Mashers, Owl Cars, and Night Hawks
Mashers, Owl Cars, and Night Hawks
This chapter examines the safety of women riding in streetcars at night time in American cities during the 1800s. It highlights the repeated descriptions of harassment of women on the streetcars and suggests that women’s precarious safety on the streetcars was a particularly disturbing sign of social crisis. It discusses the establishment of a law of common carriers that made railroad companies responsible for the safety and welfare of the traveling public. This chapter also describes the case of Avery D. Putnam who became an exemplar of the masculine resolve needed to resist urban disorder after being killed for defending a woman being harassed by a drunken streetcar passenger.
Keywords: streetcars, women, harassment, social crisis, Avery D. Putnam, urban disorder
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
