A Year of Glory and Gold: 1932 - Ireland's Jazz Age

By Kevin C. Kearns

The 1930s in Ireland is often thought of as a bleak period of economic stagnation and unemployment. But 1932, hailed by the Irish Press as a 'new era', was an early glimmer of the modernity and success Ireland would later reach: a sequence of events and achievements that included technological advances in travel, agriculture, home appliances and entertainment; Olympic gold medals and the meteoric rise of boxing phenomenon Jack Doyle; a spectacular Eucharistic Congress; sweepstakes and a so called gold rush; as well as the election of Éamon de Valera and transformations in politics and culture.
The soundtrack scoring all this change was the jazz craze, which landed in Ireland in the early 1930s and flourished throughout the country, loosening the conservative social and moral order of the time. Jazz brought new forms of dress, lifestyle and behaviour, exciting and exhilarating a younger generation for the future, while leaving an older generation wary of such rapid change.
A Year of Glory and Gold is an energetic and exuberant biography of a bright year in Ireland's history, combining deep archival research with spirited storytelling by one of Ireland's best-loved social historians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9780717195626

Kevin C. Kearns

Kevin C, Kearns, PhD, is a social historian, Professor Emeritus at the University of Northern Colorado and the author of fifteen books, including several bestsellers – most notably Dublin Tenement Life and Ireland’s Arctic Siege. In 2021 he was awarded the Lord Mayor’s Scroll from Dublin City Council, in recognition of his ‘dedication to preserving Dublin’s social history’. Kearns now lives in New England, on the coast of Maine.

Book preview

PROLOGUE  

A golden period is dawning in this country – we now have control over our own destiny.

IRISH EXAMINER, 1932

The first decade of the Irish Free State coincided with the Golden Age of jazz … wireless and gramophone bringing infectious rhythms, dancehalls, fancy notions.

IRISH TIMES

Erin takes her place in the sun.

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

They were sometimes referred to as ‘fairy tale’ years. It was a time when grand ‘golden dreams’ and fantasies came true, when glorious events and achievements occurred amidst global acclaim, a rapturous moment in Irish history when ordinary people shared in glories and glittering gold triumphs.

‘Welcoming in the new era’, as the Irish Press heralded it, marked a period of exciting modernity in Ireland in the early 1930s that was celebrated for its great accomplishments and for changing Ireland’s image as a somnolent, ‘backward’ country. Taking centre stage internationally, Ireland was showered with praise in several spheres: stunning Olympic gold medal victories, world-famed Sweepstakes, a spectacular Eucharistic Congress, the stirring Tailteann Games, Dr Drumm’s scientific invention and the meteoric rise of boxing phenom Jack Doyle. Ireland was also host to an astonishing ‘gold rush’ and a ‘golden age of jazz’ with its flamboyant ‘flappers’, crazes and thrill-seekers.

The national elections confirmed Éamon de Valera as President of the Executive Council, with Fianna Fáil forming a minority government for the modernising Irish Free State. This was paralleled by the ‘miracles of the Machine Age’ and transformation in many areas of Irish life: politics, culture, science, transportation, agriculture and entertainment. Finally, the Irish flag and national anthem were formalised amidst waves of pride and patriotism, suffusing the Irish with a sensory perception of a truly new era in Éire. Even grannies were thrilled with the fresh ‘modish’ (the going glib term) spirit of exciting change.

As Nancy Cullen, born in 1918, of Cook Street in Dublin recalls, ‘Oh, we were over the moon!’

It was an age of joyful expressions as people spoke of feeling as ‘pleased as Punch’, ‘happy as a lark’, and ‘over the moon’ (the ultimate in emotional delight). This phrase perfectly captured the celestial spirit of the fairy tale years. There were many forms of glee and thrills in the early 1930s that sent one ‘into the heavens’, despite the dark cloud of the Great Depression, which was not as severe in Ireland as it was in other countries such as the United States. Indeed, during the period 1930–5, Irish emigrants to America were returning home, where life was better for them – no more miles-long food lines and sleeping rough in the streets. And with them, they brought jazz.

