Hatpin panic!
A friend of mine went viral on Twitter with reports on the early 20th western world’s ‘Hatpin panic’ and the relationship with the suffragists.
There exists an excellent 2014 Smithsonian article on the matter discussing how hatpins were ultimately outlawed in many jurisdictions with many women jailed or fined rather than having their rights to wear ‘murderous weapons’ in their hats.
But this is 2017 and thus we demand our history in bites of 140 characters or less!
Contemporary petticoated swashbucklers and their allies were quick to present further examples:
There are in fact stories from all over the world:
I’ve typed up the following stories below for readability:
THAT HATPIN.
CAUSED A DEAL OF TROUBLE IN AN ACTIVE LADY’S HAND.
Many years ago, when the lion comique flourished in the land, there was a music-hall sound, “I’ll hit you with a feather, I’ll stab you with a rose.”
Catherine Riley was in Deptford Broadway in a condition which here feelings demanded be relieved in song, and, trying to recollect this musical gem of her childhood’s happy days, she carolled to a policeman, “I’ll stab you with a hatpin.”
“Oh, will you?” said the intelligent officer, and straightaway “took her inside.”
When the matter came before Mr Kennedy at Greenwich it was not shown that Catherine had any hatpin, but the policeman’s opinion was that it was lost in the struggle.
Mr Kennedy, in sentencing the prisoner to a month, say she was a dangerous woman, and she said he was a “cruel old magistrate.”
HATPIN DANGER
While two women were looking at a shop window in Zurich on Wednesday one of them, whose hat was fastened with several large hatpins, suddenly turned her head. On of the pins she was wearing entered the other woman’s eye, completely destroying the sight.
MURDEROUS HATPIN
A campaign against the murderous hatpin has be instituted by the newspapers of Berlin in view of a series of accidents which have already occurred during the busy period of Christmas shopping. Numbers of more of less serious injuries have been caused by these dangerous implements protruding from the huge hats of fashionable ladies. Last Sunday a lady was permanently blinded in one eye when taking part in a rush at a “bargain sale.” Two days later a lift attendant at a neighbouring shop had his face so badly injured that it was necessary to take him to a hospital. Many cases of scratched faces are reported from many quarters.
HATPIN DEFENCE
GIRLS’ STORY OF AN ATTACK
At Wrexham County Police Court on Tuesday, Price Hughes, twenty-seven, of Wrexham road, Pentre Broughton, was charged with assulting Sarah Taylor, seventeen, of New Broughton.
According to the evidence, the prosecutrix and a friend named Blodwen Jones, were walking home from Wrexham on the night of the 4th instance when the prisoner, who was a stranger to them, came up and made a remark about the weather.
He then took hold of the prosecutrix, and in consequence of his behaviour she kicked him. He struck her in the back and seuzed her by the shoulder, and got .comher on the ground and pulled her towards the hedge. She struggled and got hold of his throat, while her companion pulled him backwards by the neck.
Prosecutrix hit him on the head, and he then struck her twice on the face.
During the struggle Miss Jones stabbed him in the back with a hatpin which broke off without inflicting injury. Using a second hatpin she stabbed him again, causing him to release his hold of the prosecutrix.
The girls afterwards ran away and mat a cyclist who searched for the prisoner but he …
What an interesting near-forgotten artifact of feminist swashbuckling history!
