maximus otter
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The “justice” system lost a major asset when hatpins went out of fashion.
maximus otter
Hatpins: Women's Fashionable Defense Weapons
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The “justice” system lost a major asset when hatpins went out of fashion.
maximus otter
escargot
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Yup, a nice long sharp brass hatpin, what a lovely weapon. I was given an antique one as a teenager and would carry it just in case. Never deployed it.
Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
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I think that's what they were really for.
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This 2017 Atlas Obscura article provides an overview of the hatpin-as-masher-defense phenomenon.
Before Mace, a Hatpin Was an Unescorted Lady’s Best Defense
THERE WERE ONCE, AMONG THE rogues’ gallery of men who harass women in public, disreputable fellows known as mashers. The masher took a lady’s arm, the masher took liberties, the masher might, with the slightest provocation, take advantage. He approached a woman he did not know, to ask her to a dance or to ask if he hadn’t met her somewhere before. The masher, above all, the Scranton Truth explained in 1914, was “just a plain cad … a coward, too, for he knows that an unescorted girl can only express her resentment by ignoring him.” But women had another tool in their arsenal to swiftly prick and deflate the masher’s inflated ego: the hatpin. ...
By 1901, fashionable hats had grown into towering monstrosities of taffeta, silk, ribbons, flowers real and fake, ostrich feathers, and even artificial fruit. Affixing these edifices to those hairstyles required stout hardware, sometimes of six, eight, even 10 inches in length. All the ingredients were there—ridiculous hair, even sillier hat—for a perfect hatpin storm. ...
This period also saw more women were walking alone or in unaccompanied groups, which some men found either morally affronting or desperately alluring. Unchaperoned women began to experience sexual harassment on the street or on public transportation more than ever before. But, for “perhaps the only time in American history,” writes Kerry Segrave, in The Hatpin Menace: American Women Armed and Fashionable, 1887–1920, “virtually all American women went out and about armed with a deadly (though legal) weapon.” That weapon attached their hats to their hair—and it was so effective that within a decade, proposed legislation to curb these accessories to assault had bubbled up across the United States. ...
For all their utility, the hatpin was most of all an unexpected consequence of the extraordinary hat. Without the headwear, the pins were just weapons. Fashionistas of the time favored hats with real plumage, which led to the slaughter of thousands, even millions, of birds every year. Lobbyists called for an end to this needless killing, lest the birds go extinct. In 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it illegal to kill, sell, or transport certain birds and feathers. It was a hatpin through the heart for these millinery miracles. By the 1920s, women were bobbing their hair short and wearing cloches, turbans, tam o’shanters. Hatpins were largely retired—and mashers breathed a skeevy sigh of relief.
FULL STORY: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hatpins-mashers-self-defense-history-women-hats-fashion
THERE WERE ONCE, AMONG THE rogues’ gallery of men who harass women in public, disreputable fellows known as mashers. The masher took a lady’s arm, the masher took liberties, the masher might, with the slightest provocation, take advantage. He approached a woman he did not know, to ask her to a dance or to ask if he hadn’t met her somewhere before. The masher, above all, the Scranton Truth explained in 1914, was “just a plain cad … a coward, too, for he knows that an unescorted girl can only express her resentment by ignoring him.” But women had another tool in their arsenal to swiftly prick and deflate the masher’s inflated ego: the hatpin. ...
By 1901, fashionable hats had grown into towering monstrosities of taffeta, silk, ribbons, flowers real and fake, ostrich feathers, and even artificial fruit. Affixing these edifices to those hairstyles required stout hardware, sometimes of six, eight, even 10 inches in length. All the ingredients were there—ridiculous hair, even sillier hat—for a perfect hatpin storm. ...
This period also saw more women were walking alone or in unaccompanied groups, which some men found either morally affronting or desperately alluring. Unchaperoned women began to experience sexual harassment on the street or on public transportation more than ever before. But, for “perhaps the only time in American history,” writes Kerry Segrave, in The Hatpin Menace: American Women Armed and Fashionable, 1887–1920, “virtually all American women went out and about armed with a deadly (though legal) weapon.” That weapon attached their hats to their hair—and it was so effective that within a decade, proposed legislation to curb these accessories to assault had bubbled up across the United States. ...
For all their utility, the hatpin was most of all an unexpected consequence of the extraordinary hat. Without the headwear, the pins were just weapons. Fashionistas of the time favored hats with real plumage, which led to the slaughter of thousands, even millions, of birds every year. Lobbyists called for an end to this needless killing, lest the birds go extinct. In 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it illegal to kill, sell, or transport certain birds and feathers. It was a hatpin through the heart for these millinery miracles. By the 1920s, women were bobbing their hair short and wearing cloches, turbans, tam o’shanters. Hatpins were largely retired—and mashers breathed a skeevy sigh of relief.
