Katie Mulcahey and New York’s Short-Lived Women’s Smoking Ban

By | August 29, 2018

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Two girls lighting cigarettes, 23 April, 1931, have the right to do so thanks to Katie Mulcahey. Photograph by Leslie Cardew. (Photo by Daily Herald Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)

Smoking cigarettes was a big thing in the early 1900s. Most men smoked and many women did. The problem was, no one looked twice if they saw a man smoking in public, but they were extremely uncomfortable if a woman smoked in public. This sort of double standard happened all the time. It was shocking, for example, for women to enter a store, restaurant, or hotel without a proper male escort. But the times, they were a-changing. By 1908, women were clamoring for their rights…to vote, to shop or dine alone in public and to light up a cigarette in public. That didn’t sit too well with some, especially an alderman in New York City. 

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“Little Tim” Found a Smoking Woman to be Offensive

New York City Alderman Timothy Sullivan, known his whole life as “Little Tim” to distinguish him from his cousin, “Big Tim” Sullivan, a Lower East Side political boss, strongly believed that a woman who smoked cigarettes in public was immoral with loose character. Although he admitted that he had never actually witnessed a woman smoking on the streets of New York, he was sure he would lose all respect for a lady if he did see it.