Pinned

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Browse by Era

History doesn't arrive all at once. Pinned is organized the way a museum organizes a timeline — walk through in order, or step directly into the era that interests you.

Each section of the scale spans fifty years, except the last, which runs from 2000 to today.

1858–1979

Committed

The pattern at its starkest: a man's word, a doctor's compliance, and a woman with no legal standing to object. Decades before the Hatpin Laws, the same reflex — treating a woman's independence as a problem to be diagnosed and contained.

No. 1 — The Axe at the Bedroom Door

June 18, 1860. Elizabeth Packard disagreed with her husband's theology. He had her committed on his word alone — and Illinois law said that was enough.

No. 2 — The Operation

April 1867. London's surgeons voted to expel a colleague for removing the clitoris to treat insanity. Similar operations went on in America for decades.

No. 3 — A Song Interrupted

November 1941. Rosemary Kennedy was singing on an operating table when the doctors decided she'd said enough. Her father never asked her.

No. 4 — 'A Massive Curtailment of Liberty'

October 1971. Wisconsin police committed Alberta Lessard without a hearing. She sued from inside the system — and rewrote the rules for the whole country.

No. 5 — Nobody Counted

June 1858. Rosina Bulwer-Lytton confronted her husband at his election and was certified insane within weeks. Illinois had already put that power in writing.

1903–1920

The Hatpin Laws

Where the pattern for this project starts: a decade of women defending themselves in public, and the press that turned them from heroines into a menace.

No. 1 — The Stagecoach on Fifth Avenue

May 1903. Leoti Blaker, a hatpin, and the incident popular memory calls the beginning.

No. 2 — Before Blaker: The Walk Home From Work

A month earlier, in East St. Louis, a woman named Mayme Andrews did the same thing — and nobody remembers her name.

No. 3 — A Trend Is Just an Incident With a Wire Service

How a single well-told story became a summer of copycat headlines, and what actually spread.

No. 4 — From Heroine to Menace: Tracking the Shift, Year by Year

1903 to 1910, headline by headline: how an accident narrative and a self-defense narrative quietly merged into one "hatpin problem."

No. 5 — Innocent Victims (and One Story That Might Not Be True)

Real accidents, a foot-long steel pin, and a widely repeated death story that may never have happened at all.

No. 6 — 'Iniquitous and Unnecessary Legislation'

Sydney, 1912: sixty women jailed rather than pay a hatpin fine, and the international spread of a panic that never really needed America to start.

No. 7 — Sixty-Eight to Two

Chicago, March 1910: a packed council chamber, a $50 fine, and a vote that looked like consensus but wasn't.

No. 8 — Let Them Make the Streets Safe

Nan Davis got the floor before the vote and told the council exactly what was wrong with the ordinance. It passed anyway.

No. 9 — What Actually Passed

A circus rider fined $1, ordinances copied almost word for word from Chicago's, and penalties from a dollar to six months in jail. Every version targeted the pin.

No. 10 — 'Not Concurred In'

The hatpin bills that died, in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Wilkes-Barre, where a council clerk named Emma Schwager was handed the deciding vote.

1911–1960s

Employment

A woman didn't have to picket or ride a streetcar to trigger the pattern. She just had to work.

No. 1 — The Chair in the Hallway

1911. Hallie Janes Jameson was barred from her own classroom for getting married, sued, and won — and it took decades for the ruling to matter.

No. 2 — Just Being Women

September 1945. A UAW committee told its board that women were being pushed out of the plants. Federal figures, a job-service letter, and local papers show how it worked.

1913–1920

Women's Suffrage

The same pattern, raised in stakes: what happens when the claim to public space becomes a claim to political power, and the backlash moves from newspaper columns into prison cells.

No. 1 — The Workhouse at Occoquan

November 14, 1917. Thirty-three women, a superintendent named Whittaker, and a night the Silent Sentinels made sure the country couldn't ignore.

No. 2 — The Procession on Pennsylvania Avenue

March 3, 1913. A parade, a mob the police wouldn't clear, and Ida B. Wells refusing to march at the back.

No. 3 — Hugging a Delusion

A cartoonist who drew for both sides, and the postcards, pamphlets, and household hints that argued a woman who wanted the vote had already lost something better.

1928–Today

Sports

A rule said women couldn't go the distance. When they did, the argument moved from what they could do to whether it had counted.

No. 1 — No Such Thing as a Marathon for Women

April 19, 1966. Roberta Gibb ran the Boston Marathon from the bushes and finished ahead of most of the men. The next day, the race director said she hadn't run it.

No. 2 — Number 261

April 19, 1967. Kathrine Switzer ran Boston with an official number. Two officials went after it, so she wouldn't count as a contestant.