An de ladies in a row,
All for to tell you whar I'm from,
I'se going for to go!
For I wheel about an turn about, an do just so,
An ebery time I turn about, I jump Jim Crow.
In 1836, Mr. T. D. Rice, who had previously appeared at the Surrey Theatre, in "Bone Squash Diablo," made his first appearance at the Adelphi, in a farcical Burletta, called "A Flight to America; or, Twelve Hours in New York". The sketch, written for him by Mr. Leman Rede, introduced Rice as a nigger, Yates as a Frenchman, and Mrs. Stirling as Sally Snow—a coloured belle, Miss Daly, John Reeve, and Buckstone strengthened the cast. "Jump Jim Crow" caught the fancy of the town at once, and the familiar tune was soon to be heard everywhere. Rice stayed through the whole season, playing an engagement of twenty one weeks, then considered something extraordinary. For a long period he performed at the Adelphi and the Pavilion Theatres the same evening, and it was calculated that in so doing he had travelled considerably more than a thousand miles, while being encored five times at each theatre for 126 nights, it was easy to set down the figure of 1,260 as representing the number of times he had sung "Jim Crow," during that period. Rice cleared by this engagement eleven hundred pounds. A street-ballad of the day informed the public that it could have:—
The Jim Crow rum, the Jim Crow gin,
The Jim Crow needle, and the Jim Crow pin;
The Jim Crow coat, the Jim Crow cigar;
The Jim Crow dad, and the Jim Crow ma';