From where comes the phrase - 'Paint the town red'?

Jack Flash

According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, this is a phrase of American origin but no elaboration is given on this. However, I also have a Dictionary of Curious Phrases which says: 'This expression was first recorded in an American newspaper at the end of the 19th century. The Boston Journal reported that 'whenever there was any excitement or anybody got particularly loud, they always said somebody was painting the town red'. A few years later, in 1897, the Chicago Advance said in an article 'the boys painted the town red with firecrackers'. By 1922 the expression was well enough known for James Joyce to make a joke in Ulysses 'And there he was at the end of his tether after having painted the town tolerably pink'. It has been suggested that the kind of behaviour associated with this phrase could lead to a certain amount of blood being splashed about, hence the reference to 'red'. The phrase may merely mean that those concerned attract attention to themselves, as they would if they wandered through the town splashing red paint everywhere. I hope this helps. Oct 03 02, 6:57 PM

mrts	the millennium edition of Brewers adds that the phrase perhaps originally alludes to a towns 'red light district' which raunchy cowboys and their molls would extend to the whole town Oct 03 02, 8:16 PM