Another Edwardian Day Out: Steam, Teens, and Tours

After the success of Edwardian Day Out in May, the DFWCG scheduled another Edwardian Day Out for October 15th since the house tour tickets for Thistle Hill were also good for visiting another local Victorian home: the Ball-Eddleman-McFarland House (what a mouthful!).

The house is tucked up at the end of Penn Street and isn’t visible from the busier thoroughfares of downtown, so many people don’t know about it. Chris and I had actually discovered it by accident when we first moved back to Fort Worth years ago. We did a creeping drive-by of the property, but it’s not obvious at all that the property is open for tours (Indeed, even the historical marker, like so many Texas Historical Markers, is planted pretty deep into the front yard, so you have to park and tromp through the grass to read it. This is super awkward when you can’t tell if the property is public or private. Why, Texas? WHY?). We gaped, then drove away.

You don’t forget an epic porch like that, though, so when I saw the picture on the Thistle Hill ticket for the McFarland House, I was excited! We finally could tour the mysterious house on the hill!

Becky, Marcella, and I got dressed and drove out a little early to meet the group and get some pictures on the porch.

The house is owned by and used as offices for Historic Fort Worth, the area preservation society. However, they have a sign by the front door that says to ring the bell for tours at 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm. The event had been scheduled for the 2pm tour, but alas, as 2 o’clock inched closer, no other cars pulled up the quiet street and we wandered the wide, empty front porch alone, debating what to do. Well, we were already there, tickets in hand, so we rang the bell!

Mrs. Jackson, the docent on duty, met us at the door. I’m sure we made quite a presentation in our garb on a quiet Sunday afternoon! She guided us around the lavish first floor that was just covered in gorgeous woodwork from floor to ceiling surrounding luminous stained glass, and had stunning Edwardian light fixtures and 1940s wallpaper in every room. The brightest, most iconic room in the house is the lavish peachy formal parlor covered in flocked pink wallpaper and lit by 30+ individual lights in brass tulips, like an opera house! (I wish I’d gotten a better picture of them, but I was too busy looking around. There is this lovely photo by Peter Calvin, though, if you can’t tour the place yourself.)

The house had been owned by a succession of very wealthy families and each woman that owned the house had added her own touches to the property. It was interesting to see what each subsequent mistress added and removed. The exciting wallpapers throughout the house were added mid-century, but they suited the house so well that you might never guess!

We couldn’t tour the upstairs because Historic Fort Worth had converted all the rooms into offices, but we were assured it had been done so that the house could be returned to its original state should they change locations. It was a little disappointing to only get to tour the downstairs of the house. If you stopped by to tour the McFarland House before Thistle Hill and found out your $20 tour only covered a few rooms, you might be very disappointed at how little your money seems to afford you. However, since the tickets are good at both houses, the McFarland house is like dessert after a Thistle Hill dinner.

Despite the series of shortcomings, we made a good day out of it. The weather was just stunning: the right temperature for both layered corseted outfits and lighter fabrics alike, that happy medium between warm and chilly. Divine! Becky wore her new striped Victorian skirt, Marcella wore her 1912 outfit, and I wore my super-comfy 1990s-does-1910s polka-dot dress. The staff at Lucille’s restaurant was totally unperturbed when we walked in for lunch! Ah, the glory of October when costuming becomes more widely accepted in the everyday!

All-in-all, a good day out with the family! It would have been nice to have more of a crowd, but life is a constantly moving target. Sometimes everyone else’s arrow ends up going a different direction and an event doesn’t pan out. That’s why I am so grateful to have costuming buddies to take to events, so if something like this happens, we can still have a good time together!

—More Edwardian and 1910s Costume Adventures—

An Edwardian Day Out #1: Thistle Hill
Easy (Post) Edwardian / WWI Costume
Easy Edwardian for under $10 (1900-1910)
More Easy Edwardian (1913-1914)

 

 

 

Call the Fashion Police! I’m Wearing an Illegal Hatpin!

To keep my hats jaunty but secure at Edwardian events, I use one of my antique, pre-ban hatpins. Pre-ban? What’s that? Well, as silly as it may sound to us, in the 1910s, cities around the globe passed laws outlawing certain sizes of hatpins! Why would governments and police departments waste valuable time outlawing fashion accessories?
Until about 1970, hats were a major part of a woman’s wardrobe. They have varied in size, material, and decor, but one of the primary problems with hats is that, if caught by a gust of wind, it can easily escape from you! Ladies have employed a variety of methods to avert this: making the hat deep enough that it sit snugly on the head or using ribbons to tie them down, wire loops that grasp your head (many 1950s hats use this method), or clips and combs that grab onto your hair. One of the most popular antique methods we no longer use was the hatpin. Hatpins hold your hat on securely by attaching your hat to your hairstyle. That way, as long as your bun is secure, your hat can’t fall off or blow away in the wind! It also helps perch the hat high on your head so it’s not smashing your hairdo or hiding your face. To wear one, you position your hat as desired, thrust the pin through one side of the crown, carefully sliding it under a portion of your hair, and then pushing the pin back out the other side of the hat.

