Not a complete answer, and about published rather than verbal jokes, but I'd encourage anyone with an interest in old jokes to check out the excellent online archives of old humor magazines - particularly National Lampoon (plenty of NSFW stuff there, BTW) from the US and Punch from England. Mad Magazine and Playboy are also sources for what was going on in US humor in the latter part of the 20th century but I don't know of good legal online archives of their early days.
The 70s issues of NL have a fair number of jokes and references to the sexual revolution that would nowadays be considered neither shocking nor funny, as well as portraying stereotypes in ways that today would be considered distasteful or simply racist. For instance, 1976-01 has a feature called "Irish Marketplace" that presumably would fit in the vein of "Irish jokes" but it would probably be considered inappropriate by today's standards (although I admit that the "George Bernard Shaw Museum of Punctuation" is a funny idea). "Racist jokes" would definitely be a category that would have been much more prevalent/mainstream in the past that today wouldn't fly.
NL 1972-05 has a segment called "Did you know that..." that presents facts about men, presumably making fun of the feminist movement, in a way that probably wouldn't be considered funny today: "[Did you know that] ...at one time, several of the world's great religious figures - including Jesus Christ and Buddha - were classified as MEN?" Certainly jokes/references to popular current social phenomena tend to rise and fall very fast.
Punch magazine has lots of references to stuff that wouldn't be relevant in the US or England today, including lots of jokes about class differences, accents, foreign stereotypes, and current events from the time. A presumably class-related example from volume 56 that I don't really understand has two society gentlemen arguing while a young woman and child play croquet:
SUCH IRE IN CELESTIAL MINDS "You're disestablished! I'll give her flowers, or whatever I like." "I'm disendowed if you shall! Now then!"
There are quite a lot of similar cartoons that portray class-based activities / terminology / status that doesn't make sense today. Also a bunch of jokes making fun of lower classes, and their misunderstandings of upper class ways. One example has a young lower-class woman looking at a poodle with a fancy semi-shaved coat, saying something like "poor likkle doggy ain't got no fevvers!"
Vol 56 has another one that's still kind of funny, playing on the theme of naivete/innocence. It depicts a young girl walking with her mother.
"Mamma dear, there were two such rude boys in the toy-shop this morning! They did stare at me so! I stared at them again, but as they did not mind that, I took to winking!"
Anyway, incomplete answer but hope it helps. I really enjoy reading old humor magazines and highly recommend it... there is still plenty of stuff in there that's funny today and I think it helps get a perspective on timeless humor.
Hello everyone,
Yes, this is a thread asking about jokes, but no, that doesn't mean you get to just post an 'old' joke and call that an answer. So far, there have been a number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt to answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Certainly jokes can - and ought to! - be incorporated into an answer to this question, but answers should still approach the question from an academic perspective concerning past standards of humor in the United States. As always, answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed.
Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!
Somewhat relevant: an article on ancient jokes:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/07/31/uk-britain-joke-life-idUKL129052420080731
Oldest known joke (Sumeria, ca 1900 BC)
"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
Second oldest known joke (Egypt, ca 1600 BC)
"How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish."
Oldest British Joke
"What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."
EDIT: Source for date on oldest joke - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7536918.stm
Follow up question that's a little more specific.
During slave times was it considered okay for one slave owner to crack jokes about how crappy another owner's slaves were?
Kind of like the way that friends today may bust each other's chops about cars they own or sports teams?
"No Soap Radio" strikes me as an archaic example of the sort of template-style joke you refer to.
"No Soap Radio" is an anti-joke popular in the 40s, a nonsense punchline you insert at the end of an unrelated joke. The "punchline" itself isn't meant to be funny (and well done), but the humor is that in telling the joke to individual A, you were meant to have a confederate B laugh at it to see whether or not individual A would or would not laugh along, demonstrating their resistance towards the conformity mentality.
Yeah, thing were real weird after the war.
I'd also submit "sniglets", an 80s phenomenon where you created humorous mashups of words to define discrete concepts or objects, has been largely supplanted and made obsolete by our well-demonstrated, earnest tendency to create neologisms/portmanteaus (itself a sniglet, ha!).
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK
The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 … OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes." Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, "oll wright."
Comical misspellings and abbreviations combined that you couldn't possibly know what they meant were once a fad in Boston in early 1800s. One holdover is the word OK for Oll Kurrect (All Correct). Which nowadays is OK, but at the time was anything but. This is one theory if the origin of the word, where it may be a version of a previously existing word, but it is a classic example of the humor of the time. And now we return full circle with textspeek (LOL [laugh out loud], OMG [oh my god]) and comical misspellings (Rekt [wrecked], Reddit [read it], Google [googol]).
The one you've most likely seen and missed entirely was the joke in Airplane where Howard Jarvis sits in the cab with the meter running after the driver abandons him. Political humor often has a short shelf life like that, with the Three Stooges at one time being known as much for the political humor in their work as the slapstick.
Meanwhile, there are likely also a lot of jokes based on stereotypes that aren't known or followed anymore. Once upon a time, Jews were stereotyped as being dumb but good at sports, particularly basketball (which Jews dominated until they moved to the suburbs and the rules of the game were changed to no longer discourage tall players).
Late to the party here, but I think telephone operator jokes (like so) are fading away.
Used to be every comedian had a switchboard bit, from Abbott and Costello to Lily Tomlin.
I have American Wit and Humour Vol 1. A collection from various sources classified under appropriate subject headings
It isn't dated but presumed pre WWI
The Chapters are:
Some items are like jokes: Why is a lame dog like an inclined plane? Because he's a slo-pup.
Most are not: Twenty-one girls of Kenosha, Wis., have resolved, that if the young men won't come and see us, we will go and see them.