With the national elections approaching, de Valera’s impassioned supporters were cheering madly, marching behind pipe and drum bands and dancing around bonfires. Ireland’s jazz craze, on the heels of America’s ‘Roaring Twenties’, was vibrant, prompting the nation’s moral guardians to deliver fiery speeches against the ‘evils’ of the modern mania for jazz music and dancing. This turned out to be a futile effort as the liberated youth and new jazz culture shocked the conservative, traditional social and moral order of society.¹ The wild music and uninhibited dancing, imported largely from America, also brought new forms of dress, lifestyle and morality.

Flappers were the most flamboyant icon of the new era – symbols of the early women’s movement and freedom from the constraints of the rigid, ‘proper’ conventional Irish society of their mothers and grandmothers. Rattling the moral guardians, flappers disdained the old-fashioned, prescribed behaviour. They ditched their pantaloons, shortened their skirts, cropped their hair and dared to openly smoke, drink, drive cars and attend men’s rough and daring sporting events. They also participated actively in politics and elections. The Jazz Age was indeed ‘golden’ to them, as one journalist wrote: ‘The golden age of jazz was when they discovered the music … and were hit or overwhelmed by the shock of joyous recognition.’²

The social freedoms and youthful exuberance of the Jazz Age also coincided with what was called the ‘amazing Mechanical Age’. It was a period of rapidly advancing science, engineering, electrification and new inventions – from toasters to tractors. It seemed like a time of endless possibilities and new wonders:

The spirit of the age was marked by a general modernity and a break with tradition. Everything seemed feasible through modern technology, especially automobiles, moving pictures and radio … as the Jazz Age rose in popularity.³

From the late twenties through to the mid-thirties, there occurred a stream of new and improved Mechanical Age inventions: smart cars, race cars, labour-saving machines for farms, factories and shops, home appliances, aeroplanes, the wireless, cinematographs and gramophones. It was a dazzling array that dramatically changed Irish life in the early 1930s.

The new wonders indisputably brought greater efficiency, productivity and convenience in a country long considered ‘behind-the-times’. Yet progress sometimes came with unforeseen problems, leaving workers unemployed and dispirited as more than 1,000 dockers fell victim to a single towering mechanical grain elevator. The beloved Guinness dray horses and draymen were similarly doomed by motorised lorries.

Although modernity was not all flash and fun, it was still a halcyon age with a golden glow deserving of its unique place in the annals of Irish history.

Chapter 1

MODERNITY AND THE JAZZ CRAZE

Joyous scenes in Dublin as crowds made their way to hear the chimes welcoming in the new era.

IRISH PRESS, 1 JANUARY 1932

Was it a holy symbol – or an ominous sign? In the blackness of New Year’s Eve 1931, there appeared a large fiery and mysterious apparition. For miles around Slieve Gullion, County Armagh, people began spotting it and rushing to alert neighbours. When news of the sighting reached distant locales, people hurried towards it; ‘roads were thronged’ with those on foot, in horse traps and in cars.

To those unaware of its meaning, the blazing cross on the mountainside left them in awe. As they congregated around it, the story emerged. It was to usher in and celebrate the 1,500th anniversary of St Patrick’s arrival in Ireland. Once the swelling crowd became acquainted with its true meaning, it ‘evoked great admiration’, symbolising the joy and celebrations ahead.

Meanwhile, in Dublin people were rejoicing, welcoming in what newspapers were heralding as a ‘new era’ in Ireland, a ‘modern age’. At gatherings, there were toasts to the ‘old-fashioned’ days giving way to a future of modernity filled with grand expectations and events – a fresh Irish spirit.

In the early 1930s the concept of ‘modernity’ was alluring, conjuring images of the bustling, glamorous world of New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Berlin, so often seen on the cinema screen. The Irish longed to catch up, to take their modest place in the sun and attain the pleasures of modern life in Western society. For too long the country had been perceived as behind the times.

With the arrival of the thirties, the miracle of the Machine Age dawned in Ireland. It was a period of science, mechanisation, electrification, invention and mass production. The Modern Age and the Machine Age were coincident, the latter providing most of the new inventions for modern life. Without the automobile, aeroplane, wireless, cinematograph, gramophone, implements for factories and offices, and home appliances, society would have been lodged in the dark ages, a term that had been derisively used to describe Ireland. It was little wonder that by the 1930s the Irish were eager to attain modernity and all its benefits.

