In the 19th Century, Women Used Hatpins to Defend Themselves From Street Harassment

There were once, among the rogues’ gallery of men who harass women in public, disreputable fellows known as mashers. The masher took a lady’s arm, the masher took liberties, the masher might, with the slightest provocation, take advantage. He approached a woman he did not know, to ask her to a dance or to ask if he hadn’t met her somewhere before. The masher, above all, the Scranton Truth explained in 1914, was “just a plain cad … a coward, too, for he knows that an unescorted girl can only express her resentment by ignoring him.” But women had another tool in their arsenal to swiftly prick and deflate the masher’s inflated ego: the hatpin.