Paint the town red

To go on wild spree is an American expression that dates from the late 19th century. Despite the claims of Melton Mowbray, a town in England, that the Marquis of Waterford and his hooligan friends painted several of the town’s buildings red in 1837 during a drunken spree, the expression was first cited in The New York Times some 50 years later. There are other allusions to red light districts and the spilling of blood in drunken brawls, but the origin of the expression, why ‘red’ and who first coined it, remains obscure.