Ellisdons in London used to sell a lot of similar items. Visited a few times as a kid, never got an arrow through head but did buy some giant elephant footprints which were equally useful. And a whoopee cushion, of course, because who wouldn't?
It's like something out of that Science Fiction film, The Day of the Chestnuts. Terrifying.
Odd couple sitcom ahoy!
I have encountered the word "mottled" in two very different contexts in the last few hours, and I fear it is stalking me.
AI tools are likely to be good at generating code that already exists in libraries and bad at the novel stuff which is what most of us are paid for. Which is why I have turned all the AI integration off in my IDE and won't turn it back on.
She adopts the name "Daniel McGuire" and that is where this piece ends, though it is "to be continued". I hope to find more in a copy of the September 1918 issue, when one turns up. (Hopefully it is not like October 1917, which sells for several hundred dollars as it has an Aleister Crowley item.)
She fought him off and escaped, but as you may guess, this is just the first of a series of such encounters. Men offer her work or accommodation but there is always an expected quid pro quo. Then she has an idea, and goes to a barber who buys women's hair, asking him to cut it very close.
McGuire recounted how she was born to rich parents but her father drank, and died young. Her mother also died while she was a girl, and she went to live with a second cousin of her mother's, a watchmaker, who turned out to want favours in return for his "kindness".
They met, and McGuire started by saying how men make life impossible for women in the workplace, before revealing his secret.
The article was written by Mildred Meeker, an investigative journalist with an interest in working conditions for women, and it concerns "Daniel McGuire". McGuire sent Meeker a letter which led to the article.
