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The Hatpin Peril · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. As always, thank
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you so much for tuning in. It is a lovely,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: slightly gloomy uh Monday morning here Monday morning ish uh
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia. And it looks like I am wearing
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a hat and my co host Knoll is wearing a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: hat as well. It's true, Ben, I am wearing a hat,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: alas it is not bedazzled or adorned with any like
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: fruit or or vegetable items, or any kind of perhaps
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: brightly colored feathers, or even entire taxidermy chickens. Because that's
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the thing. Yes, neither of our hats contain weapons. If
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: you could see the Zoom call today, that would probably
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: be your first question. You would be like, Ben, why
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: don't you have a knife of some sort in your hats?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Or maybe a tiny gun disguised as fruit. Or you
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: might even ask why is super producer Casey Pegram not
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: wearing a hat? And Uh, I think it's because you
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: know you and I figured this out a number of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: years ago. Uh, Casey, You're not really a hat guy.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: That is true. Although I get compliments when I do
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: down a hat. Well, you have that one amazing hat,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Casey that just says movies. If I'm not mistaken, it
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: is the hat that says movies, that is correct, Casey.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: On the case you need one good hat exactly that'll
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: that'll last me. Yeah, yeah, that's all it takes sometimes,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: you know, and I want to verify really quickly. I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: know we we seem too oddly pivoted from me having
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: all these extra koutre monts in my imaginary hat to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Ben talking about weapons. There's a there's a crossover here
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: between these. See the weapons in question for today's story.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We're actually very functional and would have been used to
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: hold in place some of the koutrama, the aforementioned a kudrama,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: which you know, got more and more absurd, as you
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: know fashion tends to do. Of the time. We're talking
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: about the turn of the twentieth century women's style. It
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: was all the rage to have big massive hair uh
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and and big huge hats that were kind of part
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: of the hair do. They were sort of like almost
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: woven in. They were like almost one and the same,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: this kind of like mega headdress thing of you know,
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  Speaker 1: organic hair and weird little props um. And in order
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: to keep all of stuff from just totally falling into
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  Speaker 1: the uh, the assumedly disgusting, filthy sidewalks of the time,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: women needed to enlist the help of these giant needle.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Uh you get your hat pin, and my mind immediately
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: goes to let hairpin. Not the same at all, my friends,
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  Speaker 1: A hat pin was a twelve inch long, very very
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: very pointy needle. Yeah, that's right now for listeners in
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the southern part of the United States, these really big
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: ostentatious hats maybe associated with church services, particularly the big
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: ticket services like Easter, right, But back in the day,
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  Speaker 1: these big, big hats were a big, big deal, and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: they were much more common. There was also a social
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: change occurring at the turn of the twentieth century. For
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the first time, at least in modern history, women were
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: socializing on their own. They were strolling sidewalks without without backup,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: without a chaperone, and there they encountered what the author
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of Men to Floss article calls a new peril, street harassment.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And so, in a very innovative way, fashion started becoming
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  Speaker 1: a matter of defense as well as a sartorial matter,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and so in newspapers throughout the land. You began seeing
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  Speaker 1: these stories that had a common thread, or I would
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: say a common underpinning, common hatpinning. Well, you get where
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: we're going. There were multiple stories of women defending themselves
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  Speaker 1: from rapscallions, Dan Sickle esque scoundrels with hat pins. It's
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a new one on me. Ben dan Sickle asked, all right,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I thought that was just one word. You're
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you're referring to a previous uh lothario of of of
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: ridiculous history. Law check that one out if you missed it. Um, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's true, there's a there's a word. We're gonna get
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  Speaker 1: into a little more of the the etomology behind or
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the atomology. But when it came into fashion, referring to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: these men, these aggressively flour tacious, entitled men, the types
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  Speaker 1: that we would have talked about in our wolf Whistling
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  Speaker 1: episode as mashers. I love this term. I mean, it's obviously,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: you know, referring to something very awful and uh and misogynists.
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  Speaker 1: But just the word mashers is funny to me. Um,
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's true. It was the turn of the
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  Speaker 1: twentieth century. Women were aligning with one another to petition
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: for the right to vote. A lot of these women.
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  Speaker 1: We talked about that issue very recently too. We're in
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  Speaker 1: heavily populated, dense urban areas, uh, and there were a
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  Speaker 1: lot of there was a lot of wealth. There was
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  Speaker 1: a lot of alsap poverty, but there was a lot
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  Speaker 1: of ridiculous wealth. And and these hats in their you know,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: heights were almost the flex of one's wealth. Um. So
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: women you know, who had been relegated to the home
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  Speaker 1: before that worse out now taking public transportation or taking
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  Speaker 1: walks alone at night, like you said. And the men
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  Speaker 1: who at the time were not used to seeing women out.
