“Soiled Lilies” of the Speakeasy?

HBO’s series, Boardwalk Empire, about Atlantic City during Prohibition, was awash in alcohol, in spite of the laws against booze. “Soiled Lilies” along with soused socialites found ways to drink and party the night away. – Photo source, Pinterest

IN CONNECTION with repeal and the effort to do away with the saloon there is a new factor to take into consideration. During these years of the speakeasy, which has been a product of prohibition, the custom of women entering places where liquor has been sold has steadily grown. Originally the habit was the outgrowth of a desire to do something that “wasn't being done,” but as the years went by women found real pleasure in being escorted to this or that place where they could take drink for drink with their companions.

This is one of the problems that will have to be contended with if the speakeasy is to be put out of business. The answer of the moralists and of certain “best people” will be that this practice was confined only to certain night-life creatures of questionable repute. That happens not to be the correct answer. The truth is that women from all walks of life, high and low, became accustomed to this new freedom and availed themselves of it without restraint.

In the old days women never entered saloons, unless they were the “soiled lilies” of the streets or possibly part of a slumming party. They were not wanted there by the men who owned the saloons. But under the new order which came with prohibition, the era of the hip flask, women came to feel just as free as men in regard to liquor. They drank it wherever they could get it. The speakeasy, the night club, obtained a large revenue from women. With a high tax on good liquor the speakeasy with its synthetic gin and corn whisky and its welcome for both men and women is not go- ing to be put out of business as easily as many people thought it would. –Salinas Index, 1933

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Second Class Rail Etiquette

1840’s depictions of Third, Second and First Class Railroad car in Great Britain – It was only in the 1840s that a law was passed to ensure third-class carriages were covered. These drawings of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class railroad cars appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1847 – from UK.gov

  

Travel in Second-Class Cars

Editors Press: —As we have much pride in the good name that the young and growing State of California should bear, I will endeavor to point out one step that we, as well as the older States are taking, which it would seem a little thought might show unprofitable and ungenerous, if not inhuman, wicked and immoral in its tendency. I refer to second-class railroad travel. Most of the railroads have provided themselves with a plain, cheap car for each passenger train, to which they invite the emigrant, the common laborer, and all who may feel, from necessity or otherwise, obliged or inclined to economize. That is all well. Now we would invite the readers attention to the daily picture presented in this second-class car. 

The outside appearance is quite plain, needing no other sign to indicate to the traveler which one in the train it is. As you enter you find plain seats, may be cushioned, and may be plain boards, with equally cheap finish of inside work generally. That too, is all well. Seated in this plain car may be seen men of all nationalities, and possibly among them as pure hearts as can be found among the passengers of the ears before or behind them. We also find lady-like looking young women and quite frequently the mother with her precious charge of children, with a heart yearning for good influences to aid her feeble hands in teaching sobriety, good language, and decorum. But the opposite is true of the picture which this car presents. It is made the receptacle of all the bold drinking, profane language, and unmitigated old pipes, and cigars , struggling over each other for mastery in the amount of smoke they may be able to get into a small coach. To add further to the imposition on the better portion of the inmates of the befogged car, many passengers from first-class coaches feel an apparent pride in retiring to a second-class car to indulge in all those ungentlemanly and filthy habits.

We believe this state of things is unprofitable to railroad companies, as it is certainly unpleasant to many who travel in such cars. It drives many of the better class of poor from these thoroughfares and we believe its reformation would be attended with results similar to those which were noticed in the reform of the postal system. When the Government charged twenty-five cents for letters the poor could send but few, making very limited interchange of thought, and not paying mail expenses. But when the postage was reduced to three cents, a revenue sprang up. All can now afford the gratification of a correspondence. Now suppose the same watchfulness by the conductors in the second-class car, as in the first, in regard to etiquette. The mighty people, the masses, would travel; gaining information and paying back in cash. All railroad men who become instrumental in abating the nuisance complained of, and aiding the poor, but highminded, to travel in your plain but respectable second-class cars. –Way Side, 1871

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

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

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia