23 Skidoo

[Zyada]

The question about 23 Skidoo in the “Phrases I don’t understand” thread inspired me to invoke a little known byproduct of Google’s book search. If you do a search and specify “full text only” what you get are books that are almost all written in the early 1900s or earlier.

So I did this with 23 Skidoo, and found some interesting things.

The 1906 catalog of Copyright entries lists two companies publishing “the rules for 23 skidoo”

A volume of musical compositions from the copyright office in 1907 list several songs with skidoo in the title, including:
Skidoo, skidoo, 23 for you
Twenty-three fo’ yo’, skidoo
Skidoo, Cupid
She handed him a lemon; and said 23 skidoo
That last title led me to this story:

Brother Joe Cummings is back from a fishing trip and he told the boys a fish story. He said that while fishing one day in Irondale he got two bites at the same time; of course he could only tend to one bite, so he pulls up and said, “Now I’ve got you, you son of a-gun,” and what do you think—he pulled up a mermaid. No wonder it was a heavyweight. When he saw the mermaid in the water he thought that it was the City of Travers. The mermaid asked him where he come from, and he said Irondale. He told her to come out and she said, “I can’t.” He said, “Why, I am in deep love and I can come out.” She wanted to hand him a lemon, but he refused to take it, so she said 23 and Irondale for you, skidoo. He wanted to express himself but couldn’t, so had to go by B & O. freight

That was from Coopers international journal, Volume 17, published in 1907.
Notes from a 1908 reunion of a Wisconsin military unit had the following :
“on page 23 (Skidoo)”

I also found an ad from 1906 using the 23 Skidoo as a joke.
Then I checked the Library of Congress. They have a 1902 or 1903 animation from Thomas Edison called Skidoo-23

Summary: An early example of animation in which the white letters and numbers “SKIDOO 23” appear on a black background and dance off the screen. No titles