Fraternity History & More

I’m sometimes asked where I come up with topics for this blog. Frankly, I think the topics find me. In researching my December 7 post, I came upon a small article in the December 1941 KLEOS of Alpha Phi Delta entitled “Beware of College Widows.”

The article was about a New York City pawnshop, United Pledge Service, located at 860 Eighth Avenue, and one of its owners. The article noted that fraternity men and women from all parts of the country wrote to the shop in the hopes of locating lost or strayed badges. The June 27, 1925, New York Times had “United Pledge Society, pawnbroker,” in its list of new incorporations. The owners were J. H. Gorta and two others. Gorta is the person identified in the KLEOS article. It was stated that he “made a hobby of fraternity pins for the past thirty years (from about 1911, according to my calculations). The shop is the headquarters for the pawned fraternity pins. It is asserted that not one out of ten pins found in hock shops were put there by the original owner.” The “College Widow” of the article was a young woman liked the one “who entered Mr. Gorta’s shop to pawn her collection of college fraternity pins. Her ‘haul’ included fifteen plus one she removed from her breast to make sixteen in all.”

Another article in the Theta Upsilon Omega OMEGAN from May 1933, told of a Sigma Phi, H. W. Hawley, who in addition to his job in the research department of the Cunard Line, had hobby of trying to return fraternity pins to their respective owners. In the 18 years he had been pursing it, about 50 pins and owners were reunited. He had two shops “which seem, somehow, to be headquarters for fraternity pins: J. B. Koplik & Company on Park Row, and the United Pledge Society, 843 Eighth Avenue.” After he wrote the owners, he said that replies fell into three categories, “‘Hurrah, send it to me; here’s the money,’ ‘Don’t bother me; I have too many troubles already,’ and ‘I think you’re some kind of a crook and will tell the police if you pester me.’ The first letter comes in more frequently if the national secretary, who naturally knows Mr. Hawley, has written and the owner knows all is well. In behalf of the skeptical frat brothers it may be said that mostly they have lost their pins through theft and are therefore suspicious.”

A 1937 article in the Star and Lamp of Pi Kappa Phi, reprinted from Fortune magazine, offered more insight on J. B. Koplik & Company, “Until Daniel M. and Jerome S. Koplik took a hand in the family pawn shop about 18 years ago, most pawned fraternity pins were broken up and sold as old gold and second-hand gems. But Daniel and Jerome Koplik went to college, became members of Phi Epsilon Pi, and were quick to realize that there would be more money selling fraternity pins whole instead of in bits.” According to the article, the company started by their grandfather in the 1860s was the largest second-and dealer of fraternity pins. The business sold as many as 700 a year an average price of $12, about half of the cost of a new pin.

I also found a December 29, 1910 letter to the editor of the New York Times about an article which appeared on the front page of the Times. It was written by Clinton G. Abbott, a Columbia grad, who was a member of Phi Beta Kappa (my thanks to a blog reader for providing this info).  He wrote, “Is not the insinuation of an article on the front page of to-day’s TIMES, that members of leading college fraternities have pawned their pins because some have been seen in a Bowery pawnshop window rather unjust? The history of these pins is far more likely to show that they were accidentally lost by their owners and brought to the pawnshop by the finder who saw there the only opportunity of converting his discovery into ready cash. It would, I am sure, be the first instinct of any member of the fraternities mentioned to redeem immediately any badge of his society displayed in a pawnshop; and it is equally safe to assert that could the rightful owner, whose name is inscribed on the back, be again placed in possession of his property, the intrinsic value thereof would be as nothing compared with the satisfaction of preserving an emblem whose associations to him are priceless.”

What perplexed me the most in my afternoon of googling was finding a series of reprints of an article about the selling of fraternity pins in a New York pawn shop. The article appeared in many newspapers and fraternity magazines of the 1890s including the Shield of  Theta Delta Chi, the Scroll of  Phi Delta Theta and the Kappa Alpha Journal. No two of the articles I located were the same, although it was evident that they were all from a common source. Finally, I headed to the Library of Congress site, where I was able to locate the original article from the New York Sun.  The doubter in me thinks it might be a work of fiction, disguised as news.  I wish it named the pawn shop and the owner. It is from page 6 of the March 4, 1894 New York Sun. It had three headlines: “An Odd Bowery Expert, Wise in the matter of college fraternity pins and badges, They make a feature in his pawnbrokers sale shop,” and “He finds them the most fascinating incident of his business.” Even though it is quite long (no doubt the unidentified author’s payment was by the column inch), the entire article as it appeared in the Sun is reprinted below:

On the Bowery, not far from Broome street is a pawnbroker’s sale shop, the proprietor of which makes a specialty of dealing in college fraternity pins and badges. You may examine every other pawn shop and sale store on the Bowery and find not more than five or six such emblems in all of them, but in this shop, occupying a conspicuous position in the show window, there is always a velvet-covered tray on which a dozen or more pins of different secret societies are displayed. The place is getting to be known among college men, and people who have lost fraternity badges go there as the first step to finding them.

