rosslynpaladin:

ardatli:

archaeo-geek:

Ladies, you know how we can’t fit more than a single tube of lip balm into the pockets of most of our clothing for reasons that remain unsatisfactory to us all? 

Tonight I learned that, back in the days when women’s pockets were separate articles of clothing worn tied around the waist under the skirt, one woman was convicted of theft for PUTTING A WHOLE DUCK INTO EACH POCKET AND WALKING AWAY WITH THEM. 

My jeans won’t even hold my keys comfortably. We have been robbed of the joy of surreptitiously stealing large and ungainly objects including waterfowl, dammit!

I found my note on that case! 

Court case from 1777, Worcestershire. A woman “of bad character,” Jane Griffiths, was brought to trial for stealing two ducks from a man named Thomas Wainwright. She tried to steal them by stuffing them in her pockets and taking off running. (as quoted in Barbara Burman, Pockets of History).

Ladies. Pockets used to be a whole big bag under your outer skirt, like sometimes two of them, and you always had them on your person or under your pillow. Unless you lost yours, devastating if you’d had personal stuff in there See English nursery rhyme:

Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher found it,

 not a penny was within it, but a ribbon round it.

So men were threatened by the fact that a woman could have concealed items on her at any time, in her pocket under her layered floofly skirt. She could hide a full change of clothes and money in there if she wanted to, for example, leave a bad marriage… so in the early 1800s when skirts went narrower, probably intentionally to stop the whole stashing stuff in your skirt trend, men designed the reticule, ie the purse,  a charming fashion accessory which is easier to just take off a woman to confiscate her ability to carry personal property. Besides, a reticule is kept small so as to be feminine. And unable to hide anything too valuable. And since then women’s clothing has not had big pockets. “You have purses, girls, you dont need to carry anything personal on you like you have secrets or property, now let me look through that purse.”