Saturday, March 31, 2012

Pin Money

Today's blog started out from looking up cartwheel hats,which turned out to be wide brimmed hats as the name implies. They were fairly interesting on their own,but what caught my attention more than the hats were the hatpins. I have always wondered exactly how they worked as obviously you wouldn't jam them into your head. I never really found an answer to how they were used other than they went through the hair,so either the hair was ratted or maybe braided and the pin stuck through that is my guess.
I was surprised that the length of the hatpins was from 6-12 inches,depending on the size of the hat it was to hold in place.
Around the 1820's to keep up with demand England started importing hatpins from France. Parliament passed an act restricting the sale of pins to two days a year,January 1st and 2nd. Ladies saved their money all year to be able to spend it on pins. This is thought to be a source of the term "pin money".
Laws were passed in 1908 in America which limited the length of hatpins as there was concern they might be used as weapons. Sounds kind of like the start of TSA!

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