Human beings are a species in constant evolution. We once carried spears and created fantastical works of art on the walls of French caves. Today we carry smartphones and are often distracted by them. Yes, the human species continues to progress in many ways.
Since the Industrial Revolution, things have changed at such a rapid pace that we sometimes forget how different the world was. Things that were once common today seem strange or even unusual, although it is probably also true that humans who lived 100 years ago would find some of our modern habits peculiar. Unfortunately, we have no way of showing someone from the early 20th century a YouTube video of someone attempting a modern challenge. But we can at least reflect on the unusual habits of our recent ancestors.
This may sound like fiction, but it is actually non-fiction. A hundred years ago, in many major cities in the United States, it was illegal to be judged unattractive in public.
Let’s take Chicago as an example. According to the Chicago Tribune, in 1881, Alderman James Peevey introduced an ordinance banning people who were “disease, mutilated, mutilated, or in any manner deformed, so as to constitute an unsightly or disgusting object” from the streets of Chicago, where they might make people uncomfortable. If you were deemed too unsightly to be in public, you had to pay a fine of $1 to $50 (which was a decent amount in those days) or go to the almshouse, which was a place for those who were. needed.
After World War I, when veterans returned home with missing limbs and other disfiguring battle scars, public opinion toward the disabled began to change, but these laws remained in force and enforcement continued. continued until the 1950s. Chicago’s unsightly law was not officially abandoned until 1974.
We’d like to say we’re much more enlightened today, but body shaming is still around, so collective enlightenment may still be ahead. But at least body shaming isn’t written into the law.
Before Halloween, there was Thanksgiving. No, really. People dressed up, ran through the city streets making noise, and went to costume parties. At Thanksgiving.
According to NPR, the tradition was so beloved that in 1897 the LA Times reported that Thanksgiving was “the busiest time of the year for manufacturers and dealers of masks and fake faces.” » And if that wasn’t enough to make your head spin, costumed children would also parade in groups through their neighborhood and ask adults “Anything for Thanksgiving?” »And then the adults gave them candy. Oh-okay.
This custom bothered many people. In fact, the New York school principal, who was almost certainly related to the person who invented this unsightly law, complained that the tradition seemed designed primarily to “annoy adults” and was inconsistent with ” modernity”. » Regardless, it might surprise you to learn that this particular Thanksgiving tradition is still going strong, only now you mostly only see elaborate Thanksgiving costumes in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
However, children really didn’t want to give up buying candy, and by the 1930s the practice of going door to door looking for treats became a Halloween tradition, even though it s t was primarily an organized event intended to reduce Halloween vandalism. and violence — hence the expression “trick or treat.” »
