The birth of jaywalking
The first known illustration of a “jay walker” (originally printed as two words) was published in the Kansas City Star on April 30, 1911. At first, the term referred to a pedestrian who didn’t know how to walk in a big city.
According to Peter Norton, the Kansas City region rightfully claims the origin of the word as a whole, too.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” Norton says.
This April 30, 1911, cartoon in the Kansas City Star was the first known illustration of “jay walkers.” It precedes the earliest Oxford English Dictionary citation for the word by six years, according to Norton's research.
The important part of this neologism is “jay,” which, in early 20th century parlance, meant “idiot.” Jay was a pejorative term typically deployed against rural people, but it could also be attached to any noun.
No one showed up in the small town to see the traveling Shakespeare theater troop? Well, that’s because it’s a jay town. They’re not sophisticated enough to understand real art.
A country bumpkin is stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking into the store’s big show window? What a jaywalker.
“‘Jay driver,’ I find by 1904, a little bit ahead of ‘jaywalker,’” Norton says, “for farmers with wagons who are blocking street cars.”
Oddly enough, “jaywalking” doesn’t actually have anything to do with the jayhawk, the mascot for the nearby University of Kansas, a mythical trouble-making bird that was used as the moniker for the Kansas “free staters” during the Civil War.
When walking became a crime
In 1911, Kansas City implemented the first anti-jaywalking ordinance of its kind in the country. Carrying a potential fine ranging from $5 to $50, the law prohibited pedestrians from crossing anywhere other than regulated crosswalks.
While there were some earlier ordinances restricting pedestrians in cities like Boston and Minneapolis, Norton says none of those were ever really enforced, and none of them used the term “jaywalking.”
Pedestrians stroll down 12th Street and watch a Sells Floto Circus parade in Kansas City on July 5, 1915.
Norton says Kansas City’s effort was influenced by the amount of automobile-related traffic accidents at the time — although it wasn’t solely based on concerns for pedestrians.
“There was a more specific concern about who was gonna be liable in the case of somebody getting injured or killed,” Norton says.
“Automobile clubs, which represented car drivers and insurance companies and dealers, were all very anxious that every time a driver in Kansas City injured or killed a pedestrian, they were held liable for it. Because the street at that time was for everyone,” Norton continues.
“They couldn't say, ‘Oh, well that person walked right out into the street.’ Because the judge would say, ‘Well, that person was entitled to walk out in the middle of the street.’”