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William M. Tweed

William Magear "Boss" Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April 12, 1878) was an American politician most notable for being the political boss of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party's political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th-century New York City and State.

At the height of his influence, Tweed was the third-largest landowner in New York City, a director of the Erie Railroad, a director of the Tenth National Bank, a director of the New-York Printing Company, the proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel, a significant stockholder in iron mines and gas companies, a board member of the Harlem Gas Light Company, a board member of the Third Avenue Railway Company, a board member of the Brooklyn Bridge Company, and the president of the Guardian Savings Bank.

Tweed was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852 and the New York County Board of Supervisors in 1858, the year that he became the head of the Tammany Hall political machine. He was also elected to the New York State Senate in 1867. However, Tweed's greatest influence came from being an appointed member of a number of boards and commissions, his control over political patronage in New York City through Tammany, and his ability to ensure the loyalty of voters through jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects.

Tweed was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen's committee in 1877 at between $25 million and $45 million from New York City taxpayers from political corruption, but later estimates ranged as high as $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ). Unable to make bail, he escaped from jail once but was returned to custody. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail.

Early life and education
Tweed was born April 3, 1823, at 1 Cherry Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The son of a third-generation Scottish chair-maker, Tweed grew up on Cherry Street. His grandfather arrived in the United States from a town near the River Tweed close to Edinburgh. Tweed's religious affiliation was not widely known in his lifetime, but at the time of his funeral The New York Times, quoting a family friend, reported that his parents had been Quakers and "members of the old Rose Street Meeting house". At the age of 11, he left school to learn his father's trade, and then became an apprentice to a saddler. He also studied to be a bookkeeper and worked as a brushmaker for a company he had invested in, before eventually joining in the family business in 1852. On September 29, 1844, he married Mary Jane C. Skaden and lived with her family on Madison Street for two years.

Early career
Tweed became a member of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, and joined a volunteer fire company, Engine No. 12. In 1848, at the invitation of state assemblyman John J. Reilly, he and some friends organized the Americus Fire Company No. 6, also known as the "Big Six", as a volunteer fire company, which took as its symbol a snarling red Bengal tiger from a French lithograph, a symbol which remained associated with Tweed and Tammany Hall for many years. At the time, volunteer fire companies competed vigorously with each other; some were connected with street gangs and had strong ethnic ties to various immigrant communities. The competition could become so fierce, that burning buildings would sometimes be ignored as the fire companies fought each other. Tweed became known for his ax-wielding violence, and was soon elected the Big Six foreman. Pressure from Alfred Carlson, the chief engineer, got him thrown out of the crew. However, fire companies were also recruiting grounds for political parties at the time, thus Tweed's exploits came to the attention of the Democratic politicians who ran the Seventh Ward. The Seventh Ward put him up for Alderman in 1850, when Tweed was 26. He lost that election to the Whig candidate Morgan Morgans, but ran again the next year and won, garnering his first political position. Tweed then became associated with the "Forty Thieves", the group of aldermen and assistant aldermen who, up to that point, were known as some of the most corrupt politicians in the city's history.

Tweed was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852, but his two-year term was undistinguished. In an attempt by Republican reformers in Albany, the state capital, to control the Democratic-dominated New York City government, the power of the New York County Board of Supervisors was beefed up. The board had 12 members, six appointed by the mayor and six elected, and in 1858 Tweed was appointed to the board, which became his first vehicle for large-scale graft; Tweed and other supervisors forced vendors to pay a 15% overcharge to their "ring" in order to do business with the city. By 1853, Tweed was running the seventh ward for Tammany. The board also had six Democrats and six Republicans, but Tweed often just bought off one Republican to sway the board. One such Republican board member was Peter P. Voorhis, a coal dealer by profession who absented himself from a board meeting in exchange for $2,500 so that the board could appoint city inspectors. Henry Smith was another Republican that was a part of the Tweed ring.

Although he was not trained as a lawyer, Tweed's friend, Judge George G. Barnard, certified him as an attorney, and Tweed opened a law office on Duane Street. He ran for sheriff in 1861 and was defeated, but became the chairman of the Democratic General Committee shortly after the election, and was then chosen to be the head of Tammany's general committee in January 1863. Several months later, in April, he became "Grand Sachem", and began to be referred to as "Boss", especially after he tightened his hold on power by creating a small executive committee to run the club. Tweed then took steps to increase his income: he used his law firm to extort money, which was then disguised as legal services; he had himself appointed deputy street commissioner – a position with considerable access to city contractors and funding; he bought the New-York Printing Company, which became the city's official printer, and the city's stationery supplier, the Manufacturing Stationers' Company, and had both companies begin to overcharge the city government for their goods and services. Among other legal services he provided, he accepted almost $100,000 from the Erie Railroad in return for favors. He also became one of the largest owners of real estate in the city. He also started to form what became known as the "Tweed Ring", by having his friends elected to office: George G. Barnard was elected Recorder of New York City; Peter B. Sweeny was elected New York County District Attorney; and Richard B. Connolly was elected City Comptroller. Other judicial members of the Tweed ring included Albert Cardozo, John McCunn, and John K. Hackett.

When Grand Sachem Isaac Fowler, who had produced the $2,500 to buy off the Republican Voorhis on the Board of Supervisors, was found to have stolen $150,000 in post office receipts, the responsibility for Fowler's arrest was given to Isaiah Rynders, another Tammany operative who was serving as a United States marshal at the time. Rynders made enough ruckus upon entering the hotel where Fowler was staying that Fowler was able to escape to Mexico.

With his new position and wealth came a change in style: Tweed began to favor wearing a large diamond in his shirtfront – a habit that Thomas Nast used to great effect in his attacks on Tweed in Harper's Weekly beginning in 1869 – and he bought a brownstone to live in at 41 West 36th Street, then a very fashionable area. He invested his now considerable illegal income in real estate, so that by the late 1860s he ranked among the biggest landowners in New York City.

Tweed became involved in the operation of the New York Mutuals, an early professional baseball club, in the 1860s. He brought in thousands of dollars per home game by dramatically increasing the cost of admission and gambling on the team. He has been credited with originating the practice of spring training in 1869 by sending the club south to New Orleans to prepare for the season.

Tweed was a member of the New York State Senate (4th D.) from 1868 to 1873, sitting in the 91st, 92nd, 93rd, and 94th New York State Legislatures, but not taking his seat in the 95th and 96th New York State Legislatures. While serving in the State Senate, he split his time between Albany, New York and New York City. While in Albany, he stayed in a suite of seven rooms in Delevan House. Accompanying him in his rooms were his favorite canaries. Guests are presumed to have included members of the Black Horse Cavalry, thirty state legislators whose votes were up for sale. In the Senate he helped financiers Jay Gould and Big Jim Fisk to take control of the Erie Railroad from Cornelius Vanderbilt by arranging for legislation that legitimized fake Erie stock certificates that Gould and Fisk had issued. In return, Tweed received a large block of stock and was made a director of the company.

Corruption
After the election of 1869, Tweed took control of the New York City government. His protégé, John T. Hoffman, the former mayor of the city, won election as governor, and Tweed garnered the support of good-government reformers like Peter Cooper and the Union League Club, by proposing a new city charter which returned power to City Hall at the expense of the Republican-inspired state commissions. The new charter passed, thanks in part to $600,000 in bribes Tweed paid to Republicans, and was signed into law by Hoffman in 1870. Mandated new elections allowed Tammany to take over the city's Common Council when they won all fifteen aldermanic contests.

The new charter put control of the city's finances in the hands of a Board of Audit, which consisted of Tweed, who was Commissioner of Public Works, Mayor A. Oakey Hall and Comptroller Richard "Slippery Dick" Connolly, both Tammany men. Hall also appointed other Tweed associates to high offices – such as Peter B. Sweeny, who took over the Department of Public Parks – providing what became known as the Tweed Ring with even firmer control of the New York City government and enabling them to defraud the taxpayers of many more millions of dollars. In the words of Albert Bigelow Paine, "their methods were curiously simple and primitive. There were no skilful manipulations of figures, making detection difficult ... Connolly, as Controller, had charge of the books, and declined to show them. With his fellows, he also 'controlled' the courts and most of the bar." Crucially, the new city charter allowed the Board of Audit to issue bonds for debt in order to finance opportunistic capital expenditures the city otherwise could not afford. This ability to float debt was enabled by Tweed's guidance and passage of the Adjusted Claims Act in 1868. Contractors working for the city – "Ring favorites, most of them – were told to multiply the amount of each bill by five, or ten, or a hundred, after which, with Mayor Hall's 'O. K.' and Connolly's endorsement, it was paid ... through a go-between, who cashed the check, settled the original bill and divided the remainder ... between Tweed, Sweeny, Connolly and Hall".

For example, the construction cost of the New York County Courthouse, begun in 1861, grew to nearly $13 million—about $ in dollars, and nearly twice the cost of the Alaska Purchase in 1867. "A carpenter was paid $360,751 (roughly $ in ) for one month's labor in a building with very little woodwork ... a plasterer got $133,187 ($) for two days' work". Tweed bought a marble quarry in Sheffield, Massachusetts, to provide much of the marble for the courthouse at great profit to himself. After the Tweed Charter to reorganize the city's government was passed in 1870, four commissioners for the construction of the New York County Courthouse were appointed. The commission never held a meeting, though each commissioner received a 20% kickback from the bills for the supplies.

Tweed and his friends also garnered huge profits from the development of the Upper East Side, especially Yorkville and Harlem. They would buy up undeveloped property, then use the resources of the city to improve the area – for instance by installing pipes to bring in water from the Croton Aqueduct – thus increasing the value of the land, after which they sold and took their profits. The focus on the east side also slowed down the development of the west side, the topography of which made it more expensive to improve. The ring also took their usual percentage of padded contracts, as well as raking off money from property taxes. Despite the corruption of Tweed and Tammany Hall, they did accomplish the development of upper Manhattan, though at the cost of tripling the city's bond debt to almost $90 million.

During the Tweed era, the proposal to build a suspension bridge between New York and Brooklyn, then an independent city, was floated by Brooklyn-boosters, who saw the ferry connections as a bottleneck to Brooklyn's further development. In order to ensure that the Brooklyn Bridge project would go forward, State Senator Henry Cruse Murphy approached Tweed to find out whether New York's aldermen would approve the proposal. Tweed's response was that $60,000 for the aldermen would close the deal, and contractor William C. Kingsley put up the cash, which was delivered in a carpet bag. Tweed and two others from Tammany also received over half the private stock of the Bridge Company, the charter of which specified that only private stockholders had voting rights, so that even though the cities of Brooklyn and Manhattan put up most of the money, they essentially had no control over the project.

Tweed bought a mansion on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street, and stabled his horses, carriages and sleighs on 40th Street. By 1871, he was a member of the board of directors of not only the Erie Railroad and the Brooklyn Bridge Company, but also the Third Avenue Railway Company and the Harlem Gas Light Company. He was president of the Guardian Savings Banks and he and his confederates set up the Tenth National Bank to better control their fortunes.

Scandal
Tweed's downfall began in 1871. James Watson, who was a county auditor in Comptroller Dick Connolly's office and who also held and recorded the ring's books, died a week after his head was smashed by a horse in a sleigh accident on January 24, 1871. Although Tweed guarded Watson's estate in the week prior to Watson's death, and although another ring member attempted to destroy Watson's records, a replacement auditor, Matthew O'Rourke, associated with former sheriff James O'Brien, provided city accounts to O'Brien. The Orange riot of 1871 in the summer of that year did not help the ring's popularity. The riot was prompted after Tammany Hall banned a parade of Irish Protestants celebrating a historical victory against Catholicism, namely the Battle of the Boyne. The parade was banned because of a riot the previous year in which eight people died when a crowd of Irish Catholic laborers attacked the paraders. Under strong pressure from the newspapers and the Protestant elite of the city, Tammany reversed course, and the march was allowed to proceed, with protection from city policemen and state militia. The result was an even larger riot in which over 60 people were killed and more than 150 injured.

Although Tammany's electoral power base was largely centered in the Irish immigrant population, it also needed both the city's general population and elite to acquiesce in its rule, and this was conditional on the machine's ability to control the actions of its people. The July riot showed that this capability was not nearly as strong as had been supposed.

Tweed had for months been under attack from The New York Times and Thomas Nast, the cartoonist from Harper's Weekly – regarding Nast's cartoons, Tweed reportedly said, "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures!" – but their campaign had only limited success in gaining traction. They were able to force an examination of the city's books, but the blue-ribbon commission of six businessmen appointed by Mayor A. Oakey Hall, a Tammany man, which included John Jacob Astor III, banker Moses Taylor and others who benefited from Tammany's actions, found that the books had been "faithfully kept", letting the air out of the effort to dethrone Tweed.

The response to the Orange riot changed everything, and only days afterwards the Times/Nast campaign began to garner popular support. More important, the Times started to receive inside information from County Sheriff James O'Brien, whose support for Tweed had fluctuated during Tammany's reign. O'Brien had tried to blackmail Tammany by threatening to expose the ring's embezzlement to the press, and when this failed he provided the evidence he had collected to the Times. Shortly afterward, county auditor Matthew J. O'Rourke supplied additional details to the Times, which was reportedly offered $5 million to not publish the evidence. The Times also obtained the accounts of the recently deceased James Watson, who was the Tweed Ring's bookkeeper, and these were published daily, culminating in a special four-page supplement on July 29 headlined "Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed". In August, Tweed began to transfer ownership in his real-estate empire and other investments to his family members.

The exposé provoked an international crisis of confidence in New York City's finances, and, in particular, in its ability to repay its debts. European investors were heavily positioned in the city's bonds and were already nervous about its management – only the reputations of the underwriters were preventing a run on the city's securities. New York's financial and business community knew that if the city's credit were to collapse, it could potentially bring down every bank in the city with it.

Thus, the city's elite met at Cooper Union in September to discuss political reform: but for the first time, the conversation included not only the usual reformers, but also Democratic bigwigs such as Samuel J. Tilden, who had been thrust aside by Tammany. The consensus was that the "wisest and best citizens" should take over the governance of the city and attempt to restore investor confidence. The result was the formation of the Executive Committee of Citizens and Taxpayers for Financial Reform of the city (also known as "the Committee of Seventy"), which attacked Tammany by cutting off the city's funding. Property owners refused to pay their municipal taxes, and a judge—Tweed's old friend George Barnard—enjoined the city Comptroller from issuing bonds or spending money. Unpaid workers turned against Tweed, marching to City Hall demanding to be paid. Tweed doled out some funds from his own purse—$50,000—but it was not sufficient to end the crisis, and Tammany began to lose its essential base.

Shortly thereafter, the Comptroller resigned, appointing Andrew Haswell Green, an associate of Tilden, as his replacement. Green loosened the purse strings again, allowing city departments not under Tammany control to borrow money to operate. Green and Tilden had the city's records closely examined, and discovered money that went directly from city contractors into Tweed's pocket. The following day, they had Tweed arrested.

Imprisonment, escape, and death
Tweed was released on $1 million bail, and Tammany set to work to recover its position through the ballot box. Tweed was re-elected to the state senate in November 1871, due to his personal popularity and largesse in his district, but in general Tammany did not do well, and the members of the Tweed Ring began to flee the jurisdiction, many going overseas. Tweed was re-arrested, forced to resign his city positions, and was replaced as Tammany's leader. Once again, he was released on bail—$8 million this time—but Tweed's supporters, such as Jay Gould, felt the repercussions of his fall from power.

Tweed's first trial before Judge Noah Davis, in January 1873, ended when the jury was unable to deliver a verdict. Tweed's defense counsel included David Dudley Field II and Elihu Root. His retrial, again before Judge Noah Davis in November resulted in convictions on 204 of 220 counts, a fine of $12,750 (the equivalent of $0 today) and a prison sentence of 12 years; a higher court, however, reduced Tweed's sentence to one year. After his release from The Tombs prison, New York State filed a civil suit against Tweed, attempting to recover $6 million in embezzled funds. Unable to put up the $3 million bail, Tweed was locked up in the Ludlow Street Jail, although he was allowed home visits. During one of these on December 4, 1875, Tweed escaped and fled to Spain, where he worked as a common seaman on a Spanish ship. The U.S. government discovered his whereabouts and arranged for his arrest once he reached the Spanish border, where he was recognized from Nast's political cartoons. He was turned over to an American warship, the USS Franklin (1864), which delivered him to authorities in New York City on November 23, 1876, and he was returned to prison.

Desperate and broken, Tweed now agreed to testify about the inner workings of the Tweed Ring to a special committee set up by the Board of Aldermen in return for his release, but after he did so, Tilden, now governor of New York, refused to abide by the agreement, and Tweed remained incarcerated.

He died in the Ludlow Street Jail on April 12, 1878, from severe pneumonia, and was buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Mayor Smith Ely would not allow the flag at City Hall to be flown at half staff.

Evaluations
According to Tweed biographer Kenneth D. Ackerman:"It's hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed's system ... The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing and organization."

A minority view that Tweed was mostly innocent is presented in a scholarly biography by history professor Leo Hershkowitz. He states:"Except for Tweed's own very questionable 'confession,' there really was no evidence of a 'Tweed Ring,' no direct evidence of Tweed's thievery, no evidence, excepting the testimony of the informer contractors, of 'wholesale' plunder by Tweed....[Instead there was] a conspiracy of self-justification of the corruption of the law by the upholders of that law, of a venal irresponsible press and a citizenry delighting in the exorcism of witchery."

In depictions of Tweed and the Tammany Hall organization, most historians have emphasized the thievery and conspiratorial nature of Boss Tweed, along with lining his own pockets and those of his friends and allies. The theme is that the sins of corruption so violated American standards of political rectitude that they far overshadow Tweed's positive contributions to New York City.

Although he held numerous important public offices and was one of a handful of senior leaders of Tammany Hall, as well as the state legislature and the state Democratic Party, Tweed was never the sole "boss" of New York City. He shared control of the city with numerous less famous people, such as the villains depicted in Nast's famous circle of guilt cartoon shown above. Seymour J. Mandelbaum has argued that, apart from the corruption he engaged in, Tweed was a modernizer who prefigured certain elements of the Progressive Era in terms of more efficient city management. Much of the money he siphoned off from the city treasury went to needy constituents who appreciated the free food at Christmas time and remembered it at the next election, and to precinct workers who provided the muscle of his machine. As a legislator he worked to expand and strengthen welfare programs, especially those by private charities, schools, and hospitals. With a base in the Irish Catholic community, he opposed efforts of Protestants to require the reading of the King James Bible in public schools, which was done deliberately to keep out Catholics. He facilitated the founding of the New York Public Library, even though one of its founders, Samuel Tilden, was Tweed's sworn enemy in the Democratic Party.

Tweed recognized that the support of his constituency was necessary for him to remain in power, and as a consequence he used the machinery of the city's government to provide numerous social services, including building more orphanages, almshouses and public baths. Tweed also fought for the New York State Legislature to donate to private charities of all religious denominations, and subsidize Catholic schools and hospitals. From 1869 to 1871, under Tweed's influence, the state of New York spent more on charities than for the entire time period from 1852 to 1868 combined.

During Tweed's regime, the main business thoroughfare Broadway was widened between 34th Street and 59th Street, land was secured for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Upper East Side and Upper West Side were developed and provided the necessary infrastructure – all to the benefit of the purses of the Tweed Ring.

Hershkowitz blames the implications of Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly and the editors of The New York Times, which both had ties to the Republican party. In part, the campaign against Tweed diverted public attention from Republican scandals such as the Whiskey Ring.

Tweed himself wanted no particular recognition of his achievements, such as they were. When it was proposed, in March 1871, when he was at the height of his power, that a statue be erected in his honor, he declared: "Statues are not erected to living men ... I claim to be a live man, and hope (Divine Providence permitting) to survive in all my vigor, politically and physically, some years to come." One of Tweed's unwanted legacies is that he has become "the archetype of the bloated, rapacious, corrupt city boss".

Middle name
Tweed never signed his middle name with anything other than a plain "M.", and his middle name is often mistakenly listed as "Marcy". His actual middle name was Magear, his mother's maiden name.

Confusion derived from a Nast cartoon with a picture of Tweed supplemented with a quote from William L. Marcy, the former governor of New York.

In popular culture

 * Arthur Train featured Tweed in his 1940 novel of life in Gilded Age New York, Tassels On Her Boots. Tweed is portrayed as having contempt for the people he rules, at one point saying that once he would have been a Baron, with a castle, levying tribute on the people. But now, "'Boss', they call me – and they are glad to have me."
 * In 1945, Tweed was portrayed by Noah Beery Sr. in the Broadway production of Up in Central Park, a musical comedy with music by Sigmund Romberg. The role was played by Malcolm Lee Beggs for a revival in 1947. In the 1948 film version, Tweed is played by Vincent Price.
 * On the 1963–1964 CBS TV series The Great Adventure, which presented one-hour dramatizations of the lives of historical figures, Edward Andrews portrayed Tweed in the episode "The Man Who Stole New York City", about the campaign by The New York Times to bring down Tweed. The episode aired on December 13, 1963.
 * In John Varley's 1977 science-fiction novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline, a crooked politician in a 27th-century human settlement on the Moon assumes the name "Boss Tweed" in emulation of the 19th-century politician, and names his lunar headquarters "Tammany Hall".
 * Tweed was played by Philip Bosco in the 1986 TV movie Liberty. According to a review of the film in The New York Times, it was Tweed who made the suggestion to call the Statue of Liberty by that name, instead of its formal name Liberty Enlightening the World, in order to read better in newspaper headlines.
 * Andrew O'Hehir of The New York Times notes that Forever, a 2003 novel by Pete Hamill, and Gangs of New York, a 2002 film, both "offer a significant supporting role to the legendary Manhattan political godfather Boss Tweed", among other thematic similarities. In a review of the latter work, Chuck Rudolph praised Jim Broadbent's portrayal of Tweed as "giving the role a masterfully heartless composure".
 * Tweed appears as an antagonist in the 2016 novel, Assassin's Creed Last Descendants where he is the Grand Master of the American Templars during the American Civil War.

title: William M. Tweed


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Balsall Heath

Balsall Heath is an inner-city area of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It has a diverse cultural mix of people and is the location of the Balti Triangle.

History
The name is first found as Bordeshale in 1275, which is derived from the Old English words Bord's healh meaning 'Bord's heath' or 'Bord's nook' implying a corner or small area of land, perhaps a sheltered hollow in the landscape, protected by trees, possibly within a river-bend. The name stems from the Anglian personal name of one Bord, who held property in the area, and in this way shares its origin with that of neighbouring Bordesley, first record as Bordesleie or Bordeslea meaning 'Bord's clearing'.

Balsall Heath was largely agricultural and park land between Moseley village and the city of Birmingham until the 1850s when expansion along Moseley Road joined the two. The area was originally part of the Worcestershire parish of King's Norton, and was added to the county borough of Birmingham in Warwickshire on 1 October 1891.

During negotiations in the previous year it had been promised a public baths and a free library. In 1895, the library was opened on Moseley Road and, in 1907, Balsall Heath Baths were opened in an adjoining building.

In 1900, the city's College of Art was also opened on Moseley Road. By this time the small lake ("Lady Pool" on old maps) at the end of Ladypool Road had been filled in to create a park.

Balsall Heath initially had a reasonably affluent population, which can still be seen in the dilapidated grandeur of some of the larger houses. A railway station on Brighton Road (on the Birmingham to Bristol line) led to further expansion, and the end of the 19th century saw a proliferation of high-density small terraced houses.

A Muslim community was started in June 1940 when two Yemenis purchased an artisan cottage on Mary Street. With the mosque being located in the area, more Muslim immigrants began to move into private lodgings in Balsall Heath. Today, Balsall Heath has one of the largest Muslim communities in Birmingham. It is also home to diverse communities from across the Commonwealth.

By the 1980s, many of Balsall Heath's houses were in a dilapidated condition; some still lacked bathrooms or indoor toilets. The local council considered demolishing these properties but chose to refurbish them as part of an urban renewal scheme. Most of these Victorian terraces still exist and, along with more modern social housing, characterise the area today. The area's traditional 'brick' pavements were replaced at this time by the more modern and conventional paving slabs.

Balsall Heath's low rents also attracted a bohemian student population. Its proximity to the University of Birmingham, the city centre and the "trendy" area of Moseley were all contributing factors. There was little conflict between the students and locals despite their vastly differing lifestyles. However, a knife-incident in 1991 led to an article in Redbrick warning students not to live in the area.

In July 2005, Balsall Heath was hit by a tornado, which devastated many buildings around Church Road and Ladypool Road. Birmingham City Council offered loans to those who would otherwise be unable to repair their properties, and the area has now made a full recovery.

Red light era
Street prostitution first appeared in Balsall Heath during the 1950s. Property values fell, attracting Birmingham's poorer migrants. By the 1970s, the area was notorious for street robberies and drug dealing. Cheddar Road was the centre of a red-light district worked by 450 women. About half of the 50 houses on this road had prostitutes advertising themselves in the windows, similar to Amsterdam. It was labelled Britain's busiest cul-de-sac. This period of the area's history is depicted in the 1980 film Prostitute.

In 1986, an organisation called ANAWIM was formed by the Sisters of Charity to provide outreach support to the prostitutes.

In September 1992, a report was published encouraging the formation of a zone of tolerance towards prostitution in Balsall Heath. This was opposed by residents and a local police inspector. In the following year Samo Paull, a woman working as a prostitute, was abducted from Balsall Heath and murdered.

In 1994, residents began to organise street patrols forcing the prostitutes and street criminals out of the area. These patrols had the qualified support of the police but were regarded as vigilantes by some. There was an immediate two-thirds reduction in street and window prostitution. By November 1995, they had been almost eliminated.

The area has enjoyed a slow revival. House prices are now similar to those in other inner-city areas, while the crime rate is among the lowest.

Politics and governance
Balsall Heath is divided by two wards for elections to Birmingham City Council; Balsall Heath West and Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East.

Balsall Heath is part of the Birmingham Hall Green constituency for general elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

Notable buildings

 * Moseley Road Baths
 * Moseley School of Art
 * St Barnabas' Church
 * St Paul's Church

Notable residents

 * Donnaleigh Bailey, Michelle Corrigan in the Birmingham-based soap Doctors
 * Alderman John Bowen, JP
 * Percy Bullock, Worcestershire cricketer
 * Howard R. Davies, racing motorcyclist
 * Alan Deakin, former Aston Villa captain
 * Oscar Deutsch, founder of the Odeon cinema chain
 * David Edgar, playwright
 * John Kenneally VC
 * Don Maclean, comedian
 * Conroy Maddox, surrealist artist
 * William Mosedale, George Cross recipient
 * Sir Robert Howson Pickard FRS stereochemist and vice-chancellor of the University of London 1937–1939
 * Anthony E. Pratt, inventor of the board game Cluedo
 * UB40, a reggae band

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Balsall Heath


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Bunge & Born

Bunge & Born was a multinational corporation based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, whose diverse interests included food processing and international trade in grains and oilseeds. It is now known as Bunge Limited.

History
Bunge & Born was founded in 1884 by Ernesto Bunge, a German Argentine whose uncle, Carl Bunge, had been Consul General in Argentina for both the Netherlands and Prussia, and his brother-in-law, Jorge Born, who had recently arrived from Antwerp. The company superseded the Bunge Company founded in Amsterdam by Johann Bunge, in 1818. Following the purchase of 60000 ha of prime pampas wheat fields, Bunge & Born established Centenera, their first food processing plant, in 1899. They had one of the largest wheat mills in the country built on a Puerto Madero lot in 1902, and with it, established Molinos Río de la Plata (later a leader in the local retail foods market). The company started Argentina's first burlap bag manufacturer, following which they successfully lobbied government policy makers for protective tariffs on the then-critical commercial staple. They established a mortgage bank, the Banco Hipotecario Franco Argentino, and a subsidiary in Brazil in 1905, and by 1910, they reportedly controlled 80% of Argentine cereal exports (Argentina was, by then, the world's third-largest grain exporter). They later established paint manufacturer Alba (1925), chemical and fertilizer maker Compañía Química, and textile maker Grafa (1932), among others; by the late 1920s, the company's annual export receipts alone reached US$300 million. The company inaugurated its neo-gothic Buenos Aires headquarters on Leandro Alem Avenue, designed by local architect Pablo Naeff, in 1926.

Bunge & Born's near-monopoly on cereal and flour exports ended with populist President Juan Perón's 1946 establishment of the IAPI, a state agricultural purchasing and export agent. The company responded by extending its reach into the country fast-growing retail processed foods market, and though its prominence as the nation's chief exporter was partly restored by Perón's 1955 ousting and the IAPI's liquidation, its focus remained domestic over the next three decades. A privately held company, Bunge & Born did not release periodical financial statements, though it did report US$2bn in gross receipts in 1962; by then it had become a leader in commodity futures trading, operating 110 offices worldwide.

The Bunge, Born, Hirsch, Engels and De La Tour families remained the company's chief stockholders, and by extension, leaders in the domestic textile, paint, chemical, fertilizer, and food processing industries. On September 19, 1974, however, the consortium was shaken by the kidnapping of siblings Jorge and Juan Born by the far-left terrorist group, Montoneros. The Born brothers were kept in a known Argentine State Intelligence safehouse for nine months until their June 1975 release, something made possible without public suspicion of outside involvement by the agency's numerous contacts inside the Montoneros (including the leader, Mario Firmenich). Freed for a US$60 million ransom (the largest on record at that time), the ordeal triggered the company headquarters' relocation to São Paulo, Brazil, and contributed to the March 1976 coup.

