The Earliest Jokers and My Questions about them

Investigating One of the Great Inventions of the 1800s: The Joker    revised Aug 9, 2024

I often wonder about the creation of the playing card joker. I haven't yet seen an article that fully satisfies my curiosity about this great invention.  

The joker is - IMHO - one of the great inventions of the late 1800s. So I thought I'd try to figure you exactly how the joker began.  

UPDATE - I received useful feedback on this and have updated this article. If you have some information to contribute, I can be reached as john at edelson.info.  Several people pointed me towards a fantastic article which answers many questions but raises new ones:  The History of the Joker Card by Phil Neil's Article.  (published Feb 2019, updated in 2022) Phil believes several  trends interacted leading to the joker and that the accepted story about the creation of the joker  is wrong in important ways. I hope to continue to research and write about this topic. 

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Here's what we know and we mostly agree on:

1.    The joker emerged in the United States in the 1860s.
2.    The joker was initially a Best Bower card for the game of Euchre. 
3.    The joker card is unique in that it lacks an industry-wide standard appearance. While many images and characters appear on the joker card, the joker card concept merged with the idea of a court fool or harlequin character.  The joker card has always been a canvas for branding and creativity for card designers.

Early Jokers (revised Aug 2024)

Here's some questions that I'm asking.  

1.    What was the first deck with a joker? How did it come to be? Does it count as a joker if the word ‘Joker’ is not used?

2.    Can we see an evolution from Best Bower to Jester and to other early graphical themes? What were the other early themes?  By looking at the earliest jokers, I see four broad graphical themes:

        -    Chinese themed
        -    Court jester or harlequin themed

        -    "Other" which includes animals and geometric designs. 

        -    Best Bower themed

3.    Why did the early jokers so often start with Chinese imagery?  

What was the first deck with a joker?  

In 1863,  there is a Best Bower card, NY36, Hochman P54, Samuel Hart & Co. It was the first time that instead of shipping a blank card, a card was specifically named to be a sort of wild card, an imperial bower. This card is widely considered to be the first joker.

Reviewing Broadly the Early Jokers

I consider any deck published in the 1860s with a joker to be a candidate for being one of the first and I review all the jokers published up to1875.  This article includes information and graphics from the Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards by Tom and Judy Dawson. 

 There are four publishers with decks that are candidates (ie 1875 or earlier) for the earliest jokers. I review them in the order that they appear in Hochman.   

• Mauger, 
• Langely / American Card Company, 
• New York Consolidated Cards,
• Andrew Dougherty.

Victor E. Mauger (from Hochman Chapter 3. The Early Makers)

Victor E. Mauger ordered customized cards from Goodall for the US market starting as early as 1867.  The earliest joker shown is U19c Columbias. It is an early card to use the word joker: It has a geometric design rather than a person. It's wild that this early joker appears to be manufactured in London by Goodall. I wonder when the first joker was published in London and whether it was through Goodall who learned about it through manufacturing for Mauger. 

 Hochman also says: "In the early 1870s, he <Mauger> ordered a deck from Goodall that included a multicolor seated joker with the Goodall inscription on it" U19 c1873 P17. It was issued for the Centennial with the Heathen. The word joker appears on the card he is holding. This figure is George Washington Lafayette Fox, a a well known clown entertainer of that era.  Obviously, it’s not too far from a harlequin or jester figure. It's funny that some of the early jokers, specifically this one and the Dundreary joker used by Congress, featured actual people.

 Early use of term ‘Joker’! 1873

Also of note, there's U18c Continental Card Co P17 c1875. This card says: "Highest Trump, Takes Either Bower."  Notice it uses neither the term Best Bower or Joker.

Langley / The American Playing Card Company (and its acquisitions)

The L5 Eagle Card Co shows an 1867 jester character,  P24. This deck appears to be the first to have a card named joker.  This is important: Is the first card to appear which is labeled a joker? Should that be the definition of the first joker?  The card character is more a European court jester than anything else, and the card has a card-centric design with pips decorating each corner and the jester's clothing.  So I'm considering him in the jester / harlequin theme.

First card marked Joker! 1867

There are also the Heathen Chinese jokers, L4 Steamboats c1870 (and the more famous L7 but it's c1877). While they are seated much like the L5 jester joker, they are clearly Chinese themed both because of the graphics and the label: "Heathen Chinese".

There is L9 c1875 which has a joker design largely featuring the word joker. Is this the second joker without a character on it?

Here's a bizarre design swerve at the very beginning of jokers, there is L12 c1875 featuring what looks to me like a dog's head staring back at me from the mirror. This is the second use of an animal on a joker? Woof woof!

There's also L16 Royal Flush c1875 P27 which features a tiger (lion?) on a joker. This is also an early use of an animal on a joker.  Great cats are today not an endangered species as far as card jokers are concerned, check it out. 

The L41 Union Playing Card Company also has a c1875 joker card which uses the word joker and features a court jester figure. 

The New York Consolidated Card Company

NY16 JNO J Levy  has a Joker card cc1871 (Hochman said 1860).  It uses the word joker and features three "Heathen Chinee" sic playing cards. The 1860 date This turns out to be a mistake by Hochman. One of the reasons that we know this to be false is that this joker is based on a poem published in 1870, written by Bret Harte which was widely reprinted in newspapers around the country.  

Bret Harte's  poem was originally published in  1870 as "Plain Language from Truthful James" but a Boston newspaper changed the title to "The Heathen Chinee."  "Ah Sin" is the name of the Chinese character mentioned in the poem.

The very first animal to appear on a joker or Best Bower is NY16b American Manufacture P50 c1868. It's a Best Bower joker featuring a dragon.  I think it's curious that the first animal is a dragon which is associated with China. By the way, I have recently been interested in the early stylized dragon jokers, the earliest of which appears in 1876 as NY47a.  

In 1863,  there is a Best Bower card, NY36, Hochman P54, Samuel Hart & Co. This card lends credence to the theory that jokers evolved from the best bower concept.

The Earliest Best Bower Cards 

Note also the 1870 Samuel Hart NY39 Best Bower.

Here is the same best bower card a year later from Lawrence Cohen, NY13  P490 c1871.  

Andrew Dougherty

AD7 c1872 p70 might be the first introduction of the term: The Jolly Joker. In this case, it's a girl as a jack-in-the-box holding a jester. This is, btw, the only joker shown in this article which I currently hold in my collection.

In the same year, Andrew Dougherty published AD8 c1872, a best bower. Geometric design, no character.

Areas for discussion and further study

Most people agree (although not all) that the word euchre and juker influenced the naming of the card the joker. Is there any evidence to support this?  Are there any other theories? 

Were there any patents, registered trademarks, or registered copyrights from the 1860s or early 1870s related to the joker?  Given the fierce competition among the card publishers and their patenting indices and designs, it seems odd that there are no efforts to protect these innovations related to jokers with patents or other intellectual property filings.

Does the Carey collection have any information about the early jokers? ANSWER: I looked it up. Nothing in the published catalog.