Victorian “Mashers” Lacked Manners

Old family photos show that dressing in drag for fun is nothing new. But to dress as the opposite sex, simply to shock, “go slumming” or to get away with rude behavior, is unacceptable.

Rudeness and Victorian Female “Mashers”

The well-bred young woman, shedding good manners and decorum for “fun.” 

Saving her petticoats, retained apparently out of respect for the law that prohibits interchange of costume by the sexes, the female masher is a little man. She is stiff and starch, well set up, and all over buttons. Her hat is made at a man's shop, so is her trim little jacket, so are her innumerable waistcoats, so apparently are her boots. She is essentially tailor-made from head to foot. When the weather is gusty, she covers all over with a tailor-made tight-fitting coat, to which a certain swagger is imparted by the use of the now preposterous and most hideous swaying crinolette. If manners oft proclaim the man, costume certainly advertises the woman ; so the female masher does not assume masculine attire without imitating parrot-like the affectation of her evident model. 

On the pier and promenade of to-day, the man is not in it. It is the woman who laughs loudly, talks at the top of her voice, takes the pavement, and elbows the crowd to the right and to the left. The female masher is neither polite in her manners nor select in her conversation. As a very slight acquaintance she will communicate suspicious stories to a perfect stranger, and there is no slang or popular vulgarity with which she is not acquainted. In a dogcart at the station, she takes the reins ; in the yacht she handles the tiller. She whistles as she walks along the pier, and hitches up her clothes as if she were a sailor. At a dance in the assembly rooms at night she evidently finds the opposite sex so insipid that she seizes upon the first girl she comes across, and whirls her around the room. The ordinary, well-behaved and courteous man finds the "female masher" the most difficult person to contend with, for when she is rude — as she very frequently is — there is necessarily no reply. She can insult and injure without any chance of a "setting down" from any one, unless he be old enough to be her father. 

Such a rebuff one of these impudent minxes received in my hearing the other day at a seaside railway station. A female masher of a pronounced type, after swaggering about a railway station, walking like a dragon, and flourishing a stick instead of a parasol, was anxious to enter a train from which an elderly gentleman was handing his gray-haired wife with her innumerable impediments. The process was too tedious for Miss Masher, who observed far too audibly to her companion, “Well, I suppose when these people have got out we shall be allowed to get in.” There was a malicious sneer in the delivery of this sarcasm which would have frightened a younger man. But the old gentleman was equal to the occasion. “My dear young lady,” said he, “a little patience will do you no harm. In fact, if you practice patience it is possible that some day you may get a husband, though I should venture to consider that it was no desirable event.” Then taking off his hat, he retired with his wife and her parcels. But “Miss Masher” was far too pachydermatous even so much as to notice or appreciate the rebuff. 

She entered the carriage in which I happened to be sitting, and proceeded as follows : She first took up the newspapers which happened to be there and flung them into another seat, occupying, why I cannot conceive, the seat opposite to me.  “I don't know what these papers are, or whose they are, and I don't care,” was her first remark, although as I was the only other occupant of the carriage, it would not have been difficult to solve that problem. The conversation she indulged in with her friend was the reverse of edifying, being a coarse mixture of slang and somewhat vulgar repartee. I am not naturally over-scrupulous or over-modest, but I was obliged to stare out of the window in order to pretend not to appreciate the brazen conduct that, had it been recognized and laughed at, would have been rewarded with a sneer or a scowl, for “Miss Masher,” although she takes enough liberties herself, never allows one. 

During the remainder of the journey my edifying companion employed herself by whistling popular airs and by ruching up her dress in order to pull up her stockings — an occupation harmless in itself, but scarcely in accordance with the decorum of a public conveyance. Now, I was curious to ascertain the habitat of this young lady. Who could she be?! To what class of society could she belong? She was evidently a lady born, if not a lady bred. She was no frequenter of the music halls, where such manners are applauded as something vastly witty. Judge of my surprise when she stopped at a railway station close to the abode of a popular nobleman, and was driven off in the private omnibus attached to the mansion. If, then, such young ladies set so unenviable an example, it is small wonder that the masherdom of society in its most pronounced form should be imitated by other girls and women equally arrogant and equally vain. “Miss Masher,” of Folkestone and Eastbourne, is reproduced in a still more masculine fashion at Margate and Yarmouth. – London Truth, 1883

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