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  Speaker 1: And we're also you know, living in a very patriarchal
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  Speaker 1: this siety where they felt entitled to hoot and holler
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  Speaker 1: and wolf whistle and even you know, paw on on
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  Speaker 1: women if they if they wanted to. Uh. They started
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  Speaker 1: to act accordingly, um in in their kind of doggedly way,
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  Speaker 1: and they started to you know, kind of aggressively flirt
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  Speaker 1: with these unescorted women. So this became a problem, a
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  Speaker 1: real problem, because there's a fine line between just aggressive
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  Speaker 1: wolf whistling and hollering and maybe a little you know
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  Speaker 1: pawing to full on sexual assault. Yeah, I would say
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  Speaker 1: it's all harassments. Um. To me, flirting always felt like
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: there was some reciprocation there. Uh, you're right though. Uh.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: There's an author named Carrie Segrave who wrote a book
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  Speaker 1: called The hat Pin Menace American Women, Armed and Fashionable
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven through nineteen twenty, and this author says
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  Speaker 1: that because of the factors that my co host just described,
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  Speaker 1: for perhaps the only time in American history, virtually all
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: American women went out and about armed with a deadly
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: though legal weapon, that Hatpin. Well. One note about cat calling, right,
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  Speaker 1: which is just the very low end of what these
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: masters were doing. Cat calling never seemed like it worked
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to me. I never get it. We mentioned this in
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the wolf Whistle episode, but cat calling in general doesn't
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  Speaker 1: seem to It seems more, uh, an expression of power
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  Speaker 1: and harassment than it does a genuine attempt to begin
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  Speaker 1: a romantic liaison. The masters took it further than that.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't just cat call. Uh. They were opportunists. So
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  Speaker 1: if they saw a woman unaccompanied in a sparsely populated
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  Speaker 1: part of town, like a dark alley or what have you,
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  Speaker 1: they would feel entitled to grab a woman's arm and
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  Speaker 1: then try to ask this person and to go with
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  Speaker 1: him to a secondary location, etcetera. Uh, this granted truth
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen fourteen put it this way, saying the masha
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  Speaker 1: took a ladies on, the master took liberties. The masha might,
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  Speaker 1: with the slightest provocation take advantage he approached a woman
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  Speaker 1: he did not know to ask her to a dance,
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  Speaker 1: or to ask if he hadn't met her somewhere before.
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  Speaker 1: And then it went on to call the master a
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  Speaker 1: cad and a coward and saying, you know, these guys
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  Speaker 1: realize the only way an unaccompanied woman can express her
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  Speaker 1: resentment is by ignoring them. Turns out, luckily that wasn't
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  Speaker 1: the case. You could take it a step further if
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  Speaker 1: you had the right kind of hat and the right
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: kind of pin you to be fair, I mean, the
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: press was on the side of these of the women
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  Speaker 1: and and and their rights to kind of go. I
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  Speaker 1: mean there were certainly politicians and you know, outspoken male
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  Speaker 1: members of the community that we're not in favor of this.
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  Speaker 1: But the newspapers started to report these encounters with mash,
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  Speaker 1: which was kind of a slang for this, like lecherous
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  Speaker 1: and predatory male lithario, you know, with the entitlement and
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  Speaker 1: all that. So it definitely wasn't like okay, you know,
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  Speaker 1: um at all, at least in the press's eyes. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, which was a novel
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  Speaker 1: at the time, the master has described as one whose
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  Speaker 1: dress or manners are calculated to uh elicit the admiration
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  Speaker 1: of susceptible young women. So it's almost like, uh, what
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  Speaker 1: you might refer to today as a boy or a
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  Speaker 1: rake or a peacock in the world of the n
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  Speaker 1: LP type uh pick up artist guys peacocking is exactly
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  Speaker 1: what they're describing here. Uh we we I like where
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  Speaker 1: we're going with this, because we know that the press
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  Speaker 1: was on on the side of these victims, but they
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  Speaker 1: were they were patronizing, and they were condescending about it.
