I wasn’t sure if people were enjoying them, so I took a break from reprinting historical articles for a while… Anyway, maybe it’s time for another?

So on February 28, 1899, The Washington Post wrote an article by a writer who while I feel does have a secret fetish for tattoos from some of the wording, clearly feels they are low class, socially inappropriate, and generally “Unamerican”. It begins,

"Chicago's society has a genre quite its own, and while its leaders avow it is still in a formative period, I think all must acknowledge that it possesses some very striking members. One of the leading society women of Chicago, whose husband's family is not far removed from diplomatic relations, attended a cotillion recently given in the gay French capital. The lady, who is rather short in stature was gowned in a robe of brilliant yellow satin, made very short in the waist, exceedingly decollete, and only held on to the shoulders by a narrow band of satin ribbon. A gentleman, upon whose arm she was leaning in the promenade, suddenly discovered, as he supposed, some foreign substance which had fallen upon her arm, and, with an apology, called her attention to the fact that something dark had fallen and lodged upon her upper arm near the shoulder, upon which the lady laughingly replied, at the same time drawing back her shoulder band, 'Oh, no, that is nothing; I will show it to you; it is the coat-of-arms of my husband's family, which I have had tattooed upon my shoulder. My daughter has one much handsomer than mine; at which the daughter, a beautiful young girl of nineteen years, was brought over and this desecration exhibited. I find myself powerless to express my sentiments upon this and leave you each to your own opinion."

Our Frenchman, it appears, met in Paris a "leading society woman whose husband's family is not far removed" from diplomatic relations. Just what he means by being "not far removed from diplomatic relations" we do not pretend to know. Doubtless he knows himself, but no one at this end of the line does or ever will. This lady evidently set a great value upon the proximity of her husband's family to diplomatic relations, so she had their coat of arms tattooed upon her ample and alluring shoulder. Unfortunately the Frenchman does not describe the heraldic device of this Chicago family "not far removed from diplomatic relations." Very probably, however, it consisted of two clear sides rampant, with eight sausages, gules, regardant, on a field sable. Or perhaps it might have been a yardstick potent with six scissors interchanged on a field, or with fess and saltire couchant en chevron. The fact remains, however, that the sumptuous details are not given. The Frenchman contents himself with telling us that the coat ofarms was tattooed upon that exciting spot, and then goes on to explain that Chicago society "has a genre quite its own" — meaning the genre just described.

We do not wonder that the historian of this extraordinary episode finds himself powerless to express his sentiments. We feel the same way ourselves. As a matter of fact, our bewilderment covers a much larger field that his, for we pine to know what sort of "leading society woman" this was and what kind of a cotillion she went to in gay Paree. We hear constantly of these queer Americans who go abroad and are seen at entertainments and among foreigners as queer as they are. Furthermore, since we know what remarkable persons visit us from abroad we are quite prepared to believe that we contribute our share of freaks wherewith to enliven and amaze the capitals of Europe. What puzzles us, though, is the fact that we never see these astounding Americans ourselves. We are plentifully supplied with tuft hunters and toadies whose breathless and undiscriminating chase after foreigners makes food for sorry and humiliation, but one does not meet society leaders, either in Chicago or elsewhere in this country, either closely or remotely connected with diplomatic relations — whatever that may mean — who tattoo various parts of their bodies with heraldic devices and then exhibit the result to strangers. To tell the truth, we not only share our Frenchman's speechless astonishment, but we are beginning to envy him his superior opportunities of observation.

What’s funny is that even though the writer swears that tattooed people, let alone tattooed society people, are unheard of in the United States, newspaper articles about the popularity of tattooing, especially in the upper classes, were common. The Davenport Tribune had already identified tattooing as a “fad” in 1893, and even the paper the above article is from had already called tattooing “fine art” in 1895. Well, I suppose the media having a very short memory is nothing new.

I just realized I haven’t printed a historical article in a while. Here’s one from The North Adams Evening Transcript, February 14, 1899.

New York women have a senseless and disfiguring fad of tattooing. The idea was not suggested by the much decorated arms of the heroes of the navy. Its inauguration is due to the fact that English society women are having their limbs tattooed. Recently one of the society tattooers came over from London and in his New York studio seems busy enough to be enjoying the popularity he claims. Of course not all his patrons are women, but he says that a large majority of them are. Actresses are especially fond of wearing some occult symbol, which they trust will bring them good luck.

“Of course,” said the society tattooer, when asked to tell something about his work, “I never divulge the names of my patrons. I make that a rule, even when I know the women would not object.”

“In England I had one patron, a titled lady, who came to me first to have a simple design tattooed upon one arm. She was so pleased with the effect that she came back almost a dozen times, and now her arms are almost filled with ingenious and, to her, significant, tattooings.”

