children, Bibles to their unchurched fathers, and sewing to their underemployed mothers. Groups advocating the colonization of free African Americans to Liberia, the regulation of drinking establishments, and the suppression of pauperism shared the goal of cleaning up the city. Reformers in all cities of the early republic sought to stem vice. Where Baltimore truly distinguished itself was in its institutional response to crime and poverty.

No other American city had discovered this secret recipe for lowering expenditures: if the poor could only gain relief in the almshouse, the threat of coerced labor would make them unlikely to do so. And those who did enter the almshouse would offset costs by growing food, sewing uniforms, and building cribs and coffins. Although the almshouse did not eliminate poverty any more than the penitentiary did crime, s Baltimore attested to the optimism of a dynamic age. A massive parade celebrated the visit of Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution.

Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and William Wirt all garnered presidential nominations in Baltimore during the first national conventions in and New possibilities always brought perils, however. Economic opportunities in the expanding city gave many working-class men and women enough money to become bank depositors.

But the same opportunities gave financiers the chance to lose these deposits through reckless speculations. That is precisely what happened at the Bank of Maryland in Once it became known that the bank had issued fifty times more paper money than warranted by its holding in gold and silver, the savings of most small depositors instantly became worthless IOUs. In previous years, they had borrowed large sums from the bank. Those loans would come due as the bank attempted to climb out of insolvency.

Buying up credit slips from desperate workers for cents on the dollar, the directors quickly accumulated enough paper to meet their obligations.

After waiting seventeen months for the directors to open their books, public outrage boiled over in August The rioters championed a moral economy that placed community needs above the inviolability of the free market. The nickname Smalltimore is a recent one that speaks to the geographic size and that one always seems to be just a couple of degrees away from everyone else in the city. The nickname The Greatest City in America has it's origins in Martin O'Malley's mayoral term, reportedly there are still some benches around the city that still bear the name.

But the name Mobtown is a historical nickname, a nickname that has been in place for a long time, was enthusiastically used in my lifetime, and is still used sometimes today. Why is Baltimore known as Mobtown? Because the citizens of Baltimore have never needed much of an excuse to form a mob and riot. There are history books that have whole chapters dedicated to the nickname. The city, separated from Baltimore county in , is the only city in Maryland not located within a county.

In recent years, a new vanguard of eateries has elevated and expanded dining choices — from the Inner Harbor to the outskirts of the city limits.

In , Baltimore city, MD had a population of k people with a median age of Between and the population of Baltimore city, MD declined from , to ,, a Your email address will not be published. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.