The same couldn’t be said of the disingenuous peddlers in 1860s New York, who perceived the docking immigrants as easy marks. The New York Daily Herald mentioned a stand as part of a “ladies fair” in October 1839 in 1853, a woman operating a stand in Cincinnati reportedly confronted two men who had insulted her, tearing the coattails of one “rowdy” clean off in 1873, an unnamed student at Cornell University was said to be helping pay his way through college by managing a stand in his student hall. There are scant references made to lemonade stands in America throughout the 1800s. Though they sold far more than just booze-fueled lemonade, the label helped distinguish their refined spaces from the seedier wine merchants of the era. At upscale French cabarets selling fashionable, sweet drinks, proprietors took to calling themselves limonadiers, or lemonaders. In 17th century France, vendors dispensed lemon water from backpacks, allowing them to follow customers around their popularity may have been helped in part by the fact that the lemonade was often alcohol-infused. We know that people in 11th century Cairo wrote about a drink with lemon juice being sold in open markets. For many, they've been a downright dirty business.Ī refreshment stand is set up in Huntington Beach, California /īecause the act of peddling lemon-flavored water in the street is not inherently newsworthy, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly how, when, and where the practice first originated. And though contracting a paralyzing viral infection seems a heavy price to pay for patronizing one, as it turns out, these refreshment pop-ups have a long and sordid history.

Kids' lemonade stands have long been a symbol of adolescent capitalism. According to the Associated Press, the outbreak of the disease was no less than the “hottest trail of the deadly disease virus in the history of epidemiology.”

As a result, she had contracted polio, and so had four of her young friends. It turned out that the budding entrepreneur had failed to rinse the glasses she gave to her customers after they had been used. They asked questions about the chain of lemonade custody and her sanitary practices. Within weeks, the county’s health department was knocking on her door. The “little girl,” as newspaper accounts later described her, plied her friends and passing strangers with refreshing glasses of lemonade in a makeshift stand just outside of her home. One hot afternoon in July of 1941, a young woman-name and age unreported-opened up a lemonade stand in Western Springs, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

Lemonade stand names