Every few weeks the proprietor of the place goes on a tour of the pawn shops looking for badges, and in his long experience he has picked up a fund of information about college fraternities that would put the average graduate to the blush. There is not much money in the particular branch, he says, but he has become interested in it and made it a sort of study. Not only does he know the emblems of every fraternity in this part of the country, but he is a perfect encyclopedia of information regarding their relative size, importance, and the peculiar characteristics of each society, and of the colleges in which each has its chapters. One would be certain that he himself is a college man bit for certain peculiarities of speech that proclaim the east sider and his positive assertion that he has never been inside the doors of a college, and has never even seen any but the local colleges from the outside.

A reporter in search of a lost badge which he thought might have found its way, as many lost articles do, into a Bowery pawn shop, went into this sale store a few days ago to look over the stock of fraternity pins. He didn’t find his badge, but he found many others. There was a handsome jeweled Chi Psi pin, and next to it a large Alpha Tau Omega badge. Beneath was a small-sized Psi Upsilon pin, touching elbows with its rival, also diamond-shaped, a Delta Kappa Epsilon. Zeta Psi, Chi Phi and Phi Beta Gamma were represented. The most peculiar badge in the window was a large plain gold one, shaped much like a shield and inscribed with three characters that looked like the Cypriote inscriptions. The proprietor had some interesting things to tell about some of his pins.

“There ain’t many things in this line that’s fun,” said he. “A man wouldn’t go into it for his health. But this secret society pin business is mighty interesting. Of course, you understand it’s only a side lay – not my regular trade. How did I get into it? Why, the funny letters on the pins used to catch me when I was on the lookout for stuff at the hock shops, and I began pickin ‘em up. Then I got interested more by an old gent from the University Club that was up on that line and used to tell me things about the badges and their different organizations. He came into my shop one day to look at a badge. That’s how I got to know him. He used to send me books and magazine articles on fraternities till I got to know as much about it as he did, and now I guess they ain’t many college societies in this part of the country that I don’t know enough about to surprise the members if I wanted to tell it.

 “They ain’t a college fraternity in the East but what I’ve handled one or more of its pins. I’m keepin tab on the hock shops all the while, and wherever I find a badge I nail it. Usually I get ‘em cheap, for they ain’t any demand for ‘em to speak of. Occasionally a man brings in a pin to me, or I see one on a bum’s coat and buy it, but it’s mostly the pawn shops.

“How do I s’pose they get there? Well, most of ‘em are lost, I think. I know enough about ‘em to know that the last thing a college man’ll hoc is his society pin. When they do hock ‘em, though, it’s down here, and not up town, where they think other college fellows may go in and see ‘em. They get mighty little on ‘em, for the hock-shopmen are dead leary of things they don’t understand. Of course, the pin itself has a good deal to do with it. If it’s heavily jeweled a man may get half its value on it. Then pins that are a marked design hock well, because they sell well. The T pin of the Delta Psis, and the star and crescent of the Alpha Delta, and the crosses like the Alpha Tau Omega or Delta Phi will find a market easier than the plain monogram pins or the diamond-shaped.

“By the way, there’s an Alpha Delta pin that I’ve been trying to nail down for three months. A Broadway cable car man had got it. Says he found it in the gutter. But he won’t sell. He’s stuck on it and wears it for a scarfpin. Oh,  you find ‘em in queer places. I bought a Theta Delta Chi shield off a newsboy on Grand street, and a week after a Theta Delta spotted it in my window, and gave me twenty times what I paid for it. That’s what you might call quick returns and big profits, hey? Yes; but it don’t happen often. Mostly the badges stay in my window for months and months, for, you see, the Bowery ain’t as popular with the college people as Fifth avenue and Broadway – and Sixth avenue, too, for that matter.

“Now, here’s a pin,” continued this erudite student of fraternities, taking a small, plain Psi Upsilon pin from the case, “that I’ve had here for eighteen months, and not an offer for it. I got it in a queer way. I was in a hock shop down by Canal street chewin’ the rag over a couple of badges that the proprietor had when in came a young woman about 26 or 28 maybe, and pretty, too, only she looked kind of half starved. She unpinned the pin for her dress, and asked:

“’How much will you loan me on this?’

“Her voice trembled, but she was game, and kept a steady face. The man offered her one dollar and she turned to go out when I said I’d give her $3 for it.

