This posting is about my dissertation for the MA History of Design and Material Culture which was submitted at the end of September 2015.

Tiger’s Eye gemstone hatpin with 12 inch tempered steel shaft. Somerset Heritage Centre collection.

At the turn of the 20th century, across Europe, the USA and the Antipodes, an extraordinary phenomenon was observed. The simple hatpin, which had developed as an essential female fashion accessory, was rapidly becoming a feared, gendered weapon.

From around 1895 until the beginning of the First World War the hatpin was a ubiquitous fashion accessory. Modesty dictated that almost every woman wore a hat in public and every hat required a hatpin to keep it in place. Often long and always very sharp, hatpins had a complex history due to the dangers inherent in their design. From an examination of hatpins in museum collections, to the ways in which they were represented in contemporary news media and fiction, this dissertation explores the factors which led to the hatpin developing from a fashion accessory, into a public danger and an improvised, gendered weapon. It engages with a methodology informed by Arjun Appadurai’s idea that objects have biographies which, under the influence of human agency, results in changes in their meaning over time. It will also reference the ideas of Judy Attfield who proposed that objects can be understood as ‘wild things’ with complex and unpredictable social identities. Through a close interdisciplinary study of hatpins, the aim is to uncover what these gendered objects reveal at an intersection between women’s fashion, increasing female emancipation, danger, vulnerability and self-reliance. It also considers how and why the hatpin became a dangerous and feared weapon with a strong cultural resonance, and what this reveals about social and gender relations at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Explored through research in several museum collections and at the British Library’s British Newspaper Archive, its Victorian Periodicals Collection, as well as a range of popular imagery and contemporary fiction, my MA History of Design and Material Culture dissertation examines a range of incidents of accidental and deliberate wounding with hatpins in Britain. Incidents are analysed in relation to the hatpin’s role in the changing status of women – fears of a new feminine agency, particularly in the context of the contemporary campaign for female suffrage – and wider issues of female vulnerability and self-defence in public.

Chapters

• The history and development of the hatpin
• The dangers posed by hatpins
• Women in public and female self-defence
• Fear of growing female agency and the Suffragettes

If you are interested in finding out more about my research, please contact me at: a.d.crowe@brighton.ac.uk