![]() But I rather believe it will be some time before Mr. “You can’t kill that kind of a snake with a hat-pin you have to stamp on its head. “You might have killed him!” she cried breathlessly. He swore, and walked off down the street.Įlsa set a pace which Martha, with her wabbling knees, found difficult to maintain. Gad! She might have missed his wrist and jabbed him in the throat. This dark-eyed Judith was distinctly an exception to the rule. His advantage had always been in the fact that the general run of them will submit to insult rather than create a scene. He was now thoroughly convinced of the truth. The hat-pin as a weapon of defense he had hitherto accepted as reporters’ yarns. He stepped into the gutter, biting his lips and straining his uninjured hand over the hurting throb in his wrist. ![]() “I warned you,” she replied, her voice steady but low. It stung like a hornet and with a gasp of pain, Craig leaped back out of range, sobered. ” At least, one kiss,” putting out his arms.Įlsa, merciless in her fury, plunged the pin into his wrist. Had he been sober he would have seen the real danger in the young woman’s eyes. Resolutely Elsa’s hand went up to her helmet, and with a flourish drew out one of the long steel pins. Bring the old lady along,” with a genial nod toward the quaking Martha. “Why not be a good fellow? Over here nobody minds. He had been drinking liberally and was a shade reckless. She was not a soldier’s daughter for nothing. She realized that she must settle this affair alone. In stories Warrington would have appeared about this time and soundly trounced this impudent scoundrel. He saw with satisfaction that none but natives was in evidence.Įlsa’s glance roved, too, with a little chill of despair. “I remember an insolent cad,” replied Elsa, her eyes beginning to burn dangerously. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”Įlsa, looking coldly beyond him, attempted to pass. At least ostensibly, these laws were intended not so much to ban the use of hatpins in self-defence as to mitigate the incidence of accidental hatpin related injuries inflicted upon blameless fellow passengers in crowded tram-cars.Ĭertainly, though, the hatpin was the weapon of choice for Edwardian novelists and playwrights who had to extricate their heroines from tight spots.įrom Harold MacGrath’s novel “Parrot & Co”, 1914:Ĭraig stepped in front of them, smiling as he raised his helmet. ![]() Laws against hatpins of “excessive length”, or the wearing of hatpins without protective stoppers, were proposed in Hamburg, Berlin and New York among other cities. Some antique examples are thirteen inches long and resemble nothing so much as unbated, miniature fencing foils.Ī wealth of evidence from the period demonstrates that hatpins were popularly regarded as secret weapons, and indeed as “every woman’s weapon” against the depredations of hooligans and ill-mannered brutes. The mainstay of the Edwardian hat was the artfully concealed hatpin, and as the hats themselves grew ever larger, so too did the pins. ![]() Circa 1901, fashionable ladies’ headwear featured elaborate assemblies of taffeta, silk bows, coloured ostrich feathers, flowers and even artificial fruit. The popular trend towards enormous, flamboyant hats reached its zenith during the Edwardian era.
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