Retaining their Argentine interests (44 companies, by the 1980s), the families continued to suffer from ongoing disputes, and in 1987, CEO Mario Hirsch died suddenly. The election of Carlos Menem to the Argentine Presidency in May 1989, however, resulted in an agreement between the President-elect and Jorge Born that gave the company partial control over national economic policy. Bunge & Born provided the Menem government with its first two economy ministers, and the combination of large rate increases on public services (around 500%), a simplified exchange rate and a massive, mandatory wage hike led to a sharp economic turnaround between July and November 1989. This foray into government policy making, however, ended in a new currency crisis that December and the failure (compounded by the company's lackluster business performance) resulted in Born's 1991 ouster from the board; he was replaced by Chief Operations Officer Octavio Caraballo.

Beset by the rift between Jorge Born and his brother, Juan, the prior unity between the shareholders disintegrated as Caraballo struggled to modernize the company. Family frictions intensified when Jorge Born formed a business partnership with one of his former kidnappers, erstwhile Montonero strategist Rodolfo Galimberti.

Bunge International
The company was converted into the Bermuda-registered Bunge International in 1994, retaining the Bunge y Born name only in Argentina. Bunge remained a privately held company of 180 shareholders (including the longtime controlling family interests) and divested itself in 1998, of almost all its retail foods interests in favor of a greater role in international agribusiness and commodity markets; by then the company's gross annual turnover had reached US$13 billion. Bunge ultimately went public on the NYSE in 2001, becoming Bunge Limited.

title: Bunge & Born


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Big Apple

"The Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s by John J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph. Its popularity since the 1970s is due in part to a promotional campaign by the New York tourist authorities.

Origin
Although the history of "Big Apple" was once thought a mystery, a clearer picture of the term's history has emerged due to the work of historian Barry Popik, and Gerald Cohen of the Missouri University of Science and Technology. A number of false theories had previously existed, including a claim that the term derived from a woman named Eve who ran a brothel in the city. This was subsequently exposed as a hoax.

The earliest known usage of "big apple" appears in the book The Wayfarer in New York (1909), in which Edward Sandford Martin writes: "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city ... It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap." William Safire considered this the coinage, but because the phrase is not quoted in the text, it is likely that it was used as a metaphor, and not as a nickname for the city.

Horse racing origin
"The Big Apple" was popularized as a name for New York City by John J. Fitz Gerald in a number of horse-racing articles for the New York Morning Telegraph in the 1920s. The earliest of these was a casual reference on 3 May 1921:

"J. P. Smith, with Tippity Witchet and others of the L. T. Bauer string, is scheduled to start for 'the big apple' to-morrow after a most prosperous Spring campaign at Bowie and Havre de Grace."

Fitz Gerald referred to the "big apple" frequently thereafter. He explained his use in a column dated February 18, 1924, under the headline "Around the Big Apple":

"The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York."

Fitz Gerald reportedly first heard "The Big Apple" used to describe New York's racetracks by two African American stable hands at the New Orleans Fair Grounds. Using racing records, Popik traced that conversation to January 1920.

In recognition of Fitz Gerald's role in promulgating "The Big Apple" as a nickname for New York City, in 1997 Mayor Rudy Giuliani signed legislation designating as "Big Apple Corner" the southwest corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, the corner on which John J. Fitz Gerald lived from 1934 to 1963. The Hotel Ameritania also once had a plaque which was installed in 1996, according to Popik, but it was removed during renovations to the building and was lost.

Evidence can also be found in the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper that had a national circulation. Writing for the Defender on September 16, 1922, "Ragtime" Billy Tucker used the name "big apple" to refer to New York in a non-horse-racing context:

"I trust your trip to 'the big apple' (New York) was a huge success and only wish that I had been able to make it with you."

Tucker had also earlier used "big apple" as a reference to Los Angeles. It is possible that he simply used "big apple" as a nickname for any large city:

"Dear Pal, Tony: No, Ragtime Billy Tucker hasn't dropped completely out of existence, but is still in the 'Big Apple', Los Angeles."

Popularity
By the late 1920s, New York writers other than Fitz Gerald were starting to use "Big Apple", and were using it in contexts other than horse racing. "The Big Apple" was a popular song and dance in the 1930s. Jazz musicians in the 1930s also contributed to the use of the phrase to refer to New York City, specifically to the city and Harlem as the jazz capital of the world. Beside the song and the dance, two nightclubs in the city used "Big Apple" in their names.

Walter Winchell and other writers continued to use the term in the 1940s and early 1950s, but by the late 1950s, if it was known at all, it had come to be considered an outdated nickname for New York.

In the early 1970s, however, during the city's fiscal crisis, "People were looking around desperately and some of them seized that old phrase the Big Apple to remind people of when New York had been a strong and powerful city and might become that again," according to the official Manhattan Borough Historian, Dr. Robert Snyder. It was then that the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau – now NYC & Company, New York City's official marketing and tourism organization – with the help of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising firm, began to promote the city's "Big Apple" nickname to tourists, under the leadership of its president, Charles Gillett. The campaign was a success, and the nickname has remained popular since then.

Today, the name is used exclusively to refer to New York City, and is used with regularity by journalists and news headline writers across the English-speaking world.

In popular culture

 * The term "big apple" was used by Frank Sinatra in conversation with opera singer Dorothy Kirsten on an episode of the NBC radio program Light Up Time on March 28, 1950.
 * The Big Apple Circus was founded in Manhattan in 1977.
 * The New York Mets of Major League Baseball have featured a "Home Run Apple" that rises whenever a Mets player hits a home run. It has become a symbol of the Mets baseball team, recognized throughout Major League Baseball as an iconic feature of the Mets' stadiums. It first appeared in Shea Stadium, and the original can still be seen on display at Citi Field, outside the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Citi Field now uses a new apple, one that is much larger than the original.
 * Uses of the term abound elsewhere in the names of cultural products and events in or concerning New York, including the Big Apple Anime Fest, the Big Apple Circus, the Big Apple Theater Festival, Jess Teong's The Kid from the Big Apple and Kajagoogoo's Big Apple, and playful uses of the nickname have been seen, such as Patrick Downey's 2008 historical study of New York City's criminal underworld, entitled Bad Seeds in the Big Apple.
 * Following his election as President of the United States in 2016, Donald Trump hosted a party named "The Big Apple Ball", which featured themed decorations and cut-outs of New York landmarks in honor of his home city.
 * In his 1982 song "Human Nature", Michael Jackson refers to New York City by singing, "If this town is just an apple, then let me take a bite".
 * In Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, when asked why New York is called 'The Big Apple', Ron Burgundy says, "Because, there's an apple tree on every corner!"
 * In Blue's Big City Adventure, Josh calls New York "The Big Apple".
 * In the 2017 video game Super Mario Odyssey, the location New Donk City, which is based on New York City, is referred to by one of its inhabitants as "the Big Banana".

title: Big Apple


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Boston Corbett

Sergeant Thomas H. "Boston" Corbett (January 29, 1832 – disappeared c. May 26, 1888) was an English-born American soldier and milliner who killed John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln on April 26, 1865. Known for his devout religious beliefs and eccentric behavior, Corbett was reportedly a good soldier and had been a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. Corbett shot and mortally wounded Booth when his regiment surrounded him in pursuit. For his actions, the American media and public largely considered Corbett a hero.

Corbett drifted around the United States before he was committed to Topeka Asylum for the Insane after being declared insane in 1887. Corbett escaped and disappeared in 1888.

Early life and education
Corbett was born in London, England, on January 29, 1832, and immigrated with his family to New York City in 1840. The Corbetts moved frequently before settling in Troy, New York. As a teenager, Corbett began apprenticing as a milliner, a profession that he would hold intermittently throughout his life. As a milliner, Corbett was regularly exposed to the fumes of mercury(II) nitrate, then used in the treatment of fur to produce felt used on hats. Excessive exposure to the compound can lead to hallucinations, psychosis and erethism. Historians have theorized that the mental issues Corbett exhibited before and after the Civil War were caused by this exposure.

Family and religion
After working as a milliner in Troy, Corbett returned to New York City. In the early 1850s, Corbett met Susan Rebecca, who was thirteen years his senior, and they married. The couple migrated, and on June 9, 1855, Corbett became an American citizen, taking the oath in a Troy courthouse. Corbett had a hard time finding and keeping work in Richmond, Virginia, in large part because of his vociferous opposition to slavery. His wife became ill, and, as they were returning to New York City by ship, she died at sea on August 18, 1856. The body continued to New York, where her death was recorded and she was buried. Following her death, he moved to Boston. Corbett became despondent over the loss of his wife and, according to friends, began drinking heavily. He could not hold a job and eventually became homeless. After a night of heavy drinking, he was confronted by a street preacher whose message persuaded him to join the Methodist Episcopal Church. Corbett reportedly encountered some evangelical temperance Christians and was detained by them until he sobered up, undergoing a religious epiphany in the process.

In 1857, Corbett began working at a hat manufacturer's shop on Washington Street in downtown Boston. He was reported to be a proficient milliner but was known to proselytize frequently and stop work to pray and sing for co-workers who used profanity in his presence. He also began working as a street preacher and would sermonize and distribute religious literature in North Square. Corbett soon earned a reputation around Boston for being a "local eccentric" and religious fanatic. by the summer of 1858, Corbett fell in with members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming a proselytizer and street preacher. On July 16, 1858, Corbett, while trying to remain chaste, struggled against sexual urges and began reading chapters 18 and 19 in the Gospel of Matthew ("And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee....and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake"). Years later, a friend recounted Corbett saying "that the Lord directed him, in a vision or in some way, to castrate himself." Corbett castrated himself with a pair of scissors. He ate a meal and attended a prayer meeting before someone was sent for medical treatment. Corbett was released on August 15, and a friend recorded that "he was very much gratified with the result as his passion was not trouble any more...his object was that he might preach the gospel without being tormented by his passions." After being baptized on August 29, he subsequently changed his name to Boston, the name of the city where he was converted. He regularly attended meetings at the Fulton and Bromfield Street churches where his enthusiastic behavior earned him the nickname "The Glory to God man". In an attempt to imitate Jesus, Corbett began to wear his hair very long (he was forced to cut it upon enlisting in the Union Army). Corbett was described as friendly and open, helpful to those he saw in need but also quick to condemn those he thought were out of step with God. Corbett routinely gathered up drunken sinners from the New York streets and took them to his room, where he would sober them up and feed them, restoring their health and also trying to help them find work. He continually expended all his own money and frequently borrowed from friends. When his hat-making boss asked Corbett about his lack of decent clothes for himself, Corbett always said he was "doing the Lord's work." His boss later described him as "a good man, for all of his faults were of the head, and not of the heart."