FULL STORY: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hatpins-mashers-self-defense-history-women-hats-fashion
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This 2014 Smithsonian article also provides a broad overview of the phenomenon and its relevance to the history of women's rights.
“The Hatpin Peril” Terrorized Men Who Couldn’t Handle the 20th-Century Woman
On the afternoon of May 28, 1903, Leoti Blaker, a young Kansan touring New York City, boarded a Fifth Avenue stagecoach at 23rd Street and settled in for the ride. The coach was crowded, and when it jostled she noticed that the man next to her settled himself an inch closer to her. ... When he lifted his arm and draped it low across her back, Leoti had enough. In a move that would thrill victim of modern-day subway harassment, she reached for her hatpin—nearly a foot long—and plunged it into the meat of the man’s arm. He let out a terrible scream and left the coach at the next stop. ...
Newspapers across the country began reporting similar encounters with “mashers,” period slang for lecherous or predatory men (defined more delicately in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie as “one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women”). A New York City housewife fended off a man who brushed up against her on a crowded Columbus Avenue streetcar and asked if he might “see her home.” A Chicago showgirl, bothered by a masher’s “insulting questions,” beat him in the face with her umbrella until he staggered away. A St. Louis schoolteacher drove her would-be attacker away by slashing his face with her hatpin. Such stories were notable not only for their frequency but also for their laudatory tone; for the first time, women who fought back against harassers were regarded as heroes rather than comic characters, as subjects rather than objects. ...
Instead of arguing with the suffragists, some detractors took a more subtle approach, objecting not to women’s changing roles but to their preferred mode of self-defense: the hatpin. Tales abounded of innocent men—no mashers, they—who fell victim to the “hatpin peril.” A 19-year-old girl in Scranton playfully thrust her hatpin at her boyfriend and fatally pierced his heart. A young New York streetcar passenger felt a sharp pain behind his ear—an accidental prick from a stranger’s hatpin—and within a week fell into a coma and died. Also in New York, a hundred female factory workers, all wielding hatpins, attacked police officers who arrested two of their comrades for making allegedly anarchistic speeches. Even other women weren’t safe. In a suburb of Chicago, a woman and her husband’s mistress drew hatpins and circled each other, duel-style, until policemen broke it up. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...-couldnt-handle-20th-century-woman-180951219/
“The Hatpin Peril” Terrorized Men Who Couldn’t Handle the 20th-Century Woman
On the afternoon of May 28, 1903, Leoti Blaker, a young Kansan touring New York City, boarded a Fifth Avenue stagecoach at 23rd Street and settled in for the ride. The coach was crowded, and when it jostled she noticed that the man next to her settled himself an inch closer to her. ... When he lifted his arm and draped it low across her back, Leoti had enough. In a move that would thrill victim of modern-day subway harassment, she reached for her hatpin—nearly a foot long—and plunged it into the meat of the man’s arm. He let out a terrible scream and left the coach at the next stop. ...
Newspapers across the country began reporting similar encounters with “mashers,” period slang for lecherous or predatory men (defined more delicately in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie as “one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women”). A New York City housewife fended off a man who brushed up against her on a crowded Columbus Avenue streetcar and asked if he might “see her home.” A Chicago showgirl, bothered by a masher’s “insulting questions,” beat him in the face with her umbrella until he staggered away. A St. Louis schoolteacher drove her would-be attacker away by slashing his face with her hatpin. Such stories were notable not only for their frequency but also for their laudatory tone; for the first time, women who fought back against harassers were regarded as heroes rather than comic characters, as subjects rather than objects. ...
Instead of arguing with the suffragists, some detractors took a more subtle approach, objecting not to women’s changing roles but to their preferred mode of self-defense: the hatpin. Tales abounded of innocent men—no mashers, they—who fell victim to the “hatpin peril.” A 19-year-old girl in Scranton playfully thrust her hatpin at her boyfriend and fatally pierced his heart. A young New York streetcar passenger felt a sharp pain behind his ear—an accidental prick from a stranger’s hatpin—and within a week fell into a coma and died. Also in New York, a hundred female factory workers, all wielding hatpins, attacked police officers who arrested two of their comrades for making allegedly anarchistic speeches. Even other women weren’t safe. In a suburb of Chicago, a woman and her husband’s mistress drew hatpins and circled each other, duel-style, until policemen broke it up. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...-couldnt-handle-20th-century-woman-180951219/
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I knew a couple of young ladies who habitually wore vintage / antique hatpins back in the early Seventies. One wore the pin in her voluminous hair - typically to anchor a scarf, bow or flower. The other typically wore hers through the collar or lapel, with its ornate handle-end visible as if it were a decorative pin or mini-brooch.