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  Speaker 1: They also give us documentation women fighting back. Before the
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  Speaker 1: Rise of the hat Pin. There was a lady in
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  Speaker 1: Chicago who was so bothered by a master's quote insulting
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  Speaker 1: questions that she beat this out of him in the
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  Speaker 1: face with an umbrella until he staggered away, hopefully learning
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  Speaker 1: from his his terrible behavior. One would hope and also
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  Speaker 1: just a little detail here about that encounter. It was
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  Speaker 1: a show girl, um who likely was either on her
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  Speaker 1: way to or from work and possibly you know, wearing
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  Speaker 1: some of her show girl attire, and that even more
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  Speaker 1: in the mind of a master would have been like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: this is this girl is just asking for it, you know,
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  Speaker 1: all that ridiculous logic. And the press really did kind
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  Speaker 1: of glom onto this is almost like a oh, like
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  Speaker 1: a vigilante kind of thing, where, um, the stories kept
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  Speaker 1: being reported more and more, and the tone of the
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  Speaker 1: reporting was very much in favor of the women and
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  Speaker 1: uh kind of like raised them up as kind of
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  Speaker 1: heroes within the community, you know, fighting back in against
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  Speaker 1: these uh, these villainous men um, which was kind of
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  Speaker 1: unusual at the time. A lot of times the press
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  Speaker 1: sort of took the side of like the the the
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  Speaker 1: popular more's and you know, this being a relatively new
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  Speaker 1: thing of women kind of venturing out. I think it's
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  Speaker 1: pretty interesting that the press uh so quickly kind of
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  Speaker 1: realized that this was an important thing to cover and
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  Speaker 1: actually took the side uh and the cause of the
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  Speaker 1: women being harassed victim blame in the media, you don't say,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: well exactly, but That's why. That's the thing. That's why
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  Speaker 1: I'm surprised, especially at the time. I would have thought
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  Speaker 1: maybe the media would have been more victim blamey, but
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: instead it starts to really mark a transition in the
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  Speaker 1: way that this kind of stuff is viewed slowly from
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  Speaker 1: this kind of housewife mentality of you know, this whole
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  Speaker 1: whatever American dream thing with like women staying at home
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  Speaker 1: with the kids and the dog and all that, and
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  Speaker 1: having dinner prepared aired for the man when he comes
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  Speaker 1: home from his work with his briefcase and slippers and
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  Speaker 1: newspaper bungling all this up. But you get the image. Uh,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and it really started advocating for female independence. Um. And
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  Speaker 1: I think that's really important thing to to note here. Um,
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  Speaker 1: working women and women who are advocating for suffrage started
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: to really kind of be able to steer the conversation
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  Speaker 1: and we're able to really let the world know about
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  Speaker 1: the plight of of women out in the world, you know,
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  Speaker 1: against these these entitled masher dudes. Yeah, this is this
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: is an interesting point. So this goes back to what
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  Speaker 1: I was saying earlier. There is a Again, nothing occurs
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  Speaker 1: in a vacuum. There is a paradigm shift here, a
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  Speaker 1: cultural shift. Moray's and values are changing. Dating is changing.
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  Speaker 1: So back in the day, in polite society, a man
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  Speaker 1: would a gentleman, of course, would call on upon a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: family home and interval woman's parlor, a gentleman caller, and
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: they would have a polite conversation on events of the day,
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  Speaker 1: under the close eye of parents or an answer or
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: another authority figure. But now it was different. Now the
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  Speaker 1: gentleman would still call, but say may I escort you
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  Speaker 1: to a show hall or a dance hall. And people
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  Speaker 1: were clutching their pearls and ringing their monocles about this,
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  Speaker 1: because then you couldn't control the kind of social company
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  Speaker 1: people kept. This could be a recipe for iniquity and evil.
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  Speaker 1: The suffragists fully rejected this notion, uh. And they also said, look,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't be blaming women for being harassed. You shouldn't
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: say that women have to dress as modestly as possible
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and that it's their fault if they get harassed. The
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: problem isn't us, they said, The problem is the quote,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the vileness of the masher mind. The masher mind. The
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: funny thing has been the things you're describing here. These
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  Speaker 1: things still happen today, the idea of you were asking
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: for it, you were dressing in such a way, the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: victim blaming nous and I mean we have we've come
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: a long way, but not so far. Think yeah, but again,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: you know, women are in between rock and a hard place. Uh,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: society isn't really on their side in many cases. And
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: uh the suffragists are doing their best to counteract that
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: usual condescending, shame on you type narrative. But there's a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: legal problem here too, because let's say you want to
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: protect yourself and you're like, hey, I'm I'm a I'm
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a young woman of means. In the United States, the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: land of the Second Amendment, why can't I just start
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: packing heat? At the time, especially in Chicago, it was
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: against the law to have a concealed firearm, not just
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: for women, right, like for anyone right. And it was
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: legal to carry most knives. What's a gal to do?
