Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. The invention caused outrage. People regarded the new
Speaker 1: technology as the moral downfall of society, and as you
Speaker 1: might imagine, made it a hot topic for conversation. Doctors
Speaker 1: warned the apparatus had catastrophic events for women and girls. Women.
Speaker 1: You see, we're thought to be frail, referred to as
Speaker 1: the angel of the household. Their jobs were to keep
Speaker 1: house and raise children, and nothing more. The new device
Speaker 1: was too hard on their dainty, feminine skeletons. Their feet
Speaker 1: would become deformed, forcing them to walk in an odd,
Speaker 1: nonfeminine plunging motion. The bones and their fingers would curl
Speaker 1: into a claw. Even their facial features weren't immune. Their
Speaker 1: mouths would contort into a grimace, and their eyes would
Speaker 1: bulge from their sockets. With continued use, a woman's body
Speaker 1: would become more masculine, That is, if she even survived
Speaker 1: at all. Doctors told the public that a woman's reproductive
Speaker 1: system severely limited her from doing anything more manly, and
Speaker 1: this contraption might cause her finite femininity and energy to
Speaker 1: become permanently extinguished. Doctors also said the new technology would
Speaker 1: render women and young girls sterile. Entire medical journals detailed
Speaker 1: all sorts of anomalies linked to the invention. Women were
Speaker 1: likely to suffer appendicitis attacks or even ruptures, inflammation, over exertion,
Speaker 1: and dangerous internal swelling of the throat, just to name
Speaker 1: a few. It was said that the device took a
Speaker 1: toll on their looks too. Women risked dark shadows under
Speaker 1: their eyes, pale lips, clenched jaws, and an overall look
Speaker 1: of weariness. Heart palpitations, insomnia, headaches, and even depression were
Speaker 1: known side effects plaguing women. Some doctors stated the conditions
Speaker 1: were permanent, while others thought that with enough time away
Speaker 1: from the invention, a full recovery could be expected. To
Speaker 1: society's horror, women using the machine also began to dress differently,
Speaker 1: wearing bloomers instead of dresses. Until now, women hadn't even
Speaker 1: shown their ankles. Pastors and Others warned the apparatus might
Speaker 1: loosen women's morals. Women might even be deriving. Dare I
Speaker 1: say it's pleasure from the invention without a man? In
Speaker 1: one a Sunday Herald reporter wrote that seeing a woman
Speaker 1: with the device was the most vicious thing he had
Speaker 1: ever laid eyes on, far outweighing women smoking. Three years later,
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, headline read lunacy in England.
Speaker 1: The article stated that without a doubt, persistent use led
Speaker 1: to weakness of the mind, general lunacy, and homicidal mania
Speaker 1: in women. Unable to handle the technology, women reportedly became
Speaker 1: overly exhilarated, and the stress, both physical and mental, would
Speaker 1: cause them to harm others while using the contraption and
Speaker 1: leave innocent people for dead. While this invention sounds pretty awful,
Speaker 1: men were completely unaffected. In fact, they were encouraged to
Speaker 1: utilize the same apparatus. The invention was all the rage
Speaker 1: back in the eighteen nineties and benefited men greatly, both
Speaker 1: for business and for pleasure. There were even special clubs
Speaker 1: for men who owned them all over the country. New
Speaker 1: cultures surrounded the device. The message was clear, the invention
Speaker 1: was purely masculine and only men could handle such a contraption.
Speaker 1: But the real reason ran a bit deeper. A woman doctor,
Speaker 1: a rarity for the time, disagreed with her male counterparts.
Speaker 1: She pointed out that not one doctor could produce evidence
Speaker 1: suggesting that the side effects they described were real. No
Speaker 1: one walked around with claws shaped hands, plunging walks, or
Speaker 1: the horrendous face that had garnered a diagnosis at all.
Speaker 1: It's quite the visual. The women of the day didn't
Speaker 1: buy it either. Women everywhere used them. Susan B. Anthony
Speaker 1: even said that equal rights were closely tied to this invention.
