# What was "the wrong side of the tracks" before there were tracks?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 11, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572 "2008-06-11T14:47:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/1 "2008-06-11T14:47:03Z")
In other words, what was the shorthand expression to describe the less-affluent and/or morally questionable neighborhood or town from which undesirable or untrustworthy people originated, before the railroad came along and provided a handy turn of phrase? In fact, was there even a common, widely-recognized expression (wrong side of the river? out past the pigyards? New Jersey?) available to be supplanted?
Or (WAG alert) did “wrong side of the tracks” catch on because it happened to coincide with newly applicable social factors\* and thus the phrase came along just at the time when there was a need for it?
\*(the rapid industrial expansion of cities, and the rise of a working underclass, combined with greater mobility of same via the rails, resulting in a large work-chasing population that originated elsewhere and needed to be housed, typically near the tracks that brought them to town, but that made the locals nervous because the immigrants were basically strangers)
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/2 "2008-06-11T14:52:39Z")
“Downtown” and “Uptown” were also neighborhood designators.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/3 "2008-06-11T14:53:00Z")
Stews? Although that usually meant a neighborhood occupied chiefly by brothels.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/4 "2008-06-11T14:57:42Z")
Slums?
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### Author:  [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/5 "2008-06-11T15:11:51Z")
rabble
commoners
serfs
dregs
unwashed
???
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### Author:  [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/6 "2008-06-11T15:15:31Z")
I got an email a long time ago. I’ll get some details wrong but it said something like:
The Space Shuttle’s largest component (liquid oxygen tank?) had size restraints during engineering because they knew they’d have to transport it by train. Since trains go through tunnels etc., the component couldn’t be bigger than the tunnel.
The width of the tunnels was determined in part by the width of the tracks…how was that width determined? We copied what the English had done. How did the English pick the width? They were using the size of Roman roads. And the Romans built them according to the chariots that they drove. So it goes back to making roads big enough for horses to pass. The widest point of the horse—the ass. IIRC the punchline was that something about the space shuttle depending on a couple of horse’s asses to get off the ground.
IOW, if that email was accurate, tracks came from roads…which might have come from the tracks left by the wheels when there were no paved roads.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/7 "2008-06-11T15:49:05Z")
That’s an urban legend. Tracks for railroads were built in a multitude of widths before standardization and the need for interconnection forced them to converge. There’s no good evidence it’s the Roman width or that the Romans had a standard width that was ever equivalent to the railroads.
The use of “slums” does predate railroads, but not by much.
There probably wasn’t a single equivalent term earlier than that. Cities always had vast numbers of the poor, but they were less physically separated than they became after the Industrial Revolution. Buildings from ancient Rome to Revolutionary-era Paris, for example, were built on a similar principle. The bottom floor had shops and a large living area for the owner, who may also have had the second floor. Floors above them were divided into smaller and smaller rooms, with those on the top floor - the worst since you had to walk up several bad flights of stairs - being a warren of tiny cubicles. The super-rich might have had their own exclusive sections but most people lived and worked at their houses in socially- and economically-mixed areas.
Only after the Industrial Revolution do we see most western cities conforming to the modern distinction of slums, working class, middle class and upper class areas. So “the other side of the tracks” as a phrase only came into being when the concept was first widely needed. The tracks, BTW, were always at grade level in those days instead of being raised on bridges over roads as they are today. Crossing the tracks was always dangerous because of the irregularity of tracks and the lack of any signals.
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### Author:  [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/8 "2008-06-11T16:24:06Z")
Downriver or the Bottoms implies that you lived where the waste flowed.
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### Author:  [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/9 "2008-06-11T16:29:08Z")
“Ghetto” is an oldie, though it also implies an element of ethnic segregation, not simply poverty.
And wasn’t “down by the docks” considered an undesirable location?
And I’m sure every town had a neighborhood that was known by name to the locals as a signifier of poverty. My hometown had “Snuffyville.” 😃
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/10 "2008-06-11T16:40:53Z")
If you’re talking a really long time ago, “the Poor Quarter”.