Enlistment in the Union Army
On April 19, 1861, early in the American Civil War, Corbett, who was anti-slavery, enlisted as a private in Company I of the Union Army's 12th New York State Militia. Corbett's eccentric behavior quickly got him into trouble. He always carried a Bible with him and read passages aloud from it regularly, held unauthorized prayer meetings, and argued with his superior officers. Corbett also condemned officers and superiors for what he perceived as violations of God's word. In one instance, he verbally reprimanded Colonel Daniel Butterfield for using profanity and taking the Lord's name in vain. He was sent to the guardhouse for several days but refused to apologize for his insubordination. Due to his continued disruptive behavior and refusal to take orders, Corbett was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot. His sentence was eventually reduced, and he was discharged in August 1863. Corbett re-enlisted later that month in Company L, 16th New York Cavalry Regiment. On February 26, 1864, he was demoted to private as punishment for an unknown incident.

Andersonville
Despite his religious-oriented eccentricities, Corbett reportedly was a good soldier. On June 24, 1864, after Confederate States Army troops led by John S. Mosby in Culpeper, Virginia had captured a good number of Corbett's comrades, Corbett continued to fire at the enemy from behind a persimmon tree and in a ditch with a seven-shooter repeating rifle. Three attempts were made to capture him before success was finally had when he ran out of ammo. Once Corbett was overtaken, one of the junior officers leaped from his saddle, enraged at Corbett's persistence, knocked the Spencer rifle from Corbett, and aimed a pistol at his head. Captain Chapman objected, "Don’t shoot that man! He has a right to defend himself to the last!" Corbett later related to friends that the man who saved his life was Mosby, though this is dubious.

Corbett was to be a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison. While on the way to Andersonville, the following incident happened, told by a fellow prisoner of Corbett's named William Collins: "At Macon there were about a thousand prisoners who had arrived ahead of us. The train we were on unloaded our thousand making 2000 in all. We were taken to an old pasture or common near the railroad tracks where a furrow was ploughed around it for a deadline. There was a small stream of water close to the guard line and the prisoners made a rush for it, most of them had no water for many hours, but the guards kept them back. One of the more venturesome than the rest got through the line and attempted to fill his canteen. He was immediately shot in the arm with buckshot by one of the guards. He was pushed back among our men and laid under a tree. The wounded man was suffering greatly and called for water to ease his pain, but none had any in his canteen. Boston Corbett stepped out of the ranks, having been unable to stand silent any longer. He crossed the deadline, filled his canteen in the stream and gave the wounded man a drink. The guards continually threatened him with death, but Corbett ignored them and went about his business. Despite their threats he returned unharmed and rejoined the ranks of prisoners. The cheers of the soldiers at this brave deed could have been heard one mile away, but Corbett seemed to think it was not out of the ordinary. It was the bravest deed that I had seen during the war. We arrived at Andersonville prison the next day."

Corbett met Richard Thatcher, a fellow POW who described Corbett as having "qualities that challenged my admiration, even more than the heroism he was capable of displaying in the battlefield. He read passages from the Scriptures to me, and spoke words of sound and wholesome advice, from which I began to learn that he was one who had the courage of his convictions." Corbett, among others, led prayer meetings and patriotic rallies to boost morale, according to John McElroy's eyewitness account in his 1879 memoir Andersonville.

After five months, Corbett was released in a prisoner exchange in November 1864 and was admitted to a military hospital in Annapolis, Maryland where he was treated for scurvy, malnutrition and exposure. Upon Corbett's return to his company, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Corbett later testified for the prosecution in the trial of the commandant of Andersonville Prison, Captain Henry Wirz.

Pursuit and death of John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln, on April 14, 1865; Lincoln died the next day. On the night Lincoln was shot, Corbett's regiment were based around the Potomac in Vienna, Virginia, and on Saturday morning, they were sent out to search for signs of the assassins and learned Booth's identity as the assassin. A two-hour procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building took place during Lincoln's funeral. Corbett and the rest of the Cavalry formed part of the parade, joining other regiments leading the hearse. Corbett's regiment had barely left the Capitol after the funeral parade when orders caught up with Lt. Doherty to pursue a lead about Booth. Corbett took time to request permission to attend night meetings at McKendree Chapel, where the leader allowed Corbett to lead in prayer over the President's death. On April 24, the regiment was sent to capture Booth. Corbett was among the first to volunteer. On April 26, the regiment surrounded Booth and one of his accomplices, David Herold, in a tobacco barn on the Virginia farm of Richard Garrett. Doherty asked Corbett "to deploy the men right and left" to surround the farm. Corbett and other soldiers arrayed themselves around the barn to ensure neither man escaped. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused and cried out, "I will not be taken alive!". The barn was set on fire in an attempt to force him out into the open, but Booth remained inside. Corbett was positioned near a large crack in the barn wall. He asked Doherty and offered to enter the barn and try to subdue Booth by himself; Corbett urged that if Booth shot him, the other soldiers could overwhelm him before he could reload (Corbett was unaware that Booth had a carbine and several revolvers.) Doherty rejected the suggestion, and Corbett moved back to his position. Lt. Colonel Everton Conger came past Corbett, igniting clumps of hay and slipped them in the cracks in the wall, hoping to burn Booth out. Booth walked to the flames, assessing whether he could extinguish the fire. Corbett claimed that he saw Booth aim his carbine, prompting him to shoot at Booth through the crack with his Colt revolver, mortally wounding him. Booth screamed in pain and fell to the ground.

Doherty, Conger, and several soldiers rushed into the burning barn and carried Booth out. Assessing his condition, Corbett and others felt a cosmic justice in that Booth's entry wound was in the same spot he shot Lincoln. The bullet struck Booth in the back of the head behind his left ear and passed through his neck. Three of Booth's vertebrae were pierced and his spinal cord was partially severed, leaving him completely paralyzed. As Mary Clemmer Ames would later put it, "The balls entered the skull of each at nearly the same spot, but the trifling difference made an immeasurable difference...Mr. Lincoln was unconscious...Booth suffered as exquisite agony as if he had been broken on a wheel." Conger initially thought Booth had shot himself, though Colonel Lafayette C. Baker was certain he had not. Corbett stepped forward and admitted he shot Booth, giving Doherty his gun. Doherty, Baker and Conger questioned Corbett, who said he had intended to merely wound Booth in the shoulder but that either his aim slipped or Booth moved when Corbett fired. Initial statements by Doherty and others made no mention of Corbett having violated any orders, nor did they suggest that he would face disciplinary action for shooting Booth. According to later sources, when asked why he had violated orders, Corbett replied, "Providence directed me." Author Scott Martelle disputes this, noting "his initial statement, and those by Baker, Conger, and Doherty don't mention Providence...those details came long after the shooting itself, amid the swirl of rumor and conjecture and considerable lobbying over the reward money."

Dragged to the porch of Garrett's farmhouse, Booth asked for water. Conger and Baker poured some into his mouth, which he immediately spat out, unable to swallow. Booth asked to be rolled over and turned facedown; Conger rejected the idea. "Then at least turn me on my side," Booth pleaded; the move did not relieve Booth's suffering. Baker said, "He seemed to suffer extreme pain whenever he was moved...and would several times repeat, 'Kill me!'" At sunrise, Booth remained in agony, and his breathing became more labored and irregular. Unable to move his limbs, he asked a soldier to lift his hands to his face and uttered his last words as he gazed at them: "Useless ... useless." Booth then began gasping for air as his throat continued to swell, and he made a gurgling sound before he died from asphyxia, approximately two to three hours after Corbett shot him.

Doherty told Corbett to ride to neighboring farms to find breakfast for the men. Corbett did so, but first "rode off to a spot when I could be alone and pray, and when I had gone through my usual morning prayer, I asked the Lord in regard to the shooting. At once, I was filled with praise, for I felt a clear consciousness that it was an act of duty in the sight of God." Corbett found supplies for half the men, and they finished their meal before Booth died. Conger and Corbett rode off to Washington.

Fame
According to Johnson, Corbett was accompanied by Lt. Doherty to the War Department in Washington, D.C. to meet Secretary Edwin Stanton about Booth's shooting. Edward Steers writes that it was "not against orders. Conger (said)..."They had no orders either to fire or not to fire." Corbett maintained that he believed Booth had intended to shoot his way out of the barn and that he acted in self-defense. He told Stanton, "...Booth would have killed me if I had not shot first. I think I did right." Corbett maintained that he did not intend to kill Booth but merely wanted to inflict a disabling wound, but either his aim slipped or Booth moved at the moment Corbett pulled the trigger. Stanton paused and then stated, "The rebel is dead. The patriot lives; he has spared the country expense, continued excitement and trouble. Discharge the patriot." Martelle says that "no other source mentions such a meeting...Johnson's memoir, which came out a half-century later, is just another part of the lore." Corbett was greeted by a cheering crowd. As he made his way to Mathew Brady's studio to have his official portrait taken, the crowd followed him, asking for autographs and requesting that he tell them about shooting Booth. Corbett told the crowd:

"I aimed at his body. I did not want to kill him....I think he stooped to pick up something just as I fired. That may probably account for his receiving the ball in the head. [W]hen the assassin lay at my feet, a wounded man, and I saw the bullet had taken effect about an inch back of the ear, and I remembered that Mr. Lincoln was wounded about the same part of the head, I said: 'What a God we have...God avenged Abraham Lincoln.'"

Corbett testified in the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, testifying on May 17, 1865.

