When "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" Was an Adult Party Craze

   

Imagine you are a 20-year old “girl” in 1888 or ‘89. You are somehow still single; you have a name like Hattie, Maude, Clara or Nellie. You’ve been invited to a Donkey party! You rush to find two pairs of scissors, and ribbon to tie to the scissors’ handles.

     When you arrive at your friend’s house, she has two baskets. You place one pair of scissors in each basket without anyone else looking. Your friend carefully invited an equal number of men and women. Once everyone is present, the women pick a pair of scissors out of one basket, and the men choose from the other. 

     Now it’s time to pair up! What young man has the scissors with the ribbon matching yours? Maybe it’s Frank, Elmer, Arthur or Herbert. Your host passes out pencils, large sheets of manilla paper and more ribbon. First, you and your partner have to make a tail. A donkey tail, of course, decorated with the ribbon. Then you work together to draw and cut out a large donkey, or perhaps you each draw one. Maybe yours looks the way a Vermont reporter described one in 1890:  “a donkey closely resembling a dromedary afflicted with cerebrospinal meningitis.” Accurate or not, your finished work is pinned to the wall. A committee is named to pick the best and worst donkey, with prizes awarded. 

     Now, the hilarity really begins. These donkey pictures are taken down and the host pins a large sheet with a life-sized donkey on it. One by one, guests are blindfolded, spun around three or four times, and then must attempt to pin the tail on the donkey. 

     What we consider a children’s birthday party game today started as an adult party game, and in 1887 it was the “sensation that’s sweeping the nation.” 

     “If you wish to be in the fashionable swim this winter, you must attend or get up a donkey party,” the Brooklyn Citizen advised in January 1888. 

     “A Chicago paper says the latest fad is the donkey party and it is fast outstripping in popularity the shadow parties, pillowslip riots and progressive euchre mobs,” the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported. In February that year, the Masonic Hall in the tiny town of  Waterville, Kansas, population about 577, attracted 200 to a donkey party. 

     “The entertainment was one that was calculated to provoke laughter and mirth,” a reporter noted. Afterwards, the fiddlers started up and dancing began. Poor Frank Stevenson was in for a little ribbing. In the “local happenings" column, it was said that “Frank Stevenson can’t tell a donkey’s extremity from a ladies’ shoulder. Ask the donkey party why." And, "When O.D. Hail was asked to pin the artificial tail on a donkey he made straight for the back of Frank Stevenson’s head.”

     Of course there were prizes for the person who pinned their tail - “caudal appendage,” as newspaper reporters liked to call it, closest to where it belonged, and a booby prize to the worst pinning. At an 1888 Asbury Park, New Jersey party, the ladies’ winner received a china teapot and the booby prize was a toy frog. For the gentlemen, the prize was a Japanese plate and the booby prize was a wind-up monkey. In Indianapolis in March 1887, Miss Bessie Wilson gave ivory letter openers to the winners and vinaigrette in a horseshoe-shaped bottle as the booby prize. At Daisy Roberts’ February 1888 party in Indianapolis, she gave a china cup and saucer to the winner and a box in the shape of a donkey as booby prize. At a February party in 1894 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the winners received a gold souvenir spoon with “Donkey party 1894” engraved on the back.

     The game originated in Milwaukee in the winter of 1886 according to newspapers which were reporting this as early as December. Curiously, the ladies of the Episcopal Church in Owensboro, Kentucky advertised a donkey party in November 1886 which was completely unrelated. Admission was ten cents with three prizes to be given: who could best ride a donkey, who looked most like one (presumably with a costume - we hope) and who could bray the best.  

     

Fundraisers – and Disapproval

     Then as now, anything that provided entertainment and drew a crowd was used as a fundraiser. The donkey party soon hit that scene. In January 1888 in Orangeburg, South Carolina a donkey party and magic lantern show raised money for the Confederate Monument Fund. The ladies from the Grace Church Guild in Washington, Kansas were pleased to make $25 from their strawberry festival and donkey party in June 1889 (about $920 today). In November 1889, a “Donkey and Pound Party” brought in a lot of donations for the needy in Colby, Kansas. (The pound part was that guests brought a “pound of this, a pound of that” – perhaps flour or dried beans – for the needy.)

     The spectacle of donkey parties as church fundraisers brought out the wrath of some. Rev. James Moore of Richmond, Virginia preached a sermon on what he considered improper church fundraisers. He didn’t believe in any - the oyster supper, the strawberry festival, the dime social, the donkey party, etc., because he believed that men needed to simply give generously to the church. Fundraisers would be unnecessary if men did their part. He conjured an image that was probably unintentionally funny: “Think of Paul, Timothy and Lydia engaging in a donkey party! Think of these servants of God exercising their mental powers in pinning on a donkey’s tail in order that a few dimes might be earned for the cause of Christ!”

     W.L.A. Stranburg, a letter-writer to The Baptist, a newspaper published in Jackson, Mississippi, also decried church fundraising, singling out as examples church fairs, oyster suppers, old maid conventions [a play produced by “home talent”] and donkey parties. He called them all, “worldly and a stench in Jehovah's nostrils.” 

     “God hasten the day when Baptist churches and pastors will do away with their cooking clubs, oyster suppers, old maids’ conventions, donkey parties and all other worldly entertainments,” he wrote, “Return to the Lord, confess their sins…” 

     Paul did not say one word about donkey parties and other fundraisers, Mr. Stranburg pointed out. Nor did Jesus.