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### Author:  [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2008, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/11 "2008-06-11T17:45:34Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
That’s an urban legend.
[/QUOTE]
I stand corrected…thanks for helping fight my ignorance. I should have thought to run it past snopes first. :smack:
> **[FACT CHECK: Are U.S. Railroad Gauges Based on Roman Chariots?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/)**
>
> Does the U.S. standard railroad gauge come directly from the width of Roman chariots?
They rate it true for trivial and unremarkable facts—but false overall.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/12 "2008-06-12T00:12:36Z")
When the classes are separated, the poorer people lived where the wastes went: downhill, downriver, or downwind.
Thus in Rome, the rich family estates were at the top of the seven hills, the middle class & poor lived downhill from them.
In the Middle Ages, the poor tended to live down river from the richer people.
And later, especially after industry & home heating produced lots of chimneys, the rich lived upwind and the poor downwind. That continues even today: in London, prevailing winds are from the west, so the poorer people live in the East End, like the popular TV show EastEnders.
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### Author:  [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2008, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/13 "2008-06-12T09:36:49Z")
I read somewhere a longtime ago that the origin of The Wrong Side of the Tracks came from U.S. railroad towns used for shipping cattle,the permament residents wanted the business and cowboys after a long hard cattle drive wanted to unwind so the compromise was that saloons,brothels etc.were allowed to open up but only on one side of the railroad whereas the respectable people and businesses lived and worked on the other.
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### Author:  [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2008, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/14 "2008-06-12T12:00:26Z")
In Bristol and AFAIK London, there tends to be some contempt for those ‘South of the River’ - but this may just be a fairly arbitrary suspicion of ‘the other’…
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2008, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/15 "2008-06-12T12:40:46Z")
[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
I stand corrected…thanks for helping fight my ignorance. I should have thought to run it past snopes first. :smack:
> **[FACT CHECK: Are U.S. Railroad Gauges Based on Roman Chariots?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/)**
>
> Does the U.S. standard railroad gauge come directly from the width of Roman chariots?
They rate it true for trivial and unremarkable facts—but false overall.
[/QUOTE]
Your email is worse than that. Ref [Space Shuttle external tank - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank) the tank is 27-1/2 feet in diameter and is carried by barge. That’s why it’s manufactured in Michoud LA on the Gulf coast.
I think it’s safe to say there are few if any railroad tunnels or road overpasses in teh US which would pass a 28 foot tall item sitting on a flat car.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2008, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-before-there-were-tracks/452572/16 "2008-06-12T15:50:58Z")
Somebody posted this same internet glurge on the [Wordwizrd forums in April](http://www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=20500). The response? A link to Cecil’s [2/18/2000 column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000218.html). And round it goes.
As for the origin of “wrong side of the tracks”, here’s a view from [Take Our Word For It](http://www.takeourword.com/TOW134/page2.html):
> [@](#):
>
> Well, etymologists like Christine Ammer don’t think the phrase has anything to do with soot. There would have been plenty of soot from everyone’s fireplaces, because most people did not have any kind of heating other than fireplaces, and for a long time that is also where cooking was done. Ms. Ammer suggests that the phrase is simply the same as “the wrong side of town” or “the wrong side of the street”. Why, there’s even a phrase born on the wrong side of the blanket. When railroads were built and became the primary mode of long-distance transportation, the tracks became an important fixture through town, literally dividing the town’s more prosperous half from its poor half, or perhaps only figuratively doing so. However, another etymologist, Adrian Room, recently revised Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and he does believe that soot, smoke, and prevailing winds did result in poor or industrial areas being located on the downwind side of the tracks, which then gave rise to the phrase. Whatever the precise notion behind the wrong side of the tracks, it arose in the U.S., probably in the 19th century, though the OED’s first record of it is from 1929.
The brothel story sounds like a classic case of folk etymology, taking something as prosaic as soot and substituting a ribald alternative.
We do need to find an earlier citing, though. 1929 would be an oddly late period for the phrase to first arise.