https://hatpinned.com/ History doesn't simply repeat itself. It leaves patterns. New essays as they are added to the collection. en Tue, 03 Nov 2026 12:30:00 -0400 https://hatpinned.com/posts/husbands-in-a-panic.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/husbands-in-a-panic.html Tue, 03 Nov 2026 12:30:00 -0400 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 12. April 1909. A Chicago nurse threw the man who attacked her. Women were learning jiu-jitsu and boxing, and the papers worried about their husbands. https://hatpinned.com/posts/eleven-wretched-women.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/eleven-wretched-women.html Mon, 02 Nov 2026 12:00:00 -0400 Sports Sports · No. 3. August 2, 1928. Nine women ran the first Olympic 800 meters and broke the world record. By the next morning, the story was who fell on the grass. https://hatpinned.com/posts/dont-wink.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/dont-wink.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:11:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 11. February 1923. Ten Washington women launched an Anti-Flirt Club with ten rules for girls. Two weeks later, a newspaper revealed who had invented it. https://hatpinned.com/posts/not-concurred-in.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/not-concurred-in.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:10:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 10. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/number-261.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/number-261.html Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:02:00 -0300 Sports Sports · No. 2. April 19, 1967. Kathrine Switzer ran Boston with an official number. Two officials went after it, so she wouldn't count as a contestant. https://hatpinned.com/posts/no-such-thing-as-a-marathon-for-women.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/no-such-thing-as-a-marathon-for-women.html Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:01:00 -0300 Sports Sports · No. 1. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/just-being-women.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/just-being-women.html Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:02:00 -0300 Employment Employment · No. 2. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-chair-in-the-hallway.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-chair-in-the-hallway.html Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:01:00 -0300 Employment Employment · No. 1. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/nobody-counted.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/nobody-counted.html Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:05:00 -0300 Committed Committed · No. 5. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/a-massive-curtailment-of-liberty.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/a-massive-curtailment-of-liberty.html Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:04:00 -0300 Committed Committed · No. 4. October 1971. Wisconsin police committed Alberta Lessard without a hearing. She sued from inside the system — and rewrote the rules for the whole country. https://hatpinned.com/posts/what-actually-passed.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/what-actually-passed.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:09:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 9. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/let-them-make-the-streets-safe.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/let-them-make-the-streets-safe.html Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:08:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 8. Nan Davis got the floor before the vote and told the council exactly what was wrong with the ordinance. It passed anyway. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-nine-inch-ordinance.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-nine-inch-ordinance.html Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:07:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 7. Chicago, March 1910: a packed council chamber, a $50 fine, and a vote that looked like consensus but wasn't. https://hatpinned.com/posts/a-song-interrupted.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/a-song-interrupted.html Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:03:00 -0300 Committed Committed · No. 3. November 1941. Rosemary Kennedy was singing on an operating table when the doctors decided she'd said enough. Her father never asked her. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-operation.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-operation.html Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:02:00 -0300 Committed Committed · No. 2. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-axe-at-the-bedroom-door.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-axe-at-the-bedroom-door.html Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:01:00 -0300 Committed Committed · No. 1. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-panic-crosses-an-ocean.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-panic-crosses-an-ocean.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:06:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 6. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/innocent-victims.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/innocent-victims.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:05:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 5. Real accidents, a foot-long steel pin, and a widely repeated death story that may never have happened at all. https://hatpinned.com/posts/from-heroine-to-menace.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/from-heroine-to-menace.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:04:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 4. 1903 to 1910, headline by headline: how an accident narrative and a self-defense narrative quietly merged into one "hatpin problem." https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-copycat-effect.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-copycat-effect.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:03:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 3. How a single well-told story became a summer of copycat headlines, and what actually spread. https://hatpinned.com/posts/hugging-a-delusion.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/hugging-a-delusion.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:03:00 -0300 Women's Suffrage Women's Suffrage · No. 3. 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. https://hatpinned.com/posts/before-blaker.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/before-blaker.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:02:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 2. A month earlier, in East St. Louis, a woman named Mayme Andrews did the same thing — and nobody remembers her name. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-procession-on-pennsylvania-avenue.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-procession-on-pennsylvania-avenue.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:02:00 -0300 Women's Suffrage Women's Suffrage · No. 2. March 3, 1913. A parade, a mob the police wouldn't clear, and Ida B. Wells refusing to march at the back. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-stagecoach-on-fifth-avenue.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-stagecoach-on-fifth-avenue.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:01:00 -0300 The Hatpin Laws The Hatpin Laws · No. 1. May 1903. Leoti Blaker, a hatpin, and the incident popular memory calls the beginning. https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-workhouse-at-occoquan.html https://hatpinned.com/posts/the-workhouse-at-occoquan.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:01:00 -0300 Women's Suffrage Women's Suffrage · No. 1. November 14, 1917. Thirty-three women, a superintendent named Whittaker, and a night the Silent Sentinels made sure the country couldn't ignore.