Four eleven forty-four

"Four eleven forty-four", or "'4-11-44"' is a phrase that has been used repeatedly in popular music and as a reference to numbers allegedly chosen by poor African Americans for the purpose of gambling on lotteries.

The Secrets of the Great City, an 1869 book by Edward Winslow Martin, referred to 4-11-44 and attributed the section on policy to "the New York correspondent of a provincial journal", but did not name the writer or give the date of the article, saying only that it had been published "recently".

When periodically the negro's lucky numbers, 4-11-44, come out on the slips of the alleged daily drawings, that are supposed to be held in some far-off Western town, intense excitement reigns in Thompson Street and along the Avenue, where someone is always the winner.

An immense impetus is given then to the bogus business that has no existence outside of the cigar stores and candy shops where it hides from the law, save in some cunning Bowery "broker's" back office, where the slips are printed and the "winnings" apportioned daily with due regard to the backer's interests.A song entitled "4-11-44" appeared in The Major, a theatrical musical by Edward Harrigan and David Braham.

Bob Cole published a song entitled "4-11-44: A Coon Ditty" in 1897 and performed it with the Black Patti Troubadour Company in the musical skit "At Jolly Cooney Island" around the same time.

The phrase appeared in 1909 in the newspaper comic "Little Nemo in Slumberland", by Winsor McCay, in which the numbers 4, 11 and 44 were shown on a sign hanging from the tail of an imaginary creature.

In 1912, The New York Times anticipated superstition surrounding the date April 11, 1944:[5] The 4-11-44 that may then be written will of course bring out into the letter writing industry every soul that ever hugged a rabbit's foot, or threw a horseshoe over the left shoulder, or a trembled when he broke a mirror or walked under a ladder.