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: And she's being mashed left and right? Well here come,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: you know. It's just a matter of being thrifty and
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: using what you have around you at your disposal. The
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: hatpin wasn't employed as a weapon. It was initially a
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: very functional item that was used to kind of pin
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: all of this stacked crazy stuff together. The women of
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the time we're wearing on their heads not all, but
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: but many um. And it was just a matter of
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: one quick thinking woman pulling that thing out and using
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: it to to skewer a masher. So before we get
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: into the kind of real origin story, the real you know,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: young Bruce Wayne seeing his mom and dad gunned down
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: by the Joker or whatever or Jack. When I forget
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: how that story actually goes, Um, we need to talk
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a little bit about the history of this evolving kind
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: of by today's standards, bizarre fashion choice of wearing these
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: massive hats that required these deadly uh needle like hat
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: pins to to kind of stitch together, right, And that
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: all began in the late eighteen fifties, Um, when women,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: especially in summer, would wear these straw hats. They needed
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: to keep them on their head so they wouldn't get
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: blown away by the wind. Um. And the hat pin
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: was employed to do that because it had to literally
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: skewer it kind of through from the back um and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the hat. You know, obviously as a porous material, you
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: can stick the pin through there without like damaging the hat.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: And then that would keep women's hats from blowing off.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And initially these pins didn't need to be super long
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: because they were just used to hold a single hat
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: onto a single head, so you might secure it, you know,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: in a couple of places with a smaller pin um
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and then you were all set. But as the hats
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: changed and the styles changed, the pins had to you know,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: evolve along with the time. Right, yeah, I would see.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I would say, there are two things here. So if
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: we don't look at the social perils of the time,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: we see a pretty common trend, which is something starts
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: off functional and then becomes fashion. It becomes a an
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: aesthetic statement. That's kind of what happened with the hat pin. Uh.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: It went from just being something to hold something in
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: place to something that was seen and displayed and became
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: part of the whole vibe, the hat vibe. But we
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: notice around the eighteen nineties, just a few years before
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, we start seeing the hat pin transform,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: not just on an aesthetic level, but on a functional level. Folks,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: when we say hat pins, just so, uh, just so
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: you have the picture in your mind. We're not talking
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: about a thumbtack. We're not talking about a pushpin. We're
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: talking about something something that's more like around a ten
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: inch to one foot law needle. Like it's it's it's dangerous.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: It's a poke a rizer for anybody who is a
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: fan of the stand and catches that deep gut reference
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: or or if you think of Aria stark sword in
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Game of Thrones that was actually called needle. Uh, it
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: would be something that you could wield like that. You
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: could absolutely stick someone with the pointy end of this
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: and it do some serious damage. Oh yeah, I'm saying
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: poke a riser because I like the word poke riser.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: But the poke risers actually a gun and a word
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: a character makes up to describe them killing gas station employees.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: But yes, you would poke rize. You could be pokerized
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: by one of these, no doubt. And by the early DS,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: what once it was a very functional, lightweight kind of
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: straw hat to keep the sun out of a woman's
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: eyes had really mutated into these towering bizarro you know,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: tafoda ribbon, you know silk things. Sometimes they were had,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: they had like feathers, even fruits. It makes me think
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of that that very famous Latin singer and movie star
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Carmen Miranda, who believe the Chaquida banana woman was based
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: on But I might just be making that up, but
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it really was in fashion, and so these shorter hatpins
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: weren't going to do the trick anymore. Not to mention
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: that the longer hat pins, uh, and the hair stack
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: and this is all kind of like stitched together with
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the hair and the hats and the ribbons all kind
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of one thing. You had to have longer hatpins. They
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: would be between ten and twelve inches, like we were saying,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: not to mention the stem alone, like the part that
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you hold to stick the pin in, sometimes were several
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: inches long on their own, and they were adorned with
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: jewels or whatever like they were like actually absolutely the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: part would be sticking out would be an extra little accessory.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Depending on your economic state, if you were more in
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the working class, then you're probably gonna have something a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: little more functional, a little less or date. But like
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: you would have maybe a pin with a white or
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: black bead a top it. But they become much more
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: suffic sticated, showy and expensive from there. This is a
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: global trend. We're mainly talking about the US, but these
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: hat pins are popular in Europe, Australia, New Zealand as well.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Most everybody is where it has and hat pins, So
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: it's not unusual to be loved by anyone. I'm kidding,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: It's not unusual to have a hat pin if you're
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: walking around. And originally people were just getting maybe accidentally
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: injured every now and then. You're on a crowded train,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: et cetera. Uh, and you get poked with a hat
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: pin in the in the mash of the crowd. And
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: there's an interesting thing about masters that will will mention
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: towards the end here that doesn't take place in the US.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: So people quickly realized this was a way to immediately
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: punish these undesirable mashers. You just pulled the pin. You