Irish society was becoming suffused with the use of the term ‘modern’. It was splashed across newspapers, advertisements, shop windows, political speeches and even ordinary conversation. It was a ubiquitous term for anything up to date or stylish. It could apply to automobiles, dress designs, hairstyles, machines or even concepts. Anything could be popularised by having the prefix ‘modern’ attached (or the chic saying ‘modish’). Indeed, in some shops on O’Connell Street and Grafton Street, nearly every item was advertised as ‘modern’ or ‘modernistic’. In January 1932, the Irish Independent ran an article about a new ‘Modern O’Connell Street Cafe’:

A cafe which in originality and modernity ranks with the finest in Europe … of stainless steel as decorated embossed glass gives dignity … the cafe is most up to date.

The cafe was an instant success as people flocked to its doors to see the modern ambience.

Women were also increasingly described by their ‘dated’ or ‘modern’ appearances and lifestyles. They were placed under a social microscope as even journalists drew attention to their status, often in superficial ways. Peer judgement could be most unkind and, in high society, being deemed passé in any respect was a dreadful slight.

A woman columnist for the Evening Herald, writing about the latest hairstyles, remarked, ‘I am told that the modern girl is realising that a high forehead is unbecoming’ and that a ‘light fringe’ enhances beauty. Similarly, another journalist, referring to young females participating in an Automobile Club hill climb, described them as ‘modern girls from Dublin’.

The most modern of women were those immersed in the roaring Jazz Age culture in Ireland, those who disdained old morals and conventions and lived by their own outlandish rules. Flouting old-fashioned ways, they flaunted their shortened skirts and hair, smoking, drinking and uninhibited dancing to wild jazz music. Even driving, in the estimation of some elders, was too modern. Letters to newspapers expressed support or criticism, as did one to the Cork Examiner:

There are unwarranted attacks on female drivers of motor cars … because some modish young thing with carmined lips and a cigarette drooping from them is seen at the wheel of a smart car.⁴

Some of these letters made one wonder – was it enmity or envy?

If some people wondered about being too modernised, others questioned being too mechanised. Electrification, mechanisation and invention were transforming Irish life at every level. ‘We live in the Machine Age’, proclaimed the Sunday Independent. However, many citizens questioned whether mechanisation was a miracle or a menace. Was modernity progressing too rapidly? After all, it was only historically recently that Ireland had been a country of horsepower, hand labour on farms and in factories and turf fires in homes. This prompted Irish journalists, scholars and moralists to vigorously debate the merits and pitfalls of the new age of mechanisation. As journalist G.Z. Victory wrote:

We live in an age of mechanical ‘miracles’. Year by year, our rapid rate of mechanical progress has been growing more rapid, and the world has been lauding each fresh scientific triumph.⁵

Irish scientist and inventor Dr J. Drumm was then at the zenith of such world acclaim, described by the Irish Times as a ‘brilliant scientist’ who had worked tirelessly ‘in the laboratory to make that quantum leap’. His most famous invention was an electric storage battery, on the heels of work carried out by Thomas Edison. From 1926 to 1931 he laboured in relative obscurity, finally revealing his discovery to the world in July 1931. By its first empirical trials in December 1931 and early 1932, it was deemed ‘no longer a pre-vision of the future, but rather a concrete achievement’. It was capable of powering trains and possibly automobiles and buses – in place of petrol.

Drumm’s first trials with the battery-powered train between Dublin and Bray were widely covered by the Irish and foreign media, as the Irish Press reported: ‘Dr Drumm, the inventor, had no doubt about the success of his battery train … the top speed was 55 mph and the motors and batteries functioned perfectly.’ Furthermore, the trial run was attended by experts from the US and Britain to ‘set the seal of world approval upon his invention’.

Drumm and his marvellous invention were a metaphor for Ireland’s new era. He was hailed as a heroic figure in modern Ireland, bringing acclaim and glory to his country.

Although the Irish took great pride in their scientist-inventor, many were sceptical of the Machine Age inventions and contraptions. The Irish Press revealed a futuristic-sounding invention about to appear on the streets of Dublin, to the fascination of some and alarm of others. Like it or not, the article forewarned, get ready for robots!

The journalist explained that motor traffic in Dublin had increased by 200 per cent during the past six years (1926–32). The work of the Gardaí pointmen had been stretched beyond their capability. Moreover, Dublin was now the ‘only capital in the world where road traffic was solely under human control’. It had become stressful and dangerous for both drivers and pointmen. The