Speaker 1: A paper in Pennsylvania pointed out that the new technology
Speaker 1: had given women the ability to go to the store,
Speaker 1: visit a friend, and exercise, all without waiting for a
Speaker 1: man to take her places, and that had been the
Speaker 1: real issue all along. It allowed women a level of
Speaker 1: freedom that most men of the time found threatening. Today,
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that one simple object caused moral
Speaker 1: panic and the invention the bicycle. All across Europe, it
Speaker 1: stood from manliness. Those with them were viewed as more
Speaker 1: elite than those who did not have them. In Germany,
Speaker 1: only men who had proved themselves in battle were permitted
Speaker 1: to wear them. They became the symbol for bravery and
Speaker 1: dashing courage, and by the nineteenth century they became all
Speaker 1: the vogue for society's elites, so waiters, domestic servants, and
Speaker 1: priests were forbidden to have them. Men wearing them were
Speaker 1: considered more handsome, more virile, and certainly more important. In France,
Speaker 1: this fashion trend happened at about the same time that
Speaker 1: fine restaurants catering to the rich began to open in Paris.
Speaker 1: Like plenty of cultures, dining is often more than just
Speaker 1: about the food, though for the wealthy and elite in France,
Speaker 1: it was also about showing off their importance. The clientele
Speaker 1: wanted an experience, and that meant they wanted to feel
Speaker 1: superior over those who served them, and so the waiters
Speaker 1: were banned from wearing them. Those who insisted were fired.
Speaker 1: The men who were denied the ability to wear the
Speaker 1: fashion and felt humiliated, demoralized, and emasculated. Women during the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution often claimed that a man without one wasn't
Speaker 1: a suitable man at all. Although the waiters complained, restaurant
Speaker 1: owners turned a deaf ear if the ultra wealthy wanted
Speaker 1: to flaunt their manliness and superiority over them. So be it.
Speaker 1: Though the industry wasn't the same as a factory. There
Speaker 1: were unions, just not as tightly formed. Waiters came and
Speaker 1: waiters went. Although it said that thousands went on strike,
Speaker 1: the newspaper reported that this wasn't so much about the
Speaker 1: style as class, and that in another ten years or
Speaker 1: so another class difference would be the center of attention. Instead.
Speaker 1: The reporters stated that the waiters, if their demands were met,
Speaker 1: would then ask for better pay and all sorts of
Speaker 1: other things. Sooner or later, prices would go up, and
Speaker 1: it would be the patrons who would strike instead. In America,
Speaker 1: the New York Times jumped into the fray, stating that
Speaker 1: preventing waiters from wearing them was like the days of slavery.
Speaker 1: Such acts were not be coming of the French elite,
Speaker 1: it was, the reporter wrote, a grotesque and humiliating display
Speaker 1: of tyranny. The cause became known as the Declaration of
Speaker 1: the Rights of Man and Citizen. When the movement reached Parliament,
Speaker 1: Antied Boyer, the socialist deputy from Marseilles, proposed a bill
Speaker 1: to make bands illegal enforceable by serving three months in prison.
Speaker 1: The restaurant owners lamented their elite clientele might go elsewhere
Speaker 1: they paid to feel like they were being served by
Speaker 1: lower class people, not equals. During the strike, though, waiters
Speaker 1: heckled the scabs who had been hired to take their
Speaker 1: place and picketed outside of the restaurants. The police were
Speaker 1: called in to arrest the strikers, although they also ended
Speaker 1: up arresting Americans who had come to dine and had
Speaker 1: no idea that lacking the trendy sense of style got
Speaker 1: them lumped in with the strikers. The boy A bill failed,
Speaker 1: but all was not lost. By early May, waiters across
Speaker 1: the city had finally won the right to sport this
Speaker 1: elite aisle of the rich. Proponents argued that the waiters
Speaker 1: should have asked for better pay, more time off, and
Speaker 1: better working conditions as well. The men all replied that
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with socialism or capitalism and
Speaker 1: everything to do with the sense of belonging and self identification.
Speaker 1: France had finally confronted the injustice that had been brewing
Speaker 1: right under everyone's nose, and when the restaurants reopened, waiters
Speaker 1: proudly returned to their jobs, sporting the thing they had
Speaker 1: fought so hard to wear, a mustache. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Loure
Speaker 1: dot Come and until next time, stay curious. H