Life, 1893-03-02 · page 3 of 14
Life — March 2, 1893 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Wrong Person" – Life Magazine Satire The main cartoon depicts a social comedy of mistaken identity. A well-dressed man stands between two groups in an elegant interior, apparently caught in an awkward situation. The caption indicates he's a bachelor who has been mistaken for a "husband" by a "charming widow," while another woman (his sister) watches. The humor relies on Victorian-era sensibilities about propriety—the embarrassment of being wrongly identified as attached or of romantic interest. Below, a brief article describes the Farmington Society in Chicago, which sewed clothing for poor families. The anecdote mocks a wealthy woman's indignation at being called "deformed" when she complained about the quality of donated garments. The satire targets class pretension and hypocrisy among the privileged.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
VOLUME XxIl. NUMBER 531. THE WRONG PERSON. Old Bachelor (very near-sighted): WHERE'S YOUR HUSBAND ? Charming Widow (tin sister of the other lady): Vm SURE 1 DON'T KxOW. HE Farmington Society, in Chicago, sew for the poor. Young ladies nowadays are not instructed in the fashioning of plain garments as in the days of our grand- mothers, and some of the articles evolved by the brains and fingers of the society's fair members are, to put it gently, unique. It fell to Mrs. X., the wife of one of Chicago's best known men to distribute some of the articles among poor families. One woman held up a certain gar- ment, and after looking at it said: “1 may be poor, but thank God I am not deformed!” ‘SAN UNPLEASANT SCRAPE.” Out OF THE FASHION.—A dressmaker’s profits. MORE TO HIS TASTE. comicbooks.com