Paintbrushes: Not intended for dainty girl hands. (Image by Hans Bernhard.)

It was in Brooklyn, New York, in November of 1900 that one of the most unimportant victories in the history of the women’s rights movement was won. Seriously, some lady wanted her house to be painted and her husband was really busy, so she did it herself. And everyone apparently went a little nuts because a woman dared to commit the shocking act of painting a house! People have always been terrible.

An excerpt from a story about the so-called scandal, which ran in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and is subtitled, “This Woman Doesn’t Propose to Pay a Man for Drinking Beer”:

“Mrs. Charles W. Hollister, who is the wife of a carpenter well known in East New York, and who is the mother of an interesting family of children, is painting her own house at 113 Sheppard avenue. She says:

‘The painters all demand too much money for the work and they use inferior paint. My husband did not have time to do the work so I made up my mind to do it myself and don’t think it’s anybody’s business but my own.

‘I know all the neighbors are talking about me and men make remarks as they pass by that are not nice. I pay no attention to them. I don’t care to have a man around here with a pipe in his mouth, drinking beer half the time and his boss charging me for it. The whole matter is that I want the house painted to suit myself so I do the work.'”

More Old Print Articles:

• Profile of an old-time clown. (1896)
• Monkey trained to steal jewelry. (1895)
• Performing bears at Bay Shore. (1895)
• Hobos steal fine clothes from decent folk. (1895)
• General Robert E. Lee kisses pretty girls. (1891)
• Circus Freak gets indigestion after swallowing metal objects. (1904)
• Hairy woman thrown through barbershop window, uninjured. (1897)
• Hunchback paramour has throat cut. (1877)
• Inflated a boy with air. (1900)
• Prisoner gives evil eye to jailer. (1900)
• Three-card monte man passes away. (1878)
• Monkey rides bicycle. (1897)
• Bears brawl in Central Park. (1902)
• Umbrella duels. (1895)
• Boiling eggs with electricity. (1890)
• Billy goat guards recluse. (1900)
• Kissing bandit captured. (1892)
• A maniac gymnast. (1877)
• Brooklyn judge encounters sea monsters in his bathroom. (1902)
• Man finds severed human head, throws head back into creek. (1897)
• Brooklyn geezer tries to shoot noisy dogs. (1896)
• Hoaxer pretends to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. (1889)
• Manhattan madman goes on rampage. (1890)
• Fisticuffs at a male beauty pageant. (1893)
• Viennese surgeon performs experimental operations in NYC. (1902)
• Tough girl breaks detective’s nose. (1898)
• George Francis Train loses his mind. (1888)
• Organ grinder has monkey kidnapped. (1899)
• Human vampire behaves poorly. (1892)