“I remember a young officer whose arm I tattooed with a portrait of his sweetheart shortly before he went away to the war. The portrait now is, with him molding to dust in a grave near Santiago.”

“The favorite place for tattooing? Well, the ladies generally have the design on the arm though I know of many who have been tattooed on the ankle. A good many married ladies are fond of having the inscription engraved on their wedding ring tattooed on the finger underneath the ring. Many of them, too, ask to have bracelets tattooed on their arms. A colored butterfly is also a great favorite. I am able to tattoo in ten different colors. What an artist can do on canvas I will undertake to reproduce on the skin.”

“The method is quite painless. The electrical tattooing machine is fitted with needles whose fineness will be appreciated by ladies when I say that they are ‘sixteens.’ Therefore a tiny puncture from such a needle could not be felt unless the skin is abnormally sensitive.”

“First of all, I wash the arm, or whatever part of the body is to be tattooed, with an antiseptic lotion, which renders the treatment perfectly safe. Then the outline is drawn on with one needle, and this traverses the skin at the rate of 70 punctures a second. After this is finished I put in the shaft as many needles as are required for the shading, sometimes using as many as 60. If the design is to be a colored one, different needles are used for different colors. The same needles are never used twice, each customer having an entirely new set of needles.”

“Engaged couples very often come to have each other’s initials done on their arms. Their mutual interest in the process as tried on each other’s arms is very funny. The worst of it is that when they quarrel both parties descend upon me to have the initials erased. This is impossible, but to overcome the difficulty I trace a heavy design over them, and this hides the initials.”

“I can also tattoo a natural tint of pink upon the cheeks of ladies. It is a very delicate and a very expensive process.”

“I once had a secret society come to me. There were 25 members, and each had the secret sign of the society tattooed on his arm. They wanted to enroll me as a member so that the sign might be safe, but I politely declined, so they made me swear eternal secrecy, which I was quite prepared to do.”

“One of the favorite designs for ladies is a butterfly. Birds with gayly colored plumage and flowers and initials are most often tattooed upon their arms. Sometimes the designs are placed upon the shoulder, where even in evening dress they are not seen. On the arm the long evening gloves cover them. One of the most conspicuous tattooings I ever made was that of a serpent called about the wrist of a society woman. It was a pretty good piece of work, and the serpent looked so lifelike that I wondered at her coolness in going through life with it coiled about her wrist.”

“The length of time it takes to tattoo a design of course depends upon the intricacy of the pattern. My charges are in accordance with this. From 20 minutes to 60 hours are the extremes of time. If a very elaborate picture in many colors were required for the back, it would take me three or four weeks to complete it.”

This story is from the Morning Herald Despatch (Decatur, IL) newspaper, dated July 2, 1897. The characterizations are kind of odd — although I do find the idea of using “heathen” to describe anyone who’s not Christian sort of amusing…

TATTOO ARTEST [sic] IN TROUBLE.

A young and dirty looking tattoo artist drifted into Quong Kee’s Chinese laundry on East Eldorado street shortly before dark last night and before he left the place became mixed in a row with the heathen and was locked up by Officers Holser and Weity. The young fellow claimed that he had gone into the place to purchase some India ink and when he offered the shirt strainer the money for the ink he refused to take it and swatted him in the face. The heathen grabbed the fellow’s coat and ran after the police to whom he told an unintelligible story and the tattoo artist was placed in the lockup for the night. The police were unable to understand the Celestial but thought from his motions and carryings on that the fellow had tried to get out of his wash shop without settling for his purchaser. From his looks the police do not think he will make good citizen of this town and he will be fired out at sun up in the morning.

Now, I’m not sure that the above story is really “anti-tattoo”, because it could just as easily be “anti-criminal”. But let’s post a story that’s later into the tattoo trend, from the Reno Evening Gazette‘s August 7, 1906 edition. I like that child protection was one of the dominion of the Humane Society!

Tattooing Will Be Done Away With

Old Custom of Sailors Has Been Frowned Upong By the Navy Department, and Practice Will Be Stopped.

WASHINGTON, August 7.— Enlisted men in the navy have instituted a movement to do away with tattoo marking, which was formerly popular with sailors. Since the conviction of a Brooklyn man, through the efforts of officers of the Humane Society, for mutilating the arms of a young boy by decorating them with India ink designs, tattooers have shown unwillingness to embellish the bodies of men who are not known to be of age, and as few adults care to have their bodies decorated, the practice may soon become a thing of the past.

The following description of a deserter of the navy shows to what extremes some men have gone in decorations which cannot be removed:
Tattoo marks on chest, shoulders, arms and back, vis: Eagle, ship, woman, flag, sailor, cards, clasped hands, flag and flowers.

Tattoo marks are a ready means of identification of deserters.

I guess the war on tattoos was as successful as the war on drugs… It just made people want them more.

I posted recently an interview with a soldier tattooing in Afghanistan, and we talked a little about the recent military bans and then un-bans on tattoos… I thought it would be interesting to share with you this story about the military use of tattoos from the April 17, 1895 edition of The Washington Post.

Identified by Tattoo Marks

Recruiting officers of the Army are aided greatly in keeping undesirable characters out of the service by the “outline figure” card record.

Under War Department oders issued in 1889, record is made by Army medical officers of indelible or permanent marks as may be found on the persons of accepted recruits for the Army. The information is forwarded to the Surgeon General of the Army. The object in view is to obtain evidence for the identification of men with bad records who have had previous army service. The system has worked great benefit to the service and is viewed by good soldiers as greatly conducive to their protection.

Speaking of using tattoos to identify people, here’s another story on identifying children, from the Twin-City News (Uhrichsville and Dennison, Ohio, October 19, 1899).

We are told that since the Clark kidnapping case many parents are having a hidden tattoo mark placed upon their children for purposes of identification. This is given upon the authority of the most noted tattooer in America, who furnishes a quality of strange and interesting facts in an article of "Tattooing and Tattoo Marks" to the October Ev'ry Month. The sketch is accompanied by photographs of the latest implements used in the art and some remarkable designs.

I have lots more stories about tattoos as identification, but I thought this next one was quite interesting, both the first part about prisoners avoiding tattoos, but more because of the part about the guy who went to prison in order to tattoo people. This is from the Wisconsin State Journal, November 29, 1899 (a reprint from The Milwaukee Sentinal).

Tattooing Out of Favor
The Bertillon System of Identification the Cause of it — Becoming Unpopular

…Since the introduction of the Bertillon system there has been a waning of the tattoo fad. There was a time when a tattoo mark was regarded as indispensable by men who made law-breaking their business. They considered it a sort of charm, and believed that to a certain extent the indelible figures that adorned their breasts or arms made them immune to arrest. But that day has gone by. The clever modern crook knows that the tattoo is a hoodoo. Under the Bertillon system of registration of the marks upon a man’s body it is a certain clew to the identification of prisoners.

“There is one peculiar thing about tattoo marks,” said a member of the state board of control recently. “Some time ago, when the board was hearing prisoners at Waupun, I took occasion to ask every man who came before as if he had any tattoo marks upon his body. Most of the men had, but I took notice that the real clever criminals had fewer marks than the buungling fellows. I learned that most of the prisoners had been tattooed by the same man. It seems that the fellow made a practice of securing short jail sentences in various places, and while in jail tattooed his fellow-prisoners, accepting whatever amount of money they were able to pay. You’ll never see a flag design tattoo on a real touch man. For some reason the fellow who is vicious doesn’t like to have the national emblem pricked into his skin. He much prefers an anchor or serpent.”

Serpent you say?

Various entries have been posted here in the past (start at this Copyleft tattoo for some examples) about copied tattoos and the conflicts that rise from them… I haven’t found an old article yet talking about copyright in a Western conflict but I’m sure I will. In the meantime, here’s an article on tattoo “copyright” from the Elyria Chronicle‘s May 20, 1904 edition.

New Guinea Tribe Fought Because Its Design Was Copied
— Unwritten Copyright Law.

One special feature of many of the tribes inhabiting New Guinea is the unwritten law of copyright in the designs with which they tattoo their bodies, says a writer in Stray Stories.

Each tribe has its own particular system of ornamenting the body, and should a member of any other tribe imitate the pattern, it is regarded as quite a sufficient reason for a declaration of war between the two tribes.

A young warrior fell in love with a girl of a neighboring tribe; the girl favored his suit, but there was a rival in her own tribe. The rival wished to know why the girl did not look upon him with equal favor, and why she went outside the tribe for a husband.

The girl hesitated, and then replied — either as a subterfuge or as a statement of actual fact, but probably the former — that the rival was not so well ornamented as was the suitor from the neighboring tribe.

The home rival watched for the successful suitor, took note of the pattern, and copied it. The other tribe resented this infringement, and declared war, in the course of which both suitors were killed.

I love the old stories I reprint in ModBlog‘s tattoo and body modification history section, but I have to admit that so many of them are “perfect” in terms of the story being a little too good to be true (endings and all), that I often believe that the writers took about as much liberty with the truth as, well, reporters these days. Nothing changes, ha…

I’ve found this story reprinted in a few papers. The earliest publication I could personally find it in was in The Davenport Daily Leader (December 28, 1884), but it was originally published in the Boston Journal slightly earlier.

Collecting In His Own Body Specimens of the Art From Everywhere.

I heard recently of an unusually odd kind of fad. It is in the possession of a wealthy Portsmouth man, who married an actress once familiarly known in Boston. He is a collector of tattoos. The exhibits are all on his own body, and I am told — it is only a matter of hearsay — that the collection is very rare. He is a connoisseur on the various kinds of tattoos, the methods of the tribes that wear them and their history. A new tattoo is as fascinating to him as a first edition or a bit of Egyptian glass that has survived the art to make it. Only a short time since he heard of a tribe in South America which owned a tattoo of which he had never heard before, and he started post haste for the interior of the southern half of the western continent and returned with the tattoo in his possession.

It surely has the claim of being an original fad, and it is one in which the collector is not likely to have many rivals. Moreover, it is a collection of which no one and no thing can rob him. It cannot be stolen; it cannot be auctioned by his creditors; envy cannot seize upon it, nor experts malign. It costs nothing to keep it, requires no insurance. Of course as an investment one cannot claim anything for it, but it has the advantage of being pursued for its own sake and not in any spirit that can be mistaken.

I really like that last paragraph, it’s really as true today as it was then (other than the first statement being wrong then, and wrong now). Anyway, because I like having pictures with entries, I’ll also share these two ads that ran alongside the article… maybe these could have been used for infected tattoos as well?

…according to the Davenport Tribune, December 15, 1893 that is!

It sure is a long lasting fad!

With the big number of railroad accidents which have marked the Columbian year there has been a widespread boom given to the art of the tattooer. There has been such a large percentage of unidentified dead among those killed in the smash-ups on the railroads of the country during the past few months that it has a remarkable effect on the travelling public. Men and women who a year ago would have shuddered at the mere suggestion of having the point of a tattooing needle touch their skin are having their names, monograms and even crests tattooed upon their bodies. And they all say that they have been tattooed in the belief that the marks made by the needle will be the best means for the identification of their bodies should they meet death away from their home and friends, says the Philadelphia Record.

But there is another class of people who, caught by the popular fad, are having emblems of secret societies and fraternities to which they belong, marked upon their skin. Many of the best known college men of the country carry the insignia of their fraternity worked upon their arms. It is among the drummers and members of the theatrical profession, however, that the tattoo man finds his greatest number of patrons. They spend a large portion of their lives in railroad cars; their danger from death in wrecks is greater than any other class of people, excepting railroad men, postal clerks and express messengers, and the tattooer is reaping a rich reward of coin from them.

With the spread of the tattooing fad in all parts of the United States the work with the ink and needle has been made well-nigh painless. The tattooing art has kept step with the march of progress in other directions and a brand-new method of puncturing the skin has taken place of the old. Instead of the laborious work of early days an electric tattoo machine has been invented. Where it required an hour in the old-fashion way to tattoo a name or a figure, the electric machine does it in a few minutes. The inventor of the machine is in the city, and lately he chatted interestingly of tattooing in general and the prevalent craze in particular. He is Professor O’Riley, probably the best known tattooer in either the United States or Great Britain. Many of the most noted tattooed men and women who have been on exhibition on both sides of the Atlantic are examples of his skill.

“I have tattooed thousands of persons, both in this country and England,” he said, “but at present the craze exceeds anything I have ever experienced during the last twenty years. Most people believe that only sailors and a vulgar class in general have tattoo marks put upon them. That is true in many instances, but by far the largest number of those that I am tattooing now are men and women of intelligence and refinement. The only explanation that I can make for this is that the danger of being buried among the unknown dead in case of a railroad, steamboat or other accident has been so strangely emphasized during the past year that men and women who travel much very wisely have the needles and ink place sure identification marks upon their bodies.

“Many of those tattooed, the ladies especially, have the work done with artistic surroundings. Men, generally want to be tattooed on the arms, while the women almost invariable have the decoration placed on the lower limb. I recently tattooed a serpent in brilliant colors around the leg of one of the best known comic opera prima donnas of the country. It bears her name in delicate letters. Another popular actress had me place a garter in vivid hues below the knee of her left leg and tattoo upon it ‘Tom,’ the name of her sweetheart, and one of the most prominent juvenile men in the profession.

“I tattooed the insignia of Delta Kappa Epsilon, one of the strongest of college fraternities, upon the arm of almost every member of the society. George Gould is one of the young men upon whose arm I place the symbol of the fraternity.

“Almost every day I put secret society marks on the arms of patrons. Two months ago I was surprised by a call from a tramp. He wanted a peculiar mark by which he was known to knights of the road tattooed in the palm of his right hand.”

I wonder… if Professor Riley could see the world today, would he me amazed, or bored?