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The American-English phrase to get caught with one’s hand in the cookie jar, and its variants, mean: to get caught doing something wrong, unauthorised or illegal—especially stealing, misusing public funds or abusing a position of power or privilege.
The literal act of getting one’s hand in a cookie jar—and of being punished for it—was evoked in an account of the 1905 Minnesota State Fair, published in The Minneapolis Journal (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) of Thursday 7th September 1905 [page 15, column 3]—the following takes place at the cookery exhibit:
“Look at those cookies,” a dapper city-bred man leaned on the case and stared with hungry eyes at half-a-dozen jumbles. “They carry me back fifty years and make me think of those Aunt Amelia made when I visited the old farm. I used to eat them a scallop at a time. My, my! I would give a good deal to try it again. […]”
[…]
“My, but I would like to get my hand in the old cookie jar again,” he said to his companion, “even if I was spanked for it.”
Before to get caught with one’s hand in the cookie jar became a fixed phrase, the image of a youngster being found stealing from a cookie jar occasionally occurred in reference to being exposed for doing something wrong, unauthorised or illegal. The following, for example, is from the column Local Briefs, published in The Republican-Courier (Bozeman, Montana, USA) of Tuesday 30th June 1908 [page 5, column 3]:
The Jesse James spirit prevaded [sic] the town along with the show of that name last Friday. At least said spirit played hob with Dick Hodke from the Cottonwood and riding his horse into town he proceeded to fill up on the bug juice which probably had a good deal to do with the shootin’ up, etc, which the original Jesse occasionally indulged in and while the aforesaid Dick didn’t do any shooting, he got real frisky and during the concert given by the show band rode his old plug with the blind bridle about the circle and narowly [sic] missed running some of the kids down. Later he cavorted around town chasing boys and frightening women. All this time Patrolman Tom Sipes was trying to get near enough to put some salt on the cayuse’s tail but to no avail and it was some time later that the officer managed to catch the obstreperous gentleman as he was crawling through the fence in the rear of the old Tudor corral. After extracting the devotee of Jesse James from the fence Patrolman Sipes started to take him to the city jug, but Dick had other ideas in the matter until Sipes lammed him one on the sky piece with his billy. After that Dick was docile enough and marched over to jail like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He spent the night sobering up and fighting Jailor Montgomery’s band of zoological specimens and in the morning he faced the uncompromising glare of Police Judge Ellis and payed [sic] an assessment of $10.
A slightly different image, that of a child whose hand has got stuck in a cookie jar, occurred in the following from The Thief of the World, published in The Grand Rapids Press (Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA) of Monday 15th July 1918 [page 4, column 1]:
At present the kaiser has his hand in the Russia cookie jar all the way from Finland to the Ukraine, but even now he can’t get it out. With the true instincts of his ancestors, the robber barons of the Rhine, this Hohenzollern has through oppression and rapacity aroused against him even in prostrate Russia forces which are requiring him to send more and more troops to preserve his robber hold.
The image of a child getting caught with one hand in a cookie jar is part of an extended metaphor in the following from Contrition, published in The North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts, USA) of Monday 9th May 1932 [page 4, column 1]:
Quite a few members of the Congress have complained that some things the President said last week in his message to the House and Senate and in his follow-up message to the nation were unfair and inaccurate.
But their colleagues have spoiled their effort to make it appear that the President was playing politics and have put them in the position of the mischievous boy who naively protests “I wasn’t doing anything—but I won’t do it again.”
No youngster with his hand in the cookie jar could have snatched it away more quickly than the House Ways and Means Committee snatched its exploring fingers out of the Patman bonus payment proposition and pushed that legislation far back on the shelf. No guilty lad could have wiped the jam off his lips quicker than the Senate Finance Committee brushed aside the experimental taxation schemes at which it had been nibbling and whipped a workable and acceptable revenue bill into shape.
The earliest occurrence of the phrase to get caught with one’s hand in the cookie jar that I have found is from the column City Hall Gossip, published in the Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California, USA) of Monday 5th June 1933 [section 2, page 4, column 6]:
New Blood
One of the most hopeful signs in the coming election is the very apparent fact that several of the old tragedians in the City Council are going to be replaced by some younger men. Youth and vigor are going to have their day.
Take the First District. There is the Nestor of politics around and about these parts, Charlie Randall. Charlie got caght [sic] with his hand in the cookie jar the other day, pulling one of the oldest and shabbiest of political tricks. He was helping to finance the campaign of an “opponent.” Everybody knows it’s done, but Charlie must be losing his grip if he gets caught at it.
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