Variations 

      Regardless of the opinions of the few, donkey parties persisted, both as church fundraisers, inexpensive entertainment at summer resorts, and of course in many private home parties. If simply hosting an adult donkey party wasn’t enough, a syndicated story appeared in newspapers across the country in 1895. The headline in the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser was “Gay Masquerading - Vegetables Are Popular For Donkey Parties.”  The suggestion: a costume donkey party, with the guests dressed as foods favored by “his ass-ship.” One could wear an orange skirt and green top and arrive as a carrot, for example. Be sure to wear long gloves of deep green suede, and a green “fillet” and tufted side bow in your hair. Being dressed as a flower was acceptable, too, since donkeys like to eat flowers. It is questionable how many socialites took the writer up on this idea, however. 

     Perhaps the game was even more popular as it began to be commercially produced. No more cutting out a black felt donkey silhouette and painstakingly basting it to a sheet. Or cutting out 20 or more wool tails. Now one could simply buy a ready-made game. 

     As early as 1890, variations were suggested in the newspapers. With the casual racism of the time, a Chinaman was suggested, using his long queue as the object to be pinned on. Or what about “Helen’s Naughty Baby?” Players tried to be the ones to get the bottle closest to the baby’s mouth. There was the game “Dressing the New Woman,” the “New Woman” being much-discussed nationally at the time. She was a suffragette who tended to advocate for dress reform, rode bicycles, and supported herself. These games could be purchased by mail order or in person from places like Hintz’s Bookstore in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1900 for 25 cents a piece. In 1905 the Kay-W-Kay York Bargain House advertised the “Buster Brown and Necktie” game (pin the necktie on Buster) and the Cinderella game (pin her slipper to her foot).  

Becoming Child’s Play

     There was a gradual shift from the donkey party being an adult activity to a children’s game. As early as July 1888, the Asbury Park editor said the donkey party seemed better suited for children, but it persisted as an adult activity.  

      After the turn of the century, it was more common to see donkey parties described as a children’s activity. Typical local news mentions were like one in August 1899 when Miss Lily McCall entertained her “little friends with a donkey party and delightful hayride” in New Orleans. Master William Ball Turner entertained a large number of his little friends in Pointe-a-la-Hache, Louisiana in 1901. Forty “young folks” tried their luck at pinning the tail, Miss Letitia Petrie coming the closest.

     But the adult participation lingered. In 1903 Augustus Kreidler celebrated his daughter’s eighteenth birthday by having 35 of her friends over for a donkey party in their Harrisburg, Pennsylvania home. Other teenage parties were not unusual. Social columns continued to report adult events such as a 1903 Cherryvale, Kansas gathering:  “Mrs. L. Bagot pleasantly entertained a party of lady friends at her home on Third Street Friday afternoon at a “Donkey Party,” in honor of Mrs. T. Dale of St. Louis.”

     There was a bizarre case at Daniel Shugg’s bar in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1909 when Ernest Crown came in for an advertised donkey party. Shuggs declared the competition off when no one else entered to play. This enraged Crown, who grabbed a bottle and smashed it over the bar owner’s head. An off-duty police officer in the bar shot Crown dead. 

     At a company picnic for the Illinois Traction System shops, stores, building and bridge departments in Springfield, Illinois in 1915, a single ladies “pin the tail on the donkey contest” was planned. A separate married ladies’ event was on the schedule, too. 

     Today, what we call “Pin the tail on the donkey” is so entrenched as a child’s game that the thought of it being played at adult parties is amusing. 

Sources:

     “About Town,” The Owensboro Messenger (Owensboro, Kentucky), 23 Nov 1886, p. 4.

     “Donkey Parties,” Neenah Daily Times (Neenah, Wisconsin), 14 Dec 1886, p. 1.

     “New Western Parlor Game,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 Dec 1886, p. 3. 

     “Personal and Society,” The Indianapolis Journal, 12 Feb 1888, p. 5.

     “Personal and Society,” The Indianapolis Journal, 29 March 1887, p. 7. 

     “Donkey Parties,” The Daily Republican (Monogahela, Pennsylvania), 11 Jan 1888, p. 3.

     “The Donkey Party,” Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, South Carolina), 11 Jan 1888, p. 8.

     Masonic Lodge Party: Waterville Telegraph (Waterville, Kansas), 3 Feb 1888, p. 3.

     “Two Donkey Parties,” Asbury Park Press, 20 July 1888, p. 1.

     “Retailing the Tailless Donkey,” Asbury Park Press, 8 Aug 1888, p. 1.

     ‘Religious Intelligence,” Washington Weekly Post (Washington, Kansas), 6 June 1889, p. 1. 

     “Hit the Wrong Donkey,” Rutland Daily Herald (Rutland, Vermont), 23 June 1890, p. 3. 

     Chinese Party: Philadelphia Enquirer, 30 July 1890. p. 4. 

     Minister on Fundraising: The Semi-Weekly Messenger (Wilmington, North Carolina), 7 June 1894, p. 2. 

     “Gay Masquerading - Vegetables Are Popular For Donkey Parties,”  Montgomery Advertiser, 13 Jan 1895, p. 1.

     Stranburg, W.L.A., “Some Old Paths Forsaken,” The Baptist (Jackson, Mississippi), 31 Jan 1901, p. 6. 

     “A Donkey Party,” Cherryvale Republican (Cherryvale, Kansas), Aug 1903, p. 4. 

     “Killed in Saloon Row. Donkey Party Didn't Come Off and Would-Be Participant Is Killed,” Pittston Gazette (Pittston, Pennsylvania), 6 Dec 1909, p. 2.

     “I.T.S. Picnic Is Big Event,” Herald and Review (Decatur, Illinois), 20 June 1915, p. 13.

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023