BLACK FRIDAY, the name given in the United States to two days that ushered in finan cial panics. First, Friday, 24 Sept. 1869, when the attempt of Gould and James Fisk, Jr., to create a comer in the gold market by buying all the gold in the banks of New York city, amounting to $15,000,000, culminated. For sev eral days the value of gold had risen steadily, and the speculators aimed to carry it from 144 to 200. Friday, the whole city was in a ferment, the banks were rapidly selling, gold was at 162;4, and still rising. Men became insane, and everywhere the wildest excitement raged, for it seemed probable that the business houses must be closed, from ignorance of the prices to be charged for their goods. But in the midst of the panic it was reported that Secretary Bout well of the United States Treasury had thrown $4,000,000 on the market, and at once gold fell, the excitement ceased, leaving Gould and Fisk the winners of $11,000,000. The second was
19 Sept. 1873, when numerous failures on the New York Stock Exchange precipitated the panic of 1873.
The term was first used in England, being applied in the first instance to the Friday on which the news reached London, 6 Dec. 1745, that the young pretender, Charles Edward, had arrived at Derby, creating a terrible panic; and finally to 11 May 1866, when the failure of Overend, Gurney & London, the day before, was followed by a widespread financial ruin. Good Friday is also known as Black Friday in some countries, because of the use of black vestments and draperies in the churches. Consult The Yale Review (Vol. III, New Haven 18%) • Andrews 'The United States in Our Own Time' (New York 1903; and Julgar's 'Short History of Panics' (New York 1893).