Corbett was largely considered a hero by the public and press. Initial newspaper reporters described him as a simple and humble man devoted, possibly excessively, to his faith; he had eccentricities but also did his duty well. One newspaper editor declared that Corbett would "live as one of the World's great avengers." For his part in Booth's capture, Corbett received a portion of the $100,000 reward money, amounting to $1,653.84. His annual salary as a U.S. sergeant was $204. Corbett received offers to purchase the gun he used to shoot Booth. He refused, stating, "That is not mine—it belongs to the Government, and I would not sell it for any price." Corbett also declined an offer for one of Booth's pistols as he did not want a reminder of shooting Booth.

Negative responses
Later, newspaper accounts began to offer some criticism of Corbett's actions, that he had acted wilfully and against orders when he shot Booth (no orders were issued on whether Booth should be taken alive). Richard Garrett, the owner of the farm on which Booth died, and his 12-year-old son Robert said years later that Booth had never reached for his gun. Steers disputes this, noting that this contradicts original accounts.

Post-war life
Southern sympathizers sent letters threatening to kill Corbett, so he kept a gun nearby at all times to defend himself. After his discharge from the army in August 1865, Corbett returned to work as a milliner in Boston and frequently attended the Bromfield Street Church. When the hatting business in Boston slowed, Corbett moved to Danbury, Connecticut, to continue his work and also "preached in the country round about." By 1870, he had relocated once again to Camden, New Jersey, where he was known as a "Methodist lay preacher" while also continuing to be a milliner. Corbett's inability to hold a job was attributed to his fanatical behavior; he was routinely fired after continuing his habit of stopping work to pray for his co-workers. To earn money, Corbett capitalized on his role as "Lincoln's Avenger". He gave lectures about the shooting of Booth accompanied by illustrated lantern slides at Sunday schools, women's groups and tent meetings. Corbett was never asked back due to his increasingly erratic behavior and incoherent speeches.

R. B. Hoover, a man who later befriended Corbett, recalled that Corbett believed "men who were high in authority at Washington at the time of the assassination" were hounding him. Corbett said the men were angry because he had deprived them of prosecuting and executing John Wilkes Booth themselves. He also believed the same men had gotten him fired from various jobs. Corbett's paranoia was furthered by hate mail he received for killing Booth. He became fearful that "Booth's Avengers" or organizations like the "Secret Order" were planning to seek revenge upon him and took to carrying a pistol with him at all times. As his paranoia increased, Corbett began brandishing his pistol at friends or strangers he deemed suspicious.

While attending the Soldiers' Reunion of the Blue and Gray in Caldwell, Ohio, in 1875, Corbett got into an argument with several men over the death of John Wilkes Booth. The men questioned if Booth had been killed at all, which enraged Corbett. He then drew his pistol on the men but was removed from the reunion before he could fire it. In 1878, Corbett moved to Concordia, Kansas, where he acquired a plot of land through homesteading upon which he constructed a dugout home. He continued working as a preacher and attended revival meetings frequently. Throughout the rest of his life, he began to become paranoid that Booth's family or friends would come and kill him, causing him to go insane.

Disappearance
Due to his fame as "Lincoln's Avenger", Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka in January 1887. On February 15, he became convinced that officers of the House were discriminating against him. He jumped to his feet, brandished a revolver, and began chasing the officers out of the building. No one was hurt, and Corbett was arrested. The following day, a judge declared Corbett insane and sent him to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane. On May 26, 1888, he escaped from the asylum on horseback. He then rode to Neodesha, Kansas, where he briefly stayed with Richard Thatcher. When Corbett left, he told Thatcher he was going to Mexico.

Conjecture arose that rather than going to Mexico, Corbett may have settled in a cabin he built in the forests near Hinckley, in Pine County in eastern Minnesota and that he died in the Great Hinckley Fire on September 1, 1894. This conjecture was based on speculation about the name "Thomas Corbett" appearing on the list of dead and a secondhand account by someone who said the fire victim had claimed to be Boston Corbett. Scott Martelle cited it as "too tenuous a connection to credit."

Imposters
Several men claimed to be him in the years following Corbett's disappearance. A few years after Corbett was last seen in Neodesha, Kansas, a patent medicine salesman in Enid, Oklahoma, filed an application using Corbett's name to receive pension benefits. After an investigation proved that the man was not Boston Corbett, he was imprisoned. In September 1905, a man arrested in Dallas also claimed to be Corbett. He, too, was proven to be an imposter and was sent to prison for perjury and then to the Government Hospital for the Insane.

Legacy
Scott Martelle, who wrote the 2015 biography The Madman and the Assassin: The Strange Life of Boston Corbett, the Man Who Killed John Wilkes Booth, called Corbett "the closest to an average, everyday person...a regular, run-of-the-mill American—albeit a strange one—who did his job as a hatter, and then as a soldier".

Memorials
In 1958, Boy Scout Troop 31 of Concordia, Kansas, built a roadside monument to Corbett on Key Road. A small sign was also placed to mark the dugout where Corbett had lived.

Portrayals
A fictional version of Corbett appears in the novel Andersonville (1955). Dabbs Greer played a fictitious version of Corbett in the Lawman episode "The Unmasked" (1962), in which Corbett is living under the name "Joe Brockway" as a Wyoming hotel owner, being searched for by two former vengeful Confederate soldiers (although he gives his name as "Bill Corbett"). Corbett is portrayed by William Mark McCullough in the series Manhunt (2024).

title: Boston Corbett


text:
Berber languages

The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related but mostly mutually unintelligible languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa. The languages are primarily spoken and not typically written. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most pervasive.

The Berber languages have a similar level of variety to the Romance languages, although they are sometimes referred to as a single collective language, often as "Berber", "Tamazight", or "Amazigh". The languages, with a few exceptions, form a dialect continuum. There is a debate as to how to best sub-categorize languages within the Berber branch. Berber languages typically follow verb–subject–object word order. Their phonological inventories are diverse.

Millions of people in Morocco and Algeria natively speak a Berber language, as do smaller populations of Libya, Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. There are also likely a few million speakers of Berber languages in Western Europe. Tashlhiyt, Kabyle, Central Atlas Tamazight, Tarifit, and Shawiya are some of the most commonly spoken Berber languages. Exact numbers are impossible to ascertain as there are few modern North African censuses that include questions on language use, and what censuses do exist have known flaws.

Following independence in the 20th century, the Berber languages have been suppressed and suffered from low prestige in North Africa. Recognition of the Berber languages has been growing in the 21st century, with Morocco and Algeria adding Tamazight as an official language to their constitutions in 2011 and 2016 respectively.

Most Berber languages have a high percentage of borrowing and influence from the Arabic language, as well as from other languages. For example, Arabic loanwords represent 35% to 46% of the total vocabulary of the Kabyle language and represent 51.7% of the total vocabulary of Tarifit. Almost all Berber languages took from Arabic the pharyngeal fricatives /ʕ/ and /ħ/, the (nongeminated) uvular stop /q/, and the voiceless pharyngealized consonant /ṣ/. Unlike the Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic languages of the Afro-Asiatic phylum, Berber languages are not tonal languages.

Terminology
"Tamazight" and "Berber languages" are often used interchangeably. However, "Tamazight" is sometimes used to refer to a specific subset of Berber languages, such as Central Tashlhiyt. "Tamazight" can also be used to refer to Standard Moroccan Tamazight or Standard Algerian Tamazight, as in the Moroccan and Algerian constitutions respectively. In Morocco, besides referring to all Berber languages or to Standard Moroccan Tamazight, "Tamazight" is often used in contrast to Tashelhit and Tarifit to refer to Central Atlas Tamazight.

The use of Berber has been the subject of debate due to its historical background as an exonym and present equivalence with the Arabic word for "barbarian." One group, the Linguasphere Observatory, has attempted to introduce the neologism "Tamazic languages" to refer to the Berber languages. Amazigh people typically use "Tamazight" when speaking English. Historically, Berbers did not refer to themselves as Berbers/Amazigh but had their own terms to refer to themselves. For example, the Kabyles use the term "Leqbayel" to refer to their own people, while the Chaouis identified themselves as "Ishawiyen" instead of Berber/Amazigh.

Origin
Since modern Berber languages are relatively homogeneous, the date of the Proto-Berber language from which the modern group is derived was probably comparatively recent, comparable to the age of the Germanic or Romance subfamilies of the Indo-European family. In contrast, the split of the group from the other Afroasiatic sub-phyla is much earlier, and is therefore sometimes associated with the local Mesolithic Capsian culture. A number of extinct populations are believed to have spoken Afroasiatic languages of the Berber branch. According to Peter Behrens and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst, linguistic evidence suggests that the peoples of the C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. The Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key loanwords related to pastoralism that are of Berber origin, including the terms for sheep and water/Nile. This in turn suggests that the C-Group population—which, along with the Kerma culture, inhabited the Nile valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afroasiatic languages.

Orthography
Berber languages are primarily oral languages without a major written component. Historically, they were written with the Libyco-Berber script. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art and in various sepulchres; the oldest known variations of the script dates to inscriptions in Dugga from 600 BC. Usage of this script, in the form of Tifinagh, has continued into the present day among the Tuareg people. Following the spread of Islam, some Berber scholars also utilized the Arabic script. The Berber Latin alphabet was developed following the introduction of the Latin script in the nineteenth century by the West. The nineteenth century also saw the development of Neo-Tifinagh, an adaptation of Tuareg Tifinagh for use with other Berber languages.

There are now three writing systems in use for Berber languages: Tifinagh, the Arabic script, and the Berber Latin alphabet, with the Latin alphabet being the most widely used today.

