E Deck numbered 23 which was informally called the "skidoo door" according to the testimony of the Chief Baker Charles John Joughin. Other explanations Cartoonist "TAD" (Thomas A. Dorgan) was credited in his 1929 obituary in The New York Times as being the "First to say 'Twenty-three, Skidoo.'" Baseball player Mike Donlin and comedian Tom Lewis may have created the expression as part of their vaudeville act. An article in the June 26, 1906 New York American credits the phrase to one Patsey Marlson, then a former jockey hauled into court on a misdemeanor charge. At his hearing, Marlson is asked by the judge how the expression came about. He explains that when he was a jockey, he worked at a track which only had room for 22 horses to start in a line. If a 23rd horse was added, the long shot would be lined up behind the 22 horses on the front line. Apparently, "23 skidoo" implied that if the horse in the back was to have any chance of winning, it would really have to run very fast. Marlson also says in the article that the expression was originally "23, skidoo for you." A parody of Henry Miller's well-regarded stage presentation of Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities may have also been the beginning of the phrase. Miller's 1899 production, entitled The Only Way, was staged at the Herald Square Theatre. The final scene of the play portrays a series of executions at a guillotine. As each person is beheaded, an old woman counts. When Sydney Carton, the protagonist of the story, is beheaded, the old woman calls out "Twenty-three!" The grisly scene was remarkable for its time, but it soon became the subject for parody, and the phrase "Twenty-three, skidoo!" was used by Broadway comedians to parody this moment. This seems likely to be an instance of comedians using an already-popular slang juxtaposed against a well-known dramatic moment for the resulting comic effect, and not an indication of invention, although the theatrical usage may have popularized the expression, or made it more widely known. It is said that 23 was an old Morse code signal used by telegraph operators to mean "away with you." (The same story accounts for 30 as "end of transmission", a code still used by modern journalists in North America, who place -30- at the end of articles as a