“Hot corn!” (street cry)

   
Grokipedia
Hot Corn
Hot corn was a staple street food in mid-19th-century New York City, consisting of roasted ears of sweet corn sold hot by itinerant vendors, frequently impoverished children supporting their families amid urban squalor. These “hot corn girls” and boys traversed bustling thoroughfares, their distinctive cries of “Hot corn! Come buy my hot corn!” echoing through the city’s soundscape and symbolizing the era’s socioeconomic hardships.
 
The phenomenon surged in cultural prominence following the 1853 serialization in the New York Tribune of “Hot Corn,” a temperance-infused tale centered on Little Katy, a child vendor victimized by parental alcoholism and poverty, which resonated amid contemporaneous reform movements like abolitionism and women’s rights. This narrative, expanded by author Solon Robinson into the 1853 book Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated, featured vignettes of street life, including stories of rag-pickers and destitute youth, blending sentimentality with moral exhortations against vice. The craze briefly captivated public imagination, spawning minstrel songs such as “Katy’s Cry: Come and Buy my Hot Corn” by I. B. Woodbury and theatrical melodramas that dramatized vendor hardships, though it waned within about 18 months as novelty faded.
 
Museum of the City of New York
The Hot Corn Seller
Creator
Nicolino Calyo (1799-1884)
Accession number
55.6.2 
Unique identifier
MNY8270 
Description
This character is one from a series by Nicolino Calyo entitled “Street Cries of New York” of watercolor paintings depicting street vendors of New York. 
Dated
1840-1844 
Object Type
watercolor (painting)
   
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Sarah Lohman
October 5, 2020
The Hot Corn Girls were 19th century street vendors in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other cities. They sold cooked sweet corn in season (August and September). They were often free black women and were particularly known for their evocative calls. Diarist George Templeton Strong, writing in NYC in 1850, said that he “heard the cry rising at every corner” and was “lulled to sleep by its mournful cadence in the distance.”
Their call were so famous, they were captured in music. Here’s Come Buy Hot Corn, from a play from the 1850s, based on a popular collection of short stories by the same name. Performed by Emily of MaestroTales
hotcorn #fivepoints #streetfood #foodhistory