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: literally pulled the pin on them, and the wounds that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: people would get from these pins were described by the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Times as not serious, but very painful. And then we
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: enter into these human interest stories. Now we pulled a
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: couple of examples of actual hat pin retaliations, but we
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: want you to know there are many, many more. These
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: kinds of human interest stories were very common in newspapers
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of the day. What say we start with Sadie Williams
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: versus the cable car robber in eight as this trend begins. Yeah,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: to me, this is that kind of origin story, And
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I think a perfect place to start, because this is
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: really right on the cusp of when the hats started
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: getting insane and the hairpins started getting longer. This was
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: an eighteen UM and it was a rainy morning in Chicago.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Sadie Williams was getting on the Blue Island Avenue cable
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: car heading to a funeral, understandably decked out in her
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: most elaborate funereal head regalia. Uh. And the car, it
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: was early in the morning, was empty except for her,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: another woman, and the conductor, so she decided to sit
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: near the back and get comfortable for a trip up
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: to Street and California Avenue. UM. A couple stops down,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: two men boarded the car, and these were coal powered
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: cars pick cable cars, by the way, So the conductor
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: bent down to shovel a little more coal into the burner.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: One of the new arrivals to the car went over
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: and actually restrained the conductor and started to rob him,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: dig dig through his pockets, and the conductor was struggling
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: to get free, but to no avail. Yeah, this story
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: is a little bit different because they're not mashing on
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the victims. Sadie Williams is actually more like a street
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: level superhero in a Netflix series. So here's what Sadie does. Uh.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: She says, hey, see here, you can't fight here, and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: then one of the men slaps her down and pushes
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: her into a seat nearby. But she doesn't take that
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: line down. She quickly pops back up again. She raises
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: her hand to her hat. Picture the moment Casey we
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: nead some superhero music. She pulls out this pin. It's long,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: gets one of those foot long ones, and then she
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: holds it like a dagger and she plunges the pin
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: straight into the guy's chest. She stabs the snot out
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of him. Uh, and she doesn't stop him from escaping
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the Robert freaks out, decides that he'll live to fight
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: and rob conductors another day, and he runs away. So
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Sadie isn't technically successful, right, but she does fight these
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: near dwells off and she does help start a revolution. Later,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: someone asked the conductor over at the Blue Island Avenue
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: cable car about the events about Sadie will Him is
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: coming to his a and he says, if it hadn't
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: been for the bravery of that woman, they would have
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: robbed me. She put up a better fight than a
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: good many men would. The way she jabbed her hatpin
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: into that man was a great sight. There's no doubt
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: about her pluck. I missed that we used to describe
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: people as plucky and say they have pluck. I still
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: say I like plucky. I'm a huge fan of plucky. Uh.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And then this really started to spread. Only a couple
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: of years later. Teddy Roosevelt himself, the President, was rescued
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: by what was referred to as a hat pin brigade
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: when he was visiting Manhattan, Kansas and the fall of
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundred. Uh. He was not the president at this point.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: He was then the governor of New York. He was
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: visited by a large crowd who were there to hear
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: him speak. Um. And then men began kind of climbing
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: over the rails to get a better look uh, in
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: blocking the women's view. UM. And the women were yelling
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they wanted to hear, you know, they wanted to see
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: as well. Uh. And the man, of course, and typical
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: gross manly fashion, refused to do what they were being asked,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: refused to get down, continued to block the view, and
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: then a rallying cry came from one woman who had
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: absolutely had it, saying, try your hat pins, at which
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: point several women you know, pulled out their their hair
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: swords as I'm going to refer to them from here forth, uh,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and started to come at the men. Uh, who then
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty quickly fled. The women had won the day,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and Roosevelt appreciated it because he was kind of getting
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: stressed out by this kind of behavior too, He said,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: he appreciated heartily this exhibition of strenuous life. For no man,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: however courageous he maybe likes to face a resolute woman
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: with a hat pin in her hand. That's the kind
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of publicity you just can't buy. If I were a
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: hat pin tycoon or manufacturer at this time, I would
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: be over the moon. I would be over the brim,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: I should say. There. It is another example Leodi Blaker
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and the stagecoach Masher three. Just a few years later.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: It's May twenty eight the afternoon. The ot is a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: young Kansas resident touring the Big Apple. She hops on
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a Fifth Avenue stage coach at twenty three Street settles
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: in for the ride, no doubt, amazed by the sights
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: and sounds, and like most people visiting New York for
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the first time, weirded out by the smells. Isn't a
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: weird Every block in New York City has a radically
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: different smell. It always gets to me anyway, it's it's
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the big Apple. Still, the coach is very crowded, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: when it jostles, she notices that this guy, the stranger
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: who's sitting next to her. Every time there's a jostle,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: student like tries to be slick. He scoots an inch
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: closer to Blaker. So she's looking at this guy. She's
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: profiling him. She's given him what always Sunny would call
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: an ocular assessment, says elderly, elegantly dressed, benevolent looking horse
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: picks up speed, tosses the passengers around again. And now
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the man is so close that he's touching her hip
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to hip, shoulder to shoulder. And then, folks, he does
