Mose the Fireman

• Mose was a New York Firefighter in the 1800s

 • most likely based on Bowery Boy leader Mose Humphrey

- printer, brawler, and firefighter

• "the toughest man in the nation's toughest city"

• Mose Appearance

- Irish : red hair

- eight-twelve feet tall, broad shouldered

- hands the size of virginia hams

- super long arms, could scratch his knee without bending over

- red shirt and a red helmet as big as a tent

-carried uprooted lamppost into battle

Mose is funny, heroic, and sentimental in his role as the guardian daemon of the Bowery

- knightly acts and honest virtue

Stories

• enters a ladies bowling parlor in female disguise, he promptly kisses a fair bowler and blows their cover.

• prospecting for gold in California, he spars with a bear and parlays hopelessly with the Indians

• in London he marvels at the mummies in the British museum but considers "They ain't no good to nuthin,"  dons the gloves of the Lord Brougham, and, presented at court, hopes that the Queen's children are "pretty bright and sassy."

• saves babies from burning building

• saves a family from a fourth story building by putting the ladder on barrels and climbing up

Mose lost popularity with the era of steam fire-engines

- killed off Mose in plays, but he doesn't really stay dead.

-when his girl turned him down fled to the South Seas where he married and island princess and became the king of the Sandwich Islands and raised forty half breed children

But even today when a bum picks up a cigarette stub he says "Big Mose must of dropped it." so the legend is still alive.