Subclassification
With the exception of Zenaga, Tetserret, and Tuareg, the Berber languages form a dialect continuum. Different linguists take different approaches towards drawing boundaries between languages in this continuum. Maarten Kossmann notes that it is difficult to apply the classic tree model of historical linguistics towards the Berber languages:"[The Berber language family]'s continuous history of convergence and differentiation along new lines makes an definition of branches arbitrary. Moreover, mutual intelligibility and mutual influence render notions such as 'split' or 'branching' rather difficult to apply except, maybe, in the case of Zenaga and Tuareg."Kossmann roughly groups the Berber languages into seven blocks:

 * Berber
 * Western (Zenaga, Tetserret)
 * Tuareg
 * Western Moroccan
 * southwestern and central Moroccan languages (Tashelhiyt, most of Central Atlas Tamazight)
 * northwestern Moroccan languages (Ghomara, Senhadja de Sraïr)
 * Zenatic (a dialect continuum stretching from eastern Morocco to the Siwa Oasis)
 * Kabyle
 * Ghadames
 * Awjila

The Zenatic block is typically divided into the Zenati and Eastern Berber branches, due to the marked difference in features at each end of the continuum. Otherwise, subclassifications by different linguists typically combine various blocks into different branches. Western Moroccan languages, Zenati languages, Kabyle, and Ghadames may be grouped under Northern Berber; Awjila is often included as an Eastern Berber language alongside Siwa, Sokna, and El Foqaha. These approaches divide the Berber languages into Northern, Southern (Tuareg), Eastern, and Western varieties.

Population
The vast majority of speakers of Berber languages are concentrated in Morocco and Algeria. The exact population of speakers has been historically difficult to ascertain due to lack of official recognition.

Morocco
Morocco is the country with the greatest number of speakers of Berber languages. As of 2022, Ethnologue estimates there to be 13.8 million speakers of Berber languages in Morocco, based on figures from 2016 and 2017.

In 1960, the first census after Moroccan independence was held. It claimed that 32 percent of Moroccans spoke a Berber language, including bi-, tri- and quadrilingual people. The 2004 census found that 3,894,805 Moroccans over five years of age spoke Tashelhit, 2,343,937 spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 1,270,986 spoke Tarifit, representing 14.6%, 8.8%, and 4.8% respectively of the surveyed population, or roughly 28.2% of the surveyed population combined. The 2014 census found that 14.1% of the population spoke Tashelhit, 7.9% spoke Central Atlas Tamazight, and 4% spoke Tarifit, or about 26% of the population combined.

These estimates, as well as the estimates from various academic sources, are summarized as follows:

Algeria
Algeria is the country with the second greatest number of speakers of Berber languages. In 1906, the total population speaking Berber languages in Algeria, excluding the thinly populated Sahara region, was estimated at 1,305,730 out of 4,447,149, or 29%. Secondary sources disagree on the percentage of self-declared native Berber speakers in the 1966 census, the last Algerian census containing a question about the mother tongue. Some give 17.9%   while other report 19%.

Kabyle speakers account for the vast majority of speakers of Berber languages in Algeria. Shawiya is the second most commonly spoken Berber language in Algeria. Other Berber languages spoken in Algeria include: Shenwa, with 76,300 speakers; Tashelhit, with 6,000 speakers; Ouargli, with 20,000 speakers; Tamahaq, with 71,400 speakers; Tugurt, with 8,100 speakers; Tidikelt, with 1,000 speakers; Gurara, with 11,000 speakers; and Mozabite, with 150,000 speakers.

Population estimates are summarized as follows:

Other countries
As of 1998, there were an estimated 450,000 Tawellemmet speakers, 250,000 Air Tamajeq speakers, and 20,000 Tamahaq speakers in Niger.

As of 2018 and 2014 respectively, there were an estimated 420,000 speakers of Tawellemmet and 378,000 of Tamasheq in Mali.

As of 2022, based on figures from 2020, Ethnologue estimates there to be 285,890 speakers of Berber languages in Libya: 247,000 speakers of Nafusi, 22,800 speakers of Tamahaq, 13,400 speakers of Ghadamés, and 2,690 speakers of Awjila. The number of Siwi speakers in Libya is listed as negligible, and the last Sokna speaker is thought to have died in the 1950s.

There are an estimated 50,000 Djerbi speakers in Tunisia, based on figures from 2004. Sened is likely extinct, with the last speaker having died in the 1970s. Ghadamés, though not indigenous to Tunisia, is estimated to have 3,100 speakers throughout the country. Chenini is one of the rare remaining Berber-speaking villages in Tunisia.

There are an estimated 20,000 Siwi speakers in Egypt, based on figures from 2013.

As of 2018 and 2017 respectively, there were an estimated 200 speakers of Zenaga and 117,000 of Tamasheq in Mauritania.

As of 2009, there were an estimated 122,000 Tamasheq speakers in Burkina Faso.

There are an estimated 1.5 million speakers of various Berber languages in France. A small number of Tawellemmet speakers live in Nigeria.

In total, there are an estimated 3.6 million speakers of Berber languages in countries outside of Morocco and Algeria, summarized as follows:

Status
After independence, all the Maghreb countries to varying degrees pursued a policy of Arabisation, aimed partly at displacing French from its colonial position as the dominant language of education and literacy. Under this policy the use of the Berber languages was suppressed or even banned. This state of affairs has been contested by Berbers in Morocco and Algeria—especially Kabylie—and was addressed in both countries by affording the language official status and introducing it in some schools.

Morocco
After gaining independence from France in 1956, Morocco began a period of Arabisation through 1981, with primary and secondary school education gradually being changed to Arabic instruction, and with the aim of having administration done in Arabic, rather than French. During this time, there were riots amongst the Amazigh population, which called for the inclusion of Tamazight as an official language.

The 2000 Charter for Education Reform marked a change in policy, with its statement of "openness to Tamazight."

Planning for a public Tamazight-language TV network began in 2006; in 2010, the Moroccan government launched Tamazight TV.

On July 29, 2011, Tamazight was added as an official language to the Moroccan constitution.

Algeria
After gaining independence from France in 1962, Algeria committed to a policy of Arabisation, which, after the imposition of the Circular of July 1976, encompassed the spheres of education, public administration, public signage, print publication, and the judiciary. While primarily directed towards the erasure of French in Algerian society, these policies also targeted Berber languages, leading to dissatisfaction and unrest amongst speakers of Berber languages, who made up about one quarter of the population.

After the 1994-1995 general school boycott in Kabylia, Tamazight was recognized for the first time as a national language. In 2002, following the riots of the Black Spring, Tamazight was recognized for the second time as a national language, though not as an official one. This was done on April 8, 2003.

Tamazight has been taught for three hours a week through the first three years of Algerian middle schools since 2005.

On January 5, 2016, it was announced that Tamazight had been added as a national and official language in a draft amendment to the Algerian constitution; it was added to the constitution as a national and official language on February 7, 2016.

Libya
Although regional councils in Libya's Nafusa Mountains affiliated with the National Transitional Council reportedly use the Berber language of Nafusi and have called for it to be granted co-official status with Arabic in a prospective new constitution, it does not have official status in Libya as in Morocco and Algeria. As areas of Libya south and west of Tripoli such as the Nafusa Mountains were taken from the control of Gaddafi government forces in early summer 2011, Berber workshops and exhibitions sprang up to share and spread the Berber culture and language.

Other Countries
In Mali and Niger, some Tuareg languages have been recognized as national languages and have been part of school curriculums since the 1960s.

Notation
In linguistics, the phonology of Berber languages is written with the International Phonetic Alphabet, with the following exceptions:

Consonants
The influence of Arabic, the process of spirantization, and the absence of labialization have caused the consonant systems of Berber languages to differ significantly by region. Berber languages found north of, and in the northern half of, the Sahara have greater influence from Arabic, including that of loaned phonemes, than those in more southern regions, like Tuareg. Most Berber languages in northern regions have additionally undergone spirantization, in which historical short stops have changed into fricatives. Northern Berber languages (which is a subset of but not identical to Berber languages in geographically northern regions) commonly have labialized velars and uvulars, unlike other Berber languages. Two languages that illustrate the resulting range in consonant inventory across Berber languages are Ahaggar Tuareg and Kabyle; Kabyle has two more places of articulation and three more manners of articulation than Ahaggar Tuareg.

There is still, however, common consonant features observed across Berber languages. Almost all Berber languages have bilabial, dental, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and laryngeal consonants, and almost all consonants have a long counterpart. All Berber languages, as is common in Afroasiatic languages, have pharyngealized consonants and phonemic gemination. The consonants which may undergo gemination, and the positions in a word where gemination may occur, differ by language. They have also been observed to have tense and lax consonants, although the status of tense consonants has been the subject of "considerable discussion" by linguists.

Vowels
The vowel systems of Berber languages also vary widely, with inventories ranging from three phonemic vowels in most Northern Berber languages, to seven in some Eastern Berber and Tuareg languages. For example, Taselhiyt has the vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/, while Ayer Tuareg has the vowels /i/, /ə/, /u/, /e/, /ɐ/, /o/, and /a/. Contrastive vowel length is rare in Berber languages. Tuareg languages had previously been reported to have contrastive vowel length, but this is no longer the leading analysis. A complex feature of Berber vowel systems is the role of central vowels, which vary in occurrence and function across languages; there is a debate as to whether schwa is a proper phoneme of Northern Berber languages.

Suprasegmentals
Most Berber languages:
 * allow for any combination of CC consonant clusters.
 * have no lexical tones.
 * either have no lexical stress (Northern Berber languages) or have grammatically significant lexical stress.

Phonetic correspondences
Phonetic correspondences between Berber languages are fairly regular. Some examples, of varying importance and regularity, include [g/ž/y]; [k/š]; [l/ř/r]; [l/ž, ll/ddž]; [trill/ vocalized r]; [šš/ttš]; [ss/ttš]; [w/g/b]; [q/ɣ]; [h/Ø]; and [s-š-ž/h]. Words in various Berber languages are shown to demonstrate these phonetic correspondences as follows:

Grammar
Berber languages characteristically make frequent use of apophony in the form of ablaut. Berber apophony has been historically analyzed as functioning similarly to the Semitic root, but this analysis has fallen out of favor due to the lexical significance of vowels in Berber languages, as opposed to their primarily grammatical significance in Semitic languages.

The lexical categories of all Berber languages are nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, and prepositions. With the exception of a handful of Arabic loanwords in most languages, Berber languages do not have proper adjectives. In Northern and Eastern Berber languages, adjectives are a subcatergory of nouns; in Tuareg, relative clauses and stative verb forms are used to modify nouns instead.