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: that date move. You guys can see it. Zoom, you
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, old yeah, and stretch. Let
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: me just drape my arm over this young lady. Classic move. Uh.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: But then when he looked at his arm, and he draped.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: He began to kind of like, you know, go in
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: for the second base kind of situation, um, going low
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: across her back. Uh. She was done, and she reached
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: for her hat pin, which was nearly a foot long,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and just crap, this is like something out of like
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the Sopranos or something, and just jammed it into the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: meaty part of the guy's arm. Uh, at which point
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: he let out a terrible shriek uh and ran off
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of the coach at the next available stop. Um. And
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: she even said to New York World, he was such
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a nice looking old gentleman. I was sorry to hurt him.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: I've heard about Broadway masters and l masters, but I
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: didn't know Fifth Avenue had a particular brand of its own.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: See that that's just a distinction. There is like she's
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: talking about the lower, you know, parts of town, but
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue to think that there would be, you know,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a more upscale masher. But yeah, it takes all kinds.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: If New York women will tolerate mashing, Kansas girls will
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: not boom go Kansas. So this seems pretty inspiring, right,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: And you can picture millions of people around the country
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: reading these stories and feeling empowered in a way. However,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the mass media of the time was somewhat fickle and
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: certainly was not known for consistently giving women their due.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Critics arose because the well actually crowd has well actually
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: existed way before Twitter. So there were critics who came forward,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: uh and said, hey, this trend is not that great,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it's hashtag not all men. Uh.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Some of these guys are completely innocent. They're not mashers.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: They're being attacked, and they didn't do anything wrong. There
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: was a story in an excellent Smithsonian article about a
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: girl in Scranton who is nineteen years old who was
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: just playing with her hat pin and thrust it at
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: her boyfriend and apparently pierced his heart fatally. It doesn't
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: sound like playing around that. That does sound like stabbing
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: someone in the chest. That is exactly what that sounds like.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Sticking with the pointy end indeed, I mean, because this
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: is starting to, you know, go from a single kind
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of vigilante woman attacking her attacker back, you know, turning
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the tables, to something starting to resemble a bit more
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of a mob, you know, I mean, it's and not
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not making any excuses for anything or anybody here.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I just I'm trying to see both sides a little bit.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: But in New York, you had a hundred female factory workers,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: all wielding the weapon of choice at the time, the
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: hat pen, attacking police officers who arrested two of their
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: uh you know, comrades. I guess you could call them,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: uh for allegedly being anarchists, um, during speeches where they
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: were trying to organize. So it's it's it's a tough one,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: right because it's like, yeah, the police, I'm sure we're
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: acting way above and beyond uh their authority and and
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and over overstepping and arresting people for just making speeches.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: But it's also not the best look when you're literally
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: attacking the police with you know, swords, um. So you know,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: when you start attacking police officers, it it definitely does
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: color the public perception of things a little bit, especially
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: in these days. Um. Quote we look for the new
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: and imported Colts hat pen, when newspaper said at the time,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: or the Smith and Wesson quick action pen. So they
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: really were starting to equate them to like rifles or handguns,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: because as we remember it was harder to get your
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: hands on guns and much more against the law, and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: knives as well have these regulations. So pins are kind
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: of a loophole, and people are pushing that loophole. Things
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: start to get crazy. Folks. We're talking about people having
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: hatpin duels in the street. I picture it kind of
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: like a Wild West vibe, but you know, with very
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: big hats and people hold their hands up and then
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: they count, they draw their pins and they go at it.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: But there was a twenty minute hatpin duel in Lake Forest.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Both of the people involved in the duel we're using
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: hatpins as weapons. There were also other countless uh anecdotes
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: about this, and eventually the law catches up by people
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: are panicking about hatpins in the US and abroad. So
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: lawmakers in Kansas City, lawmakers in Hamburg, Paris, and of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: course Chicago start writing laws that say, this is my
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: favorite part of this, writing laws that limit the length
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of the happens that makes sense, but also demanding that
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: these things get scabbards. They're basically saying, look, these are
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: head machetees. You're walking around with a head machete and
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: you need to sheath that quicken into hurry, wait a minute, now,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: let's be fair though, the hair and the hat is
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: kind of the scabbard. Just putting that out there, you're
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: literally drawing it from your head. So how how how
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: are they actually going to function as they're meant to
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: if you have them inside of a sheath. I think
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: that's where I think that's where Johnny Law eventually said, Look,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: these are swords. You have headswords, you have head machetees. Uh.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: If you have a hatpin more than nine inches long,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: for example, in Chicago, then you're going to be fined
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: fifty dollars, which is, you know, nothing to sneeze at
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: at that time. Definitely not. And it's interesting how early
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: some of this, uh, some of these uh more controversial,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: less freedom fighter kind of instances of hat pin um
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: wielding took place in a Parisian tourist Bartholomew brand Brandoner
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: was murdered with a hat pin when he was visiting Chicago.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: It was a quote to the quote the coverage of
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it at the time, a small puncture which began near
