Cop moves body to street he can spell

August 22, 2016 11:09 AM

Somebody gets killed in the street, but it's a street with a difficult name, in either Edinburgh or Glasgow. A policeman moves the body around the corner and is asked why, and he says, I can spell the name of this street for my report. Anyone have a reference for this?

Reason why: there's a story told about Quebec strongman Louis Cyr, who was a policeman for a time. A horse fell dead on Chaboillez Square, and he lifted it and carried it around the corner to Notre-Dame Street, and when asked why... well, you know the payoff line now.

I knew that tale, and read the Scottish one more recently and wondered if the same tale has been told in more places. But now I can't remember my source for the Scottish version. Anyone?

(It's possible that Stephen Fry told this anecdote on QI, but I think I read it somewhere.)

posted by zadcat to Grab Bag (17 answers total)

I doubt an actual source exists for this kind of thing - I've heard it as a joke in Greek, with a rural constable kicking a lost head into a ditch, because ditch is easier to spell on a report.
posted by Dr Dracator at 11:15 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a common joke (I've heard it as "I lost my ring!" "Right here?" "No, over there!" "Why are you looking here?" "Here's where the streetlamp is!")
posted by fingersandtoes at 11:18 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The same story is also told about Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans, as cited here.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 11:23 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Florence King wrote a similar anecdote in Wasp, Where Is Thy Sting?
posted by brujita at 11:39 AM on August 22, 2016

I first heard it from my Chicago-born father, in reference to a Polish street name in that city. I have no idea whether that street actually exists.
posted by Etrigan at 11:39 AM on August 22, 2016

I have heard the Scotland-based version before, just passed around as a joke: murder on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, body moved to Hope Street, policeman explains it's because "I can spell Hope Street."
posted by Catseye at 11:43 AM on August 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: What's nice about these is the story must pre-date standard street signs.
posted by zadcat at 11:59 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bill Bryson tells this joke in one of his UK travel books, I believe Notes from a Small Island.
posted by cpatterson at 12:07 PM on August 22, 2016

Is this real? Hard to tell, but there is an equivalent version with Eucalyptus Street
posted by z11s at 12:27 PM on August 22, 2016

There's also the following "generic" version, found in this book among other places:

A policeman is on the scene at a terrible accident—body parts everywhere. He is making his notes of where the pieces are and comes across a head.
He writes in his notebook: "Head on bullevard" and scratches out his spelling error.
"Head on bouelevard" Nope, doesn't look right —scratch scratch.
"Head on boolevard..." dang it! Scratch scratch.
He looks around and sees that no one is looking at him as he kicks the head.
"Head on curb."

posted by Johnny Assay at 12:44 PM on August 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

I heard this as a joke, with a man calling the police about a man passed out drunk on Rhododendron street. He calls the police and the dispatcher asks him to spell it. He tries a few times and then says hold on for a minute. Put's down the phone, comes back a few minutes later breathing hard, says "there's a drunk passed out on Oak street — O... A... K".
posted by blueberry at 1:28 PM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've heard a similar joke - a caller needs the police to come pick up a man who's been in an accident on Sycamore street. They ask him to spell it. He makes a few attempts and then says "Look, I'll take the guy over to Lee street and you can pick him up there."
posted by bunderful at 2:04 PM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

As a summer camp director in the US, I saw this performed as a skit multiple times by kids from all over the southern US. The version I've commonly seen was a car accident with multiple victims. One body in the ditch and one on the boulevard. After the normal attempts at spelling, it becomes two bodies in the ditch.
posted by Deflagro at 3:18 PM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've heard that tale told about Detroit, the body was dragged from (I think) Beaubien over to Cass. The telling I heard didn't involve a police officer; it was of someone who found a dead body and called it in to 911.

For what it's worth, the guy who told me this tale was born and raised in Detroit, but it was clear he was telling a joke, not relating something he actually thought had happened.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 4:39 PM on August 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

That sounds like something by Ian Rankin, one of the DI Rebus stories
posted by james33 at 4:52 AM on August 23, 2016

Here's a version about a dead horse on Kosciusko Street from 1912.
posted by interplanetjanet at 6:34 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

This Three Stooges short has the joke too. I'll bet it was a vaudeville joke.
posted by interplanetjanet at 1:16 PM on August 23, 2016