Mischief Night is a night of pranks that survives mainly in northern England. Treacle on door handles and thrown eggs mark it, according to the BBC and the Guardian.
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The BBC calls it a centuries-old tradition that is barely known elsewhere in the UK. It falls around Halloween and Bonfire Night, depending on where you live.
When did it start?
The exact origins are unknown, says the BBC. Folklorists link it to the 1700s, when Britain had a custom of Lawless Hours or Days. Simon Costin, director of the Museum of British Folklore, says tricks in those times ranged from throwing cabbage stalks to swapping shopkeepers’ signs and gates.
The Guardian reports records back to 1790. That year, fellows of St John’s College, Oxford, studied a school play that praised children’s tricks on Mischief Night. The BBC puts the first record of the night itself in the 1830s, on 30 April.
Karen Allen, who researched the first PhD on the subject, links the date to May Eve revels. In her account, these moved to the towns during the industrial revolution, and children then chose the night before the gunpowder plot anniversary.
Which night is it?
Opinion divides. Some people insist on 4 November, while others say it is always the night before Halloween. Professor Stephen Sayers of Leeds Metropolitan University links the gap to the calendar switch of 1752, which removed 11 days. Some places kept the old dates for Halloween.
Why the north?
The BBC says the night appears to have died out everywhere in the UK except northern England since the 1950s, and the reason is unclear. It also says the custom reached the US and returned as trick or treat.
Allen says trick or treat took over many Mischief Night gambits, such as swapping gates and smearing treacle on door handles. The Guardian says the remaining pranksters go out in Yorkshire cities and Nottingham.
Harmless fun or a police matter?
The Guardian reports that people have long said the tradition is on its last legs. A dialect lexicon of 1865 claimed that the practice was over.
Police in northern England take it seriously. Chief Inspector Mark Khan of North Yorkshire Police says arrests rise in the 10 days around it. Some forces add patrols. Supermarkets ban the sale of flour and eggs to under-16s. Police also act on damage or public order offences, whatever the popular belief that Mischief Night grants immunity.
Sayers argues that it gives people a socially controlled way to push against authority.
What the US calls it
Smithsonian Magazine says the night before Halloween has other names in the US. Detroit calls it Devil’s Night, Cincinnati calls it Cabbage Night and urban New Jersey calls it Mischief Night. Time magazine, the Smithsonian says, suggests it may have appeared in the US in the 1930s and 1940s.
In the 1980s, the Smithsonian adds, it turned much more violent in Detroit and Camden, where arsonists lit hundreds of fires, according to the New York Times.