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the corner of the left eye and expanded far into
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the interior of the skull. Uh. And there were no
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: details really beyond that about you know what led to this,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: but it was something that that started this public opinion
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: kind of spiraling out of control. Where the coverage initially
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: was good on you ladies for taking care of yourself
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and and and fighting back against the master menace. Then
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: it flipped to becoming the hat pen menace or ben
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: as you said off Mike, Uh, the hat pin peril,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: which feels like a kind of a weird flip on
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: zoot Suit Riot. Yes, yeah, yeah, working on the sequel
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: lyrics now. So eventually hat pins go on trial. There's
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a lady named Nan David. She's the daughter of a
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Chicago steel manufacturer, and she's familiar with this because she
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: takes classes downtown late at night. She hates that they're
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: changing the hatpin law because she feels like it's leaving
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: innocent people with no means to defend themselves. So she
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: writes a missive to the mayor and the city council
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and she says, please change the law back uh. In
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: her letters, she says, a hat pin is a woman's
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: weapon of defense. I always feel safe going home at
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: night with a hatpin available for protection. Before leaving a
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: street car, I always carry a hat pin ready in
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: my hand until I am safe within the door of
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: my house. Thousands of other women undoubtedly can speak from
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: their experience of how a stout hat pin has been
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: an affected defense in times of danger. And so this
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: is like you see this in the modern day now right, Uh,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: there will be a city council meeting. Their city council
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: meetings are often not very well attended, but every once
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in a while they start to address a huge cultural
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: issue and then the room gets packed. That's what happens here,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and the proceedings for how long happened should be in
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Chicago and whether they need a sheath. Uh, there are
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: tons of looky lose men and women, all kinds of
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: different views about it. They're crowding into the room, and uh,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: one supporter says, I love this. When one supporter says,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: if women care to wear carrots and roosters on their heads,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: that's a matter of their own concern, but when it
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: comes to wearing swords, they must be stopped. But unfortunately,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: you know, despite NaN's very um passionate speech um in
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: representing women's rights and their rights specifically to defend themselves,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the ordinance did pass by a vote of a very
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: strong majority of six to two UM. And then this
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: kind of led to a landslide of other laws passing
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: like this all across the country, places like Milwaukee, Baltimore, Pittsburgh,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: New Orleans. Then it made its way internationally because this
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: was after all, kind of an international phenomenon. Sydney, Australia
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: had an event where sixty women were imprisoned rather than
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: paying fines for wearing these quote murderous weapons in their hats. Um.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And then a lot of women in London who were
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: considered to be the more conservative side, uh, they refused
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to buy what was referred to then as hat point
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: hat pin point protectors. So essentially, I mean there was
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: there was pretty widespread protest after these these laws, these
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: ordinances and and subsequent laws were passed. And there's some Uh.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Harriet Stanton Blatch, who was the daughter of Elizabeth Katie Stanton,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: who was one of the most prominent figures in the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: women's suffrage movement, had this to say, Uh, this is
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: but another argument for votes for women and another painful
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: illustration of the fact that men cannot discipline women. And
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: then stand goes on to stay some really interesting interestingly
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: problematic stuff referring to kind of a higher class of
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: women policing a lower class of women, which doesn't age
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: super well. We're gonna skip that quote, but if you're interested,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: there is an interesting division and and some problematic features
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: to the women's suffrage movement. There is, you know, still
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: kind of an elitism to it at times. Classes um
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: for sure. And fast forward spoiler alert, surprise. The laws
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: were pretty ineffectual because the police felt like they were
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: being a little bit uh, they felt like dufas is
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: approaching women in the streets to enforce these laws. Because remember,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: the cops knew why people were rocking these hat pins.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: They knew that the hatpins how to use were there
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: for a reason. And so that's why we see things
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: like this nineteen seventeen article in the Chicago Day Book
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: saying that yet men can get women arrested for their pins,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: but instead, the day Book concludes, far be it from
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: us to pick on the ladies. Let's try and see
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: that they all get a seat so they won't have
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: to swing around on a strap. And of course women
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: are furious, like, okay, you're telling me that not only
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: are you not going to arrest these guys harassing me.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna allow me to defend myself. Boo tut tut. Interestingly, though,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: this did lead to a new sort of phenomenon nationally,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: at least in the US UH for women's self defense
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: classes or like hand to hand combat training UM in
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: around nineteen fifty there are some really telling articles from
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: places like The New The Tacoma Times with a headline
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: say New York women paid twenty five dollars a piece
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: for boxing lessons. It's a craze. And then you have
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: an incredible, m essentially uh cartoon I guess from Cosmopolitan
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: from nineteen ten, showing a woman wearing a what looks
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: like literally a cornucopia kind of bowl of fruit on
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: her head and one of those classic ruffled white blouses
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: tucked into a long skirt, who is grappling with a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: masher type man wearing a suit with a little Hitler mustache,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: holding a pistol, and she's got him gripped by the
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: elbow in the forearm and it says safe from attack
