Mose Humphrey was a printer at the New York Sun

New York Sun

The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...

and member of Fire Company 40

New York City Fire Department

The New York City Fire Department or the Fire Department of the City of New York has the responsibility for protecting the citizens and property of New York City's five boroughs from fires and fire hazards, providing emergency medical services, technical rescue as well as providing first response...

. A parishioner of St. Andrew's Church, he inspired an urban folklore character of Big Mose (Mose the Fireboy

Mose the Fireboy

Mose the Fireboy was the pseudonym of an American folk hero and supposed leader of the Bowery Boys during the 1840s, possibly based on Mose Humphrey. One of its most celebrated leaders during the period, he and his lieutenant Syksey were well-known for battling members of the Dead Rabbits and...

). He was said to have a height of 8 ft (2.4 m) and hands as big as Virginia hams

Country ham

Country ham is a variety of cured ham, typically very salty, associated with the Southern United States. Country ham is first mentioned in print in 1944, referring to a method of curing and smoking done in the rural parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky and other nearby...

, able to lift trolley cars

Horsecar

A horsecar or horse-drawn tram is an animal-powered streetcar or tram.These early forms of public transport developed out of industrial haulage routes that had long been in existence, and from the omnibus routes that first ran on public streets in the 1820s, using the newly improved iron or steel...

 over his head and rescue babies inside a stovepipe hat

Top hat

A top hat, beaver hat, high hat silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, predominantly worn from the latter part of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century...

. The character of Mose first appeared on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 in Benjamin A. Baker's A Glance at New York, in 1848. Then Mose was featured in several stage shows and penny novels in the mid-19th century. The character was most identified with actor Frank Chanfrau

Frank Chanfrau

Francis "Frank" S. Chanfrau was an American actor and theatre manager in the 19th century. He began his career playing bit parts and doing impressions of star actors such as Edwin Forrest and of ethnic groups. In 1848, he appeared as a Bowery b'hoy named Mose in A Glance at New York...

.

Further reading

• Mary Pope Osborne. New York's Bravest.
• David L. Rinear. F. S. Chanfrau's Mose: The Rise and Fall of an Urban Folk-Hero. Theatre Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2 (May, 1981), pp. 199–212