Judge — November 18, 1911 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This illustration satirizes early 1900s fashion, specifically the oversized "scuttle hat" (a large, boat-shaped hat popular among wealthy women). The cartoon depicts a society lady proudly showing her enormous hat to a maid or servant named Bedford. The humor lies in the maid's deadpan response: she appreciates the hat's practicality—it's so large it could literally be used as a coffin lid to place on a grave. This is dark, cynical humor typical of Judge magazine's social commentary. The joke mocks both the absurd excess of upper-class women's fashion and suggests the maid's grim resignation to hardship and death—a class-conscious jab at wealth inequality and the servant class's bleak prospects.