A Plan To Protect Poor, Defenseless Men
On the perils of "being handsome?"
Movies were an immensely popular new form of entertainment in the early 1900s, but film audiences had to learn to sit in the dark with hundreds of strangers. It didn’t always go well.
Which brings us to this strange article: “A Plan To Protect Poor, Defenseless Men: Handcuffs, Armor and Other Novel Suggestions to Prevent Them From Being Accused of Undue Interest in the Women Sitting Next to Them at the Movies" - the title alone seems like a incel parody from the Onion.
If you can even believe this story, it seems Miss Elva Wallace was alone in a dim movie theater in NYC when "young and attractive” Clinton Firth approached the empty seat next to her. Seeing him, she removed her "bare and shapely" arm from the neighboring seat back. "Firth ... smiled graciously, inclined his head in gesture of civility and begged the lady not to disturb her arm."
"But hardly had the words escaped Mr. Firth's mouth 'please don't disturb your arm,' than Miss Wallace shot out her hand, smacked Mr. Firth sharply upon his shapely cheek with the full force of her, stiffened palm, and then broke into an indignant question: "How dare you insult me, sir?" Miss Wallace asked of Mr. Firth, as soon as she had administered the spontaneous physical chastisement.
She promptly left the theater and fetched two police men, who came back into the theater and arrest Firth and haul him in front of a judge.
Judge Rayfield of Brooklyn, heard that the charges and each person’s story and promptly dismissed the case with a "complement to Miss Wallace" (Sounds like mansplainin to me?)
"Ladies as beautiful as you," Rayfield told her, "must expect to be a temptation to ardent and impressionable young men. The defendant here saw your charms, but he did not realize that you were militant. Next case!”
Next, the article Wallace’s reflections on the lessons he's learned:
"First, experience had taught him that an attractive young man was not safe from the modern young woman anywhere. Second, that he Mr. Firth, was particularly unsafe wherever he mingled with ladies. Third, that since this was the case, it gravely behooved all young men, but most of all it gravely behooved Mr. Clinton Firth, to formulate a line of defensive conduct which would protect him as much as possible whenever in the future he should drop into a moving picture show.”
And that brings us back to the clickbait headline - and a newspaper artist’s fanciful illustration.
Firth suggests a system to protect handsome young men from falsely being accused as he was - theaters should install devices that would make it impossible for young men to disturb women. He suggests deep sea diver's suits, handcuffs, leg chains, large blinders, sharp metal spikes for men's coats.
This sheet music from the 1919 song: "Take Your Girlie to the Movies (If You Can't Make Love at Home)” notes that a darkened movie theatre was the only place many young couples can go to hold hands. But beware of mashers.
For more on the era’s “battle of the sexes” see:
Women on the Warpath (1900)
This is the header image to a full page Sunday story on women and how Chicago police records document women’s weapon of choice. The article is decidedly anti-female and casts women as taking advantage of unarmed men. WOMAN HAS PET WEAPONS. Grabs First Thing Comes to Hand Hit Man.
Suffrajitsu: Suffragette + Ju-jitsu (1910)
The requirement for suffragette self-defense was reinforced by events such as the Black Friday Raid, wherein plain clothes police officers had allegedly physically and sexually assaulted unarmed women attempting to force entry to the House of Commons during a "Raid on Parliament" protest action.
Or go way back to …
Medieval Divorce by Combat (1467)
Divorce by combat appears to have been a form of trial by combat. Trial by combat was part of Germanic law that dealt with accusations between two parties where there were no witnesses or a confession. Whoever won the duel was deemed to be right. It was essentially a legally-sanctioned duel.
The wretched plight of the good looking man. It's rumored that when Ernest Borgnine went out on the town at night, he'd wear a pickle barrel over his head so at not to encourage the lustful thoughts of nearby females.
Today's defenseless men can thank god for smart phones because now nobody shows interest, undue or otherwise, in anything but their little screen.