Women’s Bobbed Hair Got Cincinnati Men’s Dander Up One Hundred Years Ago

From Cincinnati Enquirer 5 October 1924, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand

O ne hundred years ago, most men in Cincinnati believed women had got all the doggone progress they deserved. Women could vote, they were driving cars, they smoked cigarettes, and some women – gasp! – had jobs. In 1924, Cincinnati women discovered a new way to exasperate men. They had the nerve to cut their hair.

For many men, it was a sign of the end times. The Enquirer [2 April 1924] reported on a man who shot himself after a “three-hour tirade against all women” because his wife had her hair bobbed. The Post [29 March 1924] carried a story about an 18-year-old girl who bought rat poison in a suicide attempt because of the abuse heaped on her by her parents when she got a haircut. A single woman told the Post [25 April 1924] that she was glad to be unmarried with her bobbed hair.

“Consider what suffering I might undergo for my bobbed hair if I were married. My husband might kill himself on my account, so that I would be obliged to wear black for a year. I look dreadful in black. Of course, if a woman looks good in black, it is not so bad if her husband kills himself because of her bobbed hair.”

Some men avoided suicide and charged into divorce court. Robert M. Hannah of Spring Grove Avenue told the judge, according to the Enquirer [3 May 1924], that his wife abused and neglected him, but the haircut was the last straw:

“He said he was much opposed to bobbed hair, and to torment him she had her hair bobbed, then brought the tresses home to him, wrapped up, telling him it was a present. Then they separated.”

The local courts saw women making decisions about their own tresses as infringing on the property rights of their husbands. Judge William D. Alexander, according to the Post [18 March 1924], believed that husbands who treasured their wives ought to have a say about their appearance. He dismissed a case brought against John Brown of Clifton Avenue, who struck his wife when she got a bobbed haircut without permission. The judge said:

“If my wife wanted to have bobbed hair, she would at least consult me; that’s a wife’s duty and a matter of courtesy toward her husband.”

Typically, Cincinnati was inclined to blame any new fad for the downfall of civilization, and the local newspapers obliged by delightedly printing reports of “bobbed-hair bandits” who perpetrated robberies around town. There was one such gun moll operating in the West End who carried a “wicked revolver” and waylaid men wandering the neighborhood at night. The Enquirer [3 March 1924] was delighted because New York and Chicago had endured the predations of “bobbed-hair bandits” and our town felt left out:

“Cincinnati achieved a ‘bobbed-hair bandit’ last night and graduated to the ranks of a cosmopolitan city.”

Another bobbed-hair bandit operated over several months with a male accomplice. The Post [4 April 1924] reported she was the brains behind the operation when a gas station on Central Avenue got robbed:

“The blonde female bandit, with bobbed hair, who has been sought by police for two months, during which time she has been active, put in an appearance again Thursday night.”

From Cincinnati Post 12 April 1924, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand

Perhaps it was the unsavory connotations of bobbed hair in regard to banditry or suicides or divorce but the biggest kerfuffle caused by shorn locks in 1924 involved the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing. The dean of the college, Laura Logan, penalized eight students who dared to cut their hair by requiring them to endure another three months of instruction (presumably time to allow their tresses to grow out again). Dean Logan told the Enquirer [10 April 1924]:

“‘It was necessary to make a ruling on this because of the necessity of deciding what goes with a nurse’s uniform and what does not,’ Miss Logan said. ‘It was decided that bobbed hair detracts from the dignity of the uniform. Since uniformity was essential, this was the only way in which it could be maintained.’”

For the record, here are the young women whose rebellious fashion sense earned them double-secret probation from the nursing college: Mildred Carson, Grace Funk, Virginia Jordan, Mary Randolph, Virgina Shoot, Isabel Baer, Doris Kreimer and Mary Macey.

The newspapers reported that the nursing schools at Christ Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospital had enforced similar rules. At Deaconess Hospital the Post [11 April 1924] found the superintendent somewhat conflicted:

“‘We have more important things to worry about than bobbed hair,’ Rev. A.G. Lohmann, superintendent of Deaconess Hospital, said. Rev. Lohmann said he did not particularly blame any woman for bobbing her hair. ‘It certainly is more sanitary,’ he said. The superintendent, however, gave it as his opinion that bobbed hair was not attractive. He is discouraging bobbed hair at his institution by requiring new students in the School of Nursing to wear hair nets.”

One economic sector very much in favor of bobbed hair was the tonsorial trade. Hair stylists in 1924 could arrange and braid hair but knew nothing about cutting it. Barbers, on the other hand, now found themselves in demand by a very different, feminine, clientele. Business boomed, according to the Post [30 Aprl 1924]:

“Of 85 beauty parlors here, 19 have opened since Jan. 1. The demand for attention by bobbed heads is so great that many establishments are being opened in the suburbs. Just like husband and father, wife and daughter now have their favorite barber, whom they visit regularly to have the clippers run up their necks.”

And that may explain the real reason so many men objected to the new hairstyles – they cost more. Hugh McKay complained to the Post [1 October 1924] that his wife’s haircut cost four dollars compared to his 40-cent trim, once special treatments like water-waves and marcelles were applied. And, once her hair was clipped, her hats no longer fit and she needed new millinery.

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