A NEW FEMININE CRAZE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 44, 6 January 1880, Page 3

A NEW FEMININE CRAZE.

A correspondent writes : —A new craze has taken possession of American womankind, and that is the fashion of intoning the limbs, breast, or shoulders in Indian ink. Of all places the Quaker city of Philadelphia is the most given to it. The operators, mostly female, but not always so, have their hands full of business. Monograms, devices, the names of friends, lovers, or relatives, are pricked into the skin, until one is puzzled to think how they bear the torture. A reporter was admitted to one of those operating rooms, and saw it all through a screen. One woman had no less than eight devices, including monograms, crosses, half-moons, &c., tabooed from the knee down. Lately the women have become almost crazy about it. The charges range from sdol. to 50doh, according to design. All Eastern and Southern cities are possessed with this craze, which has extended to Chicago, St. Louis, and this coast. I suppose you have not yet got to this pitch of fashionable disfiguration in New Zealand, although it was an open secret there a quarter of a century ago that tabooing was not unknown to the families of the earliest white inhabitants, especially in the far north. It may have gone out of fashion, however, and it would be well not to revive it.