“Straw Hat Riot” – how did it happen? (6 photos)

The most innocent person can become an objectionable object for people. Kind of like a straw hat.





What could be wrong with this practical and comfortable headdress?



“Gangs of young hooligans went on a rampage in different parts of the city last night, tearing off straw hats and trampling them in the streets. In some cases, crowds of hundreds of boys and young men terrorized entire neighborhoods.”

So began a New York Times article describing the 1922 Straw Hat Riot. It seems absurd, but there were riots in New York over woven hats.





These men's boater hats, fashionable at the time, were lightweight and at the same time gave a solid look. The hats were ideal to wear in the summer. But in accordance with the prevailing informal rules, after September 15 it was necessary to switch to felt hats. Any further wearing of straw was considered a strict violation of fashion requirements.

If men were caught wearing hats after the 15th, the children knocked them off their heads and trampled them into the ground. In 1922, a group of impatient boys began tearing off and destroying hats a couple of days early. Many men did not appreciate such hooliganism and fought back.



Some of the attackers used sticks with nails on the end to pry hats off their heads, others hid in doorways and jumped out at their victims like a jack-in-the-box. And some innocent hats found their inevitable end in the flames of the fire.

On September 16, more than a dozen teenagers were arrested, “and seven were shamefully spanked by their parents at the police station on East 104th Street on the orders of a lieutenant sitting behind a desk.” What a shame...



Some offenders were fined $5 because, despite the tradition, it was not enshrined in law. And destroying hats was illegal.

“Tearing a hat is illegal, and he has the right to wear it in a January snowstorm if he wants,” Judge Peter A. Hatting told the New York Times. “Hitting a hat is a simple assault and it will be dealt with as such in this court. And I want you to spread this to everyone who will encroach on the hats.”

He threatened that violators would not be able to get away with a fine, but would be sent straight to jail.



While many suffered during this period of unrest, hat shops profited. They reportedly worked long hours and thrived selling fedoras.

Fortunately, by the 1930s, straw hats had fallen out of fashion, and with them the cruel tradition of tearing them off and damaging them. The Great Depression loomed on the horizon, and the topic of seasonality and the replacement of hats lost its relevance.