Life, 1916-03-16 · page 31 of 44
Life — March 16, 1916 — page 31: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks a scandal at the Fourteenth Regiment Armory in Brooklyn involving a stag party (all-male entertainment event). A young female dancer performed a strip-tease act, removing five of six veils while spectators paid to raffle for who would remove the final veil. The "lucky winner" was revealed to be the dancer's own husband—a setup that Life ridicules as a confidence scheme. The satire targets both the event's impropriety and the official response. Governor Whitman and General O'Ryan apparently investigated and downplayed the incident's severity. Life sarcastically criticizes the military's use of public armories for such entertainment, arguing there are proper places (bedrooms, not government facilities) for women to undress. The second cartoon shows a nurse dismissing a patient's request for "little-boy-blue stuff"—likely referring to wholesome nursery rhymes, suggesting the page's broader theme: that propriety and decorum have limits being exceeded in public life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Exceeding the Limit DISPATCH to the World, dated Albany, February 21, says that the stag-party in the Fourteenth Regi- ment Armory in Brooklyn wasn’t so bad as reported, and that these are the facts about it, as reported to Governor Whitman by General O’Ryan: Tt is true, as asserted by the newspapers, that there was a young woman dancer attired in six veils. It is true, also, that after she removed five of the veils spectators contributed twenty-five cents each to participate in a raffle which was to decide who should remove the re- maining veil. But according to the O'Ryan report the supposedly lucky man was a confederate, in fact, the dancer's husband, The managers of stag-partics in the Fourteenth Regi- ment Armory seem much in need of instruction. There is a place for all things. Let us hope it has been brought home to the entertainment committee of the Four- teenth Regiment that the place for a woman to take off six veils is in her bedroom, and that the State of New York cannot undertake to provide its armories for the con- venient devestment of ladies who feel overclad. “TELL US A COUPLE OF SHOC LITTLE-BOY-BLUE STUFF” 'M SICK OF THAT comicbooks.com