Thank you to Lori Parkinson who found this clipping in the front of a family scrapbook circa 1893. The woman attended Mt. Carmel (Illinois) High School and Northwestern. Today's parents worry about the inappropriateness of photographs their teenagers post on Facebook, but this worry is nothing new. Parents worried about the influence of photography on their children more than a century ago.
I don't have the whole clipping and I haven't been able to find the newspaper source of the clipping.
She said that since Mt. Carmel had become possessed of the Kodac craze a number of young ladies of this city had been photographed in some very unconventional attitudes, and that if any of the boys got hold of the pictures they would have more fun with them than a barrel of monkeys. Groups were the favorites: One girl would dress in her most fetching "nightie." Beside her, seated on the bed would be a girl chum, dressed in a suit of male clothing, one arm encircling the girl in the robe de nuit.The snapshots of course were taken by some other girl. Birdie says the picture sare lovely, but just a trifle realistic, and that if the mothers of the girls ever get a squint at them, those girls will get a bumping that will make them eat standing up for the next ten days.
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