Sort of like this…
The closer yo can get the pin to your scalp, the better. But watch out! You don’t want to jab yourself!

Hatpins  started out as wimple pins used to hold women’s veils in place as far back as Roman times. Those pins were fairly small. However, as women’s headwear changed, so did the pins. It was during the late 18th century– when outrageous large hats perched on outrageously large hairdos–that hatpins first began to appear. Hatpins didn’t truly become common until the mid-to-late 19th century when hats overtook bonnets as the most fashionable form of headwear. A hatpin became an indispensable part of a well-dressed woman’s wardrobe. Victorian hats were fairly small for the most part, but as the turn of the century drew near, the hats grew larger and more elaborate…not unlike the giant hats of 100 years earlier.

Mary Boteler by John Hoppner, 1786

Publicity photo of performer Rhonda Ray, circa 1903-1907

Les Modes Hats, circa 1907

Hats and hairstyles in the Edwardian era were enormous, requiring equally enormous hatpins– often so long and sharp that they could not only jab you, but anyone that got too close to you. Indeed, at over a foot long and made of rigid steel, an Edwardian hatpin makes a formidable weapon! There are even poems, books, and songs written about women defending themselves with hatpins! Mugger trying to get your purse? STAB ‘EM! Pervert “mashing” (harassing) you on the train? EN GARDE!

Poke me, eh? I’LL POKE YOU!

Newspapers published many stories about women defending themselves with their hatpins– including in Chicago, one of the first cities to institute  hatpin laws. In 1902 the Chicago Tribune published an article about Jaunite Bonneau– one of the first female couriers for Western Union– defending herself with “Fists and Hatpin” against a group of young male attackers– and being completely blamed for hurting the lads that attacked her.

You can find even more Chicago Tribune articles about hatpins being used as weapons in their searchable archives. Most have a rather negative view of hatpins and the women wielding them, but there are a few articles that mention their use in a more positive light, including this 1898 blurb about Barbara Stack who “routed street car robbers with a hatpin” or this 1907 horror story about a woman defending herself from a kidnapping rapist.

The uniquely feminine weapon did not sit too well with men used to submissive ladies, so beginning in 1908, they began passing laws limiting the length of hatpins, usually to no more than 7-9 inches. Other cities passed regulations requiring safety caps for hatpins rather than outright banning longer ones. This seemed like a much more practical approach to the problem of accidental stabbings– a naked pin point sticking out of a hat could accidentally injure people around you– though requiring a cap rendered the pin much harder to use for self-defense, too. Other cities allowed longer, uncapped pins, but they could stick out no more than 1/2″ or you could face a hefty fine— including paying reparations:

From the Boston Sacred Heart Review April 12, 1913.
It is probably not a coincidence that the notice about outlawing hatpins as weapons appears just below an article about militant suffragettes in England.

Male lawmakers weren’t just making idle threats, either. Women vehemently opposed the laws and some ladies were even arrested for wearing long or uncapped pins in their hats, especially suffragettes. Yes, policemen would actually stop women to inspect their hats for illegal hatpins. For example, here’s a clip from a newspaper article about arresting women with long hatpins. At a fierce 13 inches long, my hatpin could have landed me in the slammer if I wore it without a permit after 1908!

Pre-ban Hatpin on the left, 13″ long circa 1900
“Legal” hatpin on the right, 7″ long circa 1890-1915
Somewhat ironically, the shorter hatpin is sharper. You could definitely still defend yourself easily with it!

Hatpins do require extra attention in order to wear them safely. Truth be told, a properly worn hatpin should not be noticeable at all when worn. It should hide amid your hat trimmings, showing only the bejeweled end if it has one. The sharp end shouldn’t not stick out more than an inch (unless it also has a decorative cap as some 1910-1950 hatpins do).  If you are like me and have a hatpin a bit too long for your hat, you must be very careful when giving hugs or taking selfies with friends, not to mention being careful not to stab yourself! However,  hatpins are incredibly important if you want to wear historical hats properly…or defeat hooligans.

Post-ban newspaper articles take a decidedly dark view of women using hatpins. Many reference the violent protests of women’s rights activists as proof that women could not be trusted with sharp objects, no matter how prettily decorated:

Whether the hatpin ban made women adopt smaller hats or whether the natural flow of fashion made the edicts obsolete, it’s hard to say, but as the 1910s progressed, hats changed to sit lower on the head and slowly shrunk in scale. By 1920, a decade after the hatpin laws passed, women had adopted shorter hair, shorter skirts, and close-fitting cloches that didn’t need hatpins at all. American women also got the vote so we could fight to wear what we want!

A fight for fashion is a fight for freedom!

I actually don’t know when–or even if!– places like Chicago, New Orleans, and Melbourne repealed their hatpin bans…for all I know, it’s one of those weird laws left on the books after all these years and I’m technically a criminal in some municipalities!

COME AND GET ME, FASHION POLICE!