The gender, number, and case of nouns, as well as the gender, number, and person of verbs, are typically distinguished through affixes. Arguments are described with word order and clitics. When sentences have a verb, they essentially follow verb–subject–object word order, although some linguists believe alternate descriptors would better categorize certain languages, such as Taqbaylit.

Pronouns
Berber languages have both independent and dependent pronouns, both of which distinguish between person and number. Gender is also typically distinguished in the second and third person, and sometimes in first person plural.

Linguist Maarten Kossmann divides pronouns in Berber languages into three morphological groups:

 * 1) Independent pronouns
 * 2) Direct object clitics
 * 3) Indirect object clitics; prepositional suffixes; adnominal suffixes

When clitics precede or follow a verb, they are almost always ordered with the indirect object first, direct object second, and andative-venitive deictic clitic last. An example in Tarifit is shown as follows:

3SG:M-give:PAST =3SG:IO =3SG:M:DO =VEN

"He gave it to him (in this direction)." (Tarifit)

The allowed positioning of different kinds of clitics varies by language.

Nouns
Nouns are distinguished by gender, number, and case in most Berber languages, with gender being feminine or masculine, number being singular or plural, and case being in the construct or free state. Some Arabic borrowings in Northern and Eastern Berber languages do not accept these affixes; they instead retain the Arabic article regardless of case, and follow Arabic patterns to express number and gender.

Gender can be feminine or masculine, and can be lexically determined, or can be used to distinguish qualities of the noun. For humans and "higher" animals (such as mammals and large birds), gender distinguishes sex, whereas for objects and "lesser" animals (such as insects and lizards), it distinguishes size. For some nouns, often fruits and vegetables, gender can also distinguish the specificity of the noun. The ways in which gender is used to distinguish nouns is shown in as follows, with examples from Figuig: An example of nouns with lexically determined gender are the feminine t-lussi ("butter") and masculine a-ɣi ("buttermilk") in Figuig. Mass nouns have lexically determined gender across Berber languages.

Most Berber languages have two cases, which distinguish the construct state from the free state. The construct state is also called the "construct case, "relative case," "annexed state" (état d'annexion), or the "nominative case"; the free state (état libre) is also called the "direct case" or "accusative case." When present, case is always expressed through nominal prefixes and initial-vowel reduction. The use of the marked nominative system and constructions similar to Split-S alignment varies by language.  Eastern Berber languages do not have case.

Number can be singular or plural, which is marked with prefixation, suffixation, and sometimes apophony. Nouns usually are made plural by one of either suffixation or apophony, with prefixation applied independently. Specifics vary by language, but prefixation typically changes singular a- and ta- to plural i- and ti- respectively. The number of mass nouns are lexically determined. For example, in multiple Berber languages, such as Figuig, a-ɣi ("buttermilk") is singular while am-an ("water") is plural.

Nouns or pronouns — optionally extended with genitival pronominal affixes, demonstrative clitics, or pre-nominal elements, and then further modified by numerals, adjectives, possessive phrases, or relative clauses — can be built into noun phrases. Possessive phrases in noun phrases must have a genitive proposition.

There are a limited number of pre-nominal elements, which function similarly to pronoun syntactic heads of the noun phrase, and which can be categorized into three types as follows:

 * The pluralizer id-
 * The four pre-nominal elements roughly meaning "son(s) of" and "daughter(s) of", which commonly denote group identity and origin
 * Pre-nominal elements which expand on the meaning of the noun

Verbs
Verb bases are formed by stems that are optionally extended by prefixes, with mood, aspect, and negation applied with a vocalic scheme. This form can then be conjugated with affixes to agree with person, number, and gender, which produces a word.

Different linguists analyze and label aspects in the Berber languages very differently. Kossman roughly summarizes the basic stems which denote aspect as follows: Different languages may have more stems and aspects, or may distinguish within the above categories. Stem formation can be very complex, with Tuareg by some measures having over two hundred identified conjugation subtypes.
 * Aorist, also called aoriste, without a preceding particle:
 * imperative
 * unmarked (taking aspect from preceding verb)
 * Aorist, with the preceding article ad:
 * irrealis (adhortative, future)
 * Preterite, or accompli:
 * past tense, in dynamic use
 * states (such as "to want, to know"), in stative use
 * Intensive Aorist, also called habitative or inaccompli:
 * dynamic present
 * habitative and iterative
 * habitative imperative
 * negation of any imperative

The aspectual stems of some classes of verbs in various Berber languages are shown as follows: Verb phrases are built with verb morphology, pronominal and deictic clitics, pre-verbal particles, and auxiliary elements. The pre-verbal particles are ad, wər, and their variants, which correspond to the meanings of "non-realized" and "negative" respectively.

Numerals
Many Berber languages have lost use of their original numerals from three onwards due to the influence of Arabic; Tarifit has lost all except one. Languages that may retain all their original numerals include Tashelhiyt, Tuareg, Ghadames, Ouargla, and Zenaga.

Original Berber numerals agree in gender with the noun they describe, whereas the borrowed Arabic forms do not.

The numerals 1–10 in Tashelhiyt and Mali Tuareg are as follows:

Sentence structure
Sentences in Berber languages can be divided into verbal and non-verbal sentences. The topic, which has a unique intonation in the sentence, precedes all other arguments in both types.

Verbal sentences have a finite verb, and are commonly understood to follow verb–subject–object word order (VSO). Some linguists have proposed opposing analyses of the word order patterns in Berber languages, and there has been some support for characterizing Taqbaylit as discourse-configurational.

Existential, attributive, and locational sentences in most Berber languages are expressed with non-verbal sentences, which have no finite verb. In these sentences, the predicate follows the noun, with the predicative particle d sometimes in between. Two examples, one without and one with a subject, are given from Kabyle as follows: ð a-qšiš

PRED EL:M-boy

"It is a boy." (Kabyle)

nətta ð a-qšiš

he PRED EL:M-boy

"He is a boy." (Kabyle)Non-verbal sentences may use the verb meaning "to be," which exists in all Berber languages. An example from Tarifit is given as follows: i-tiři ða

3SG:M-be:I here

"He is always here." (habitual) (Tarifit)

Lexicon
Above all in the area of basic lexicon, the Berber languages are very similar. However, the household-related vocabulary in sedentary tribes is especially different from the one found in nomadic ones, whereas Tahaggart has only two or three designations for species of palm tree, other languages may have as many as 200 similar words. In contrast, Tahaggart has a rich vocabulary for the description of camels.

Some loanwords in the Berber languages can be traced to pre-Roman times. The Berber words te-ḇăyne "date" and a-sḇan "loose woody tissue around the palm tree stem" originate from Ancient Egyptian, likely due to the introduction of date palm cultivation into North Africa from Egypt. Around a dozen Berber words are probable Phoenician-Punic loanwords, although the overall influence of Phoenician-Punic on Berber languages is negligible. A number of loanwords could be attributed to Phoenician-Punic, Hebrew, or Aramaic. The similar vocabulary between these Semitic languages, as well as Arabic, is a complicating factor in tracing the etymology of certain words.

Words of Latin origin have been introduced into Berber languages over time. Maarten Kossman separates Latin loanwords in Berber languages into those from during the Roman empire ("Latin loans"), from after the fall of the Roman empire ("African Romance loans"), precolonial non-African Romance loans, and colonial and post-colonial Romance loans. It can be difficult to distinguish Latin from African Romance loans. There are about 40 likely Latin or African Romance loanwords in Berber languages, which tend to be agricultural terms, religious terms, terms related to learning, or words for plants or useful objects. Use of these terms varies by language. For example, Tuareg does not retain the Latin agricultural terms, which relate to a form of agriculture not practiced by the Tuareg people. There are some Latin loans that are only known to be used in Shawiya.

The Berber calendar uses month names derived from the Julian calendar. Not every language uses every month. For example, Figuig appears to use only eight of the months. These names may be precolonial non-African Romance loans, adopted into Berber languages through Arabic, rather than from Latin directly.

The most influential external language on the lexicon of Berber languages is Arabic. Maarten Kossmann calculates that 0-5% of Ghadames and Awdjila's core vocabularies, and over 15% of Ghomara, Siwa, and Senhadja de Sraïr's core vocabularies, are loans from Arabic. Most other Berber languages loan from 6–15% of their core vocabulary from Arabic. Salem Chaker estimates that Arabic loanwords represent 38% of Kabyle vocabulary, 25% of Tashelhiyt vocabulary, and 5% of Tuareg vocabulary, including non-core words.

On the one hand, the words and expressions connected to Islam were borrowed, e.g. Tashlhiyt bismillah "in the name of Allah" < Classical Arabic bi-smi-llāhi, Tuareg ta-mejjīda "mosque" (Arabic masjid); on the other, Berber adopted cultural concepts such as Kabyle ssuq "market" from Arabic as-sūq, tamdint "town" < Arabic madīna. Even expressions such as the Arabic greeting as-salāmu ʿalaikum "Peace be upon you!" were adopted (Tuareg salāmu ɣlīkum).

Influence on other languages
The Berber languages have influenced local Arabic dialects in the Maghreb. Although Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantly Semitic and Arabic vocabulary, it contains a few Berber loanwords which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian Arabic and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic. Their influence is also seen in some languages in West Africa. F. W. H. Migeod pointed to strong resemblances between Berber and Hausa in such words and phrases as these:

In addition he notes that the genitive in both languages is formed with n = "of" (though likely a common inheritance from Proto-Afro-Asiatic; cf. A.Eg genitive n).

Extinct languages
A number of extinct populations are believed to have spoken Afro-Asiatic languages of the Berber branch. According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence suggests that the peoples of the C-Group culture in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan spoke Berber languages. The Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of Berber origin, including the terms for sheep and water/Nile. This in turn suggests that the C-Group population—which, along with the Kerma culture, inhabited the Nile valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afro-Asiatic languages.

Additionally, historical linguistics indicate that the Guanche language, which was spoken on the Canary Islands by the ancient Guanches, likely belonged to the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.

title: Berber languages