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: when you know jiu jitsu. So uh. The the actual
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: self defense kind of market began to take hold here
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: as a direct result of these laws and these ordinances,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and you started to see Japanese culture, this specifically in
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: the upper class. Again, by the way, all of this
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: is largely in the upper class because the hat pins
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: that would have been um an expensive item to have,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: as would twenty five dollars for boxing lessons. Yeah, yeah,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: a couple of points of course, to be absolutely fair,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: that wasn't the Hitler mustache yet that was just the
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: toothbrush mustache at uh. And now it's the Hitler mustache.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: And I guess Mike Jordan has one too. But uh,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: you may be asking yourself, right with with all this
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: social turmoil, with this being so common throughout the world,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: although yes, definitely in the upper classes. Uh, what happened
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: to the hat pin? Whither the hat pin? Well? Uh,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the answer is in the onset of World War One. Uh,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: people were being encouraged to use alternative means of defense, right,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: like boxing, like Nol just mentioned, Uh, using whistles to
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: scare away attackers. Uh. The ultimate undoing rest on two factors. First, fashion,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: which is ever fickle, and secondly, Uh, the rush for
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: resources during World War One, especially in Europe, medals were
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: cut back. You you needed them for the military, it
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: seemed frivolous to use them in jewelry, hats got smaller,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: him lines came up. Hat pins were also smaller and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: smaller and smaller, and kind of ethically being replaced by
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: military buttons to show your support. So that's where we
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: see this shift. We were from really ornate in TV
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: cribs level hat pins or pent my ride hatpins to military,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: more functional hat pins, and then in the nineteen twenties
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: hats that didn't need hat pins became popular, so it's
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: bye bye hat pin. Of course, masters still remain. And no,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I love that you mentioned Japan, because one big problem
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: in Japan is the equivalent of mashers on the train
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: system technically their frauderist, which is a very weird term
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and interestingly enough by Japan too. Like no guns, not
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: a thing has never really been a thing. A lot
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: of pokey type weapons and hand to hand combat. And
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: so there is our story today, folks, the rise and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: fall of the hat pin peril. Uh. You may be
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: fortunate enough to have inherited a hat pin from one
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of your relatives or ancestors. If so, let us know
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: what it looks like. I'm I'm curious to see if
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: anybody has something that would just qualifies a straight up
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: head machette. I. Yeah, I guess I didn't realize. I
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: knew what a hat pan was, but I did not
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: realize how incredibly long they got. Uh, And I'm sure
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: let's if we go to like, let's see antique hat
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: pans on the internet, we could probably get Oh my goodness, Yeah,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: and they really do look like torture devices. They're quite long,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and the the little handles are very ornate with jewels
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and metal work, and these all do have little little
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: pointy like stick covers at the very at the very end,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: because yeah, man, you could literally run one of these
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: right through a guy's I you know. I mean there's
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: actually a character in a Haruki Murakami book that I've
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: been trying to slowly work my way through. Um, that
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: is a female assassin who kills her victims using a
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: very very long, skinny needle that is so skinny that
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: she can just pop it right through the back of
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: someone's neck and take it out and they wouldn't even
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: realize that had happened, and they just die instantly. Oh
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: is it one Q eighty four? That's the one. Yeah,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: that's you're reading it. Huh, I am, I am how far?
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: How far are you in? Not very It's it's great,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: but it's like it's I'm just I have been you
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: as a voracious reader. I absolutely envy you. I have
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: been having a hard time in in in the days
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: of kind of over saturation of short form content, of
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: like making my way through an entire book I'm working on.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to change for the better this year, and
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm starting with. Of course, I picked a
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: thousand page book to start, but you know, wish me luck,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: good luck man, you only enjoy it and don't feel bad.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: It's that book in particular, no spoilers, is like several
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: different stories. I'm still trying to figure that book out. Uh.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: And you know what, Murrakami is a great writer. I
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like, just like the templar said in Indiana
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Jones who and wisely also shout out I can't remember
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: whether we mentioned this on air, but when we were
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: shouting out a lot of comic books, don't forget well,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: you've got a You've got an excellent two volume series
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: waiting for you at the office. I am surprised in
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: advance and I'm I'm gonna be popped by there tomorrow
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: and get it. Thank you so much, man oh, and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you as always
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: to our super producer Casey Pegram. Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: who a little bird tells me maybe returning to the
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: show sooner rather than later, And of course thanks to
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Gabe Louis Huge. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland a k a. The Quister, who will return
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: to torment Us hopefully not with pointy objects in the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: near future. And thanks to you, Ben for being a
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: pal and a coffidant and for you know, talking hat
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: pens and mashers with me today. Let us know what
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: you think. You can find us on Facebook, you can
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: not just as a show, but as individuals. You can
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: find me on Instagram exclusively where I am at how
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown, and you can find me on Twitter
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: where I'm Ben Bole and hs w uh. You can
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: find me also on Instagram where I am at Big
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Hatpin Energy I'm kidding at Ben Bull. See you next time, folks.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts, from my heart Radio, visit the I
• 45:31
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• 45:34
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.