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A history of tipping

Published November 20, 2006 at midnight

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Early 1700s

• Brass urns inscribed "To Insure Promptitude" appear in British pubs and coffee houses, and patrons leave money in them. Most word authorities, however, dispute that this is the source of the word tip.

• Visitors to private estates in England are expected to give money (called vails) to servants for service beyond their duties.

1760s

• Vails become so onerous that noblemen meeting in 1760 in Edinburgh agree to abolish them. Servants riot after a similar effort in London in 1764.

1795

• Tipping has spread to Europe and become common in hotels as well as eateries.

1865

• At the end of the Civil War, Americans begin traveling regularly to Europe and bring tipping back to the United States.

1895

• The average tip in a European restaurant is 5 percent; in an American restaurant, it's 10 percent.

1896

• An article in Gunton's Magazine calls tipping offensive and contrary to the American spirit of working for wages rather than fawning for favors.

1900

• Many restaurants operate checkrooms through contractors whose income comes from their employees' tips. Checkroom uniforms are made without pockets.

• Hotel workers have developed a practice of marking non-tippers' bags with chalk. At the next hotel, their suitcases are often dropped or abused "by mistake."

1908

• Hotel porters in first-class hotels in New York strike to protest that they must give the head porter all their tips. Most affected hotels start allowing them to keep their tips.

1909

• Washington becomes the first state to outlaw tipping, making it a misdemeanor for tippers and tippees. Mississippi, Arkansas, Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia follow suit. Tipping persists, however, and it becomes apparent that the laws are useless. They're all repealed by 1926.

1910

• More than 10 percent of American workers are in tip-taking occupations.

1918

• A hundred waiters are arrested in Chicago for deliberately contaminating the food of those who want to abolish tipping.

Source: "The History of Tipping from 16th Century England to the United States in the 1910s," by Ofer H. Azar, Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2003