Both women mentioned the pins' utility in warding off unwanted guys, but I don't recall whether either of them claimed to have used the pins for defense during the time I knew them..
Both women mentioned the pins' utility in warding off unwanted guys, but I don't recall whether either of them claimed to have used the pins for defense during the time I knew them..
brownmane
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This may have not been a hat pin. I just remembered that in the 70's-80's it was fashion to have a stick pin (I think that is what it was called) and it was worn on your collar or lapel. I had one with my initial.
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Yes - I'm familiar with stick pins / lapel pins. The one used by the young lady I mentioned above was specifically cited as a vintage hat pin. She was very much into vintage / antique clothing and styles at the time. Her pin was on the order of 6"- 8" long.
bugmum
Justified & Ancient
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We had a pearl-ended hatpin, slightly tarnished, at home that I once managed to run into my arm (through no fault of my own, I hasten to add). Since I was in my "terrified of tetanus" phase (between the ages of about 8 and 14), I was convinced I was going to die.
Still here.
Still here.
Bad Bungle
Tutti but not Frutti.
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Hat pin to the face 1904.
Does anyone know if there was any truth in the stories of women holding a pin between their teeth as the train carriage went into a tunnel to prevent an unwanted kiss ?
https://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst177789_The-modern-history-of-harassment.aspx
Does anyone know if there was any truth in the stories of women holding a pin between their teeth as the train carriage went into a tunnel to prevent an unwanted kiss ?
https://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst177789_The-modern-history-of-harassment.aspx
brownmane
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I think you would have better control if you held it. People have mistakenly swallowed items held in their mouths.
I personally would hold it a little further from my body if I was worried of assault. Nobody would get that close to me to even try it.
I personally would hold it a little further from my body if I was worried of assault. Nobody would get that close to me to even try it.
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The forum thread to which you linked contains the following interchange, which includes a vague claim about multiple 19th century "articles" advising women to do this so as to avoid an unwanted kiss in a tunnel ...
SOURCE: https://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst177789_The-modern-history-of-harassment.aspx
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Here are two documented passing mentions of the pins / mouth / tunnel theme ...
SOURCE: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/qi/5794943/QI-quite-interesting-facts-about-kissing.html
SOURCE: https://mediafeed.org/33-facts-about-women-you-may-not-believe-are-true/
The Noticeably Stouter QI Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson
SOURCE: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/qi/5794943/QI-quite-interesting-facts-about-kissing.html
SOURCE: https://mediafeed.org/33-facts-about-women-you-may-not-believe-are-true/
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The following passages (and footnoted source citations) were found in a 2016 doctoral thesis on early British railway tunnels and (among other things...) the manner in which they were viewed by the public.
SOURCE:
Hubert John Pragnell
EARLY BRITISH RAILWAY TUNNELS: The implications for planners, landowners and passengers between 1830 and 1870
Doctor of Philosophy (Thesis). University of York. Railway Studies.October 2016
(pp. 232 ff.)
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/16826/1/Railway tunnels recovered 3.pdf
SOURCE:
Hubert John Pragnell
EARLY BRITISH RAILWAY TUNNELS: The implications for planners, landowners and passengers between 1830 and 1870
Doctor of Philosophy (Thesis). University of York. Railway Studies.October 2016
(pp. 232 ff.)
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/16826/1/Railway tunnels recovered 3.pdf
Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
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Indeed. That could actually kill.
bugmum
Justified & Ancient
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I used to be quite thankful about my diamond-hard fingernails when certain members of the opposite sex with octopus-like tendencies appeared in the same bit of the school cloakroom at the end of the day. Imagine the havoc I could have wrought with a hatpin.
GNC
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It would have put the menaces off chipolatas on sticks at Christmastime, certainly.
IbisNibs
Exotic animal, sort of . . .
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I always just wear an epee in my hair. Saves time.
I want to hear more about the butler who robbed the millionaire . . .
Cochise
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I'm quite happy with the idea of women arming themselves with deadly weapons to see off excessively persistent males, as long as they don't regard any compliment as a prelude to rape. Some of us blokes admire the female form but don't necessarily have the desire to 'possess' the object of our admiration.
I myself have always admired Debbie Harry and Suzi Quatro, but I have never been under the impression that gives me any justification to get within hatpin range of either of them.
edit: Oh, and how could I have forgotten Wendy James?
I myself have always admired Debbie Harry and Suzi Quatro, but I have never been under the impression that gives me any justification to get within hatpin range of either of them.
edit: Oh, and how could I have forgotten Wendy James?
Last edited:
brownmane
off kilter
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You admire her pompoms?
Bad Bungle
Tutti but not Frutti.
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But but that's not fair ! All the pics I ever saw of Transvision Vamp posted in MM and NME were of a bloke in a dress with a 5 o'clock shadow.
No wait - New York Dolls maybe ?