- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
- Location
- central NC
Victorian Leap Year humor, as part of an advertisement for thread. (Public Domain)
Rules for Leap Year Parties
- Ladies will call for the gentlemen promptly at 8 o’clock. Those who keep their escorts waiting, and are consequently late at the party, will be treated for the remainder of the evening as wallflowers.
- The gents will be expected to behave in the most lady-like manner.
- Gentlemen are to bring to the ball a fan, a corsage bouquet, and smelling salts.
- The gentlemen whose bouquet is not crushed in the first dance will be a witness to the fact that he has been held with propriety.
- No gentleman shall cross the floor without a lady attendant.
- If a gentleman goes for a glass of water unattended by a lady the floor managers will at once declare him out of order, and compel him to be seated.
- Gents are expected to be languid, to drop their handkerchiefs as often as possible, make frequent calls for water, and at supper give the ladies no time for eating.
- The ladies who have been snubbed at dances heretofore will claim the greatest number of dances, and those who have been active society belles will let the gentlemen severely alone.
Published by The Interior Journal, Stanford, KY in 1888.
According to an article entitled, Leap Year: Ladies’ law in Leap Year–Bachelors’ Penalty, that was published in The Weekly Kansas Chief newspaper on January 21, 1892:
“A lady has the privilege in leap year of suggesting marriage between herself and a bachelor acquaintance. In the event of his refusing, the penalty is that the ungallant gentleman shall present the tender damsel with a new silk dress. There is a reservation, however, that the right to claim this penalty depends upon the circumstances that, when she proposed, the damsel was the wearer of a scarlet petticoat, which (or a little of the lower portion of which) she must exhibit to the gentleman, the understood idea being that the silken dress shall cover the petticoat, and thus assuage dire feminine indignation at the rejection of her offered hand.”
Prospects of The Leap Year Club - caricatures (Public Domain)
So dear CWT ladies, if you had you been a widow or otherwise marriageable young lady in a Victorian Leap Year, would you have popped the question to your hesitant beau?
My dear CWT gents, would you have welcomed such a proposal?