Hatpins allowed women to travel alone, because they could defend themselves against "mashers". Photo / Supplied
Hatpin panic
Hatpins ultimately allowed women of the early 1900s to travel alone, because they could defend themselves against "mashers". A young Kansas woman was touring New York City when she boarded a crowded stagecoach and when the stage jumped, an elderly man ended up touching her — "hip to
hip, shoulder to shoulder" and then "lifted his arm and draped it low across her back" as it was reported at the time.
The woman took her hatpin (which was almost a foot (30cm) long) and plunged it into the man's arm ... But then stories about wounded innocent people emerged. A young woman playfully thrust her hatpin at her boyfriend, but she fatally pierced his heart. A young New Yorker felt a sharp pain behind his ear on a streetcar — an accidental prick from a stranger's hatpin — and died within a week.
They were also seen as a tool for lady civil disobedience when 100 female factory workers, all wielding hatpins, attacked police officers who arrested two of their colleagues for making anarchistic speeches.
In 1910, Chicago's city council banned hatpins longer than nine inches. "If women care to wear carrots and roosters on their heads, that is a matter for their own concern but when it comes to wearing swords, they must be stopped," a male supporter said. A female supporter replied: "If the men of Chicago want to take the hatpins away from us, let them make the streets safe. No man has a right to tell me how I shall dress and what I shall wear."