“’I don’t want to sell it,’ she said. ‘I want to get it back some time.’

“’Well, I’ll keep it for six months for you,’ I told her, and gave her my business card. She took the money, and she kissed the pin before she handed it to me. I never saw her again. There’s nothing on the pin but her name.”

The speaker handed the pin to the reporter, who looked on the back and saw engraved the one word, “Lizzie.” He returned the pin to its place, and it is probably there now if any Psi U wants to go the the Bowery hunting for it.  The proprietor then took out the badge with the peculiar inscriptions and held it up. On the back were the initials “P.R.V.” and the date “A.D. 1800.” This is earlier than any recognized college fraternity was organized. He knitted his brows and looked at it curiously.

 “There’s one that pleases me,” said he. “I’ve heard of a very secret society in some of the Southern colleges. No one even knows the name of it, and the members wear their pins in sight only one day of the year. They say it’s very old, and everything about it is on the dead q t. Whether it’s going now I don’t know. I’ve heard it died out, and then again I heard there was a chapter at Princeton, and another in a Virginia college. Some time, when I get richer, I’ll go down to the University of Virginia and see if I can’t get a line on it. Most likely I’ll get my face broke for pokin’ my nose into other people’s business. By the way, that pin ain’t there to sell as much as it is for a bait. I want somebody to come after it, and then maybe I can find out things. Only one fellow ever came for it yet in the two years I’ve had it. He was a mug. He came in and poked his face ‘round for a while. Then he says:

“’What d’ y’ want fer th’ pin with th’ dinky dinks on it?’ “’Twenty five dollars,’ I said to phase him, and it did the trick.

“’Hully gee!’ he said, ‘His nibbs wouldn’t stund that, I don’t t’ink.

“’Who’re you getting’ it for?’ I asked him; but he said it was none of my dam business and did a sneak. I followed him around the corner and saw him talkin’ to a military-lookin’ old man. When they spotted me they slid. That’s the last offer I had for it. One of these days I’ll get there though.

“’Here’s a couple of pins I’m keepin’,” he continued, opening a drawer and taking out a Delta Upsilon badge and a Chi Psi badge. “That means the lowest step in the life of two pretty smart men. One of ‘em was a Hamilton college man, and the other, I think, went to Williams. They got up against the horses and pawned everything to get the stuff to bet. These badges were the last thing they pawned, and with that they hit a winner. That gave ‘em enough for a start, and they put up a faro bank in the Bowery, not far from here, and were piling up the rocks, when they got a tip and flew the coop just in time to escape a police raid. I got hold of these badges and I’m freezin’ to them as an investment. One day those fellows will make their pile, and then they’ll come back and pay anything I ask ‘em for the pins.”

“Have you got any more curiosities in the line besides the southern badge?” inquire the reporter.

“I did have one that I wouldn’t have taken a hundred for, but I lost it. I could never understand what became of it, but I suspected two nice-lookin’ young chaps, who came in here one day to look at badges, of liftin’ it, for I missed it a little after they went. Anyway, it was a corker. It was a combined Psi U and Alpha Delt pin, made very small, and set with emeralds and rubies.

“The Alpha Delta star and crescent cut right into the Psi U diamond, the star setting in the diamond. It was very small and a beautiful piece of work. My theory was that probably two college boys, Psi U and an Alpha Delta, got stuck on the same girl, and she would wear the pin of either of ‘em, not wantin’ to show favor, so they had a combination pin made.

“That’s the only theory I can think of. Anyway, I wouldn’t have lost it for a good deal, and I’ll bet it is the only combination fraternity pin ever made.

In the January 1896 issue of the Alpha Tau Omega Palm, the editor responded to the Sun article.  “Nearly all of our exchanges have quoted and commented on an article which appeared in the New York Sun some time ago in regard to college fraternity badges being found in pawn shops. The editor of the Theta Delta Chi Shield determined to investigate, and the Bowery, in the vicinity of Broome street was visited. A dozen shops were visited, and no badges were found in any of them. Finally, a visit was paid to Rosenthal’s Curiosity Shop, at No. 254 Broadway, and there all kinds of athletic badges, Masonic pins, and badges of nearly all secular organizations were found; and there were also a Delta Kappa Epsilon and a Phi Gamma Delta pin, the former from the New York chapter bearing owner’s name and class, and the latter bearing no inscription. The investigator was gratified at finding so few badges and remarks, ‘Straws show which way the wind blows, therefore, we are comforted with the thought that it is rare for a fraternity man to reach so degraded a position as would make it necessary to pawn his college badge.’ We believe this is true, and that badges which are found in pawnshops have usually either been stolen or lost.”

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.