“Women Armed with Favorite Weapons,” The Chicago Sunday Tribune,  Sept 16, 1900

This issue of The Chicago Sunday Tribune discusses and visually shows what objects women have used as weapons as recorded in court cases, ranking them from most to least used. The diagram has an illustration of each “weapon” with the size of the object correlating to its number. This makes it easy for readers to quickly look over the diagram and see that broom handles were actually used more than knives. Based on the article title and main illustration, you can see that women are not shown as rightfully defending themselves with whatever household object they can find, but rather they are ferociously brandishing their weapons against the “unsuspecting” man. While some of these objects can be seen as weapons in anyone's hands, it should be obvious to readers that having to use these other random household objects as weapons against men is an occurrence that is too common among women of all ages, which is even depicted in the illustration, and that these cases of self-defense were serious enough to warrant a police report and/or court case, not a small domestic dispute. Some magazines even depict women defending themselves as heroic and brave, encouraging readers to do the same.

Pappas, Peter. “Women on the Warpath (1900).” Women on the Warpath (1900) - by Peter Pappas, The Forgotten Files, 20 Feb. 2023, forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/women-on-the-warpath-1900.