Hatpins and Self Defense

Atlas Obscura has an article sure to interest the history buff, particularly those who are also interested in self-defense topics. The article is: "Before Mace, a Hatpin Was an Unescorted Lady’s Best Defense." Between the 1880s and early 1920s, large elaborate hats and large elaborate hair styles were the fashion for women. And to keep the large hats on the piles of hair required a tool: hatpins. In addition, as the article relates:

This period also saw more women were walking alone or in unaccompanied groups, which some men found either morally affronting or desperately alluring. Unchaperoned women began to experience sexual harassment on the street or on public transportation more than ever before. But, for “perhaps the only time in American history,” writes Kerry Segrave, in The Hatpin Menace: American Women Armed and Fashionable, 1887–1920, “virtually all American women went out and about armed with a deadly (though legal) weapon.” That weapon attached their hats to their hair—and it was so effective that within a decade, proposed legislation to curb these accessories to assault had bubbled up across the United States.

As the article recounts, the hatpins were notorious for inflicting scratches and pokes on passengers on crowded public transport or venues, but women also found them useful for fending off "mashers" or otherwise protecting their person. 

... In Chicago, in 1910, a woman wrote this letter protesting potential legislation: “I always feel safe going home late at night with a hatpin available for protection. Before leaving a streetcar, I always carry a hatpin ready in my hand until I am safe within the door of my house.” She added: “Thousands of other women undoubtedly can speak from their experience of how a stout hatpin has been an effective defence in times of danger.” ...

And efforts to legislatively restrict hat pins were met with fierce opposition from women. Rather, it was changing fashion and laws protecting migratory birds (and their feathers) that spelled the end of the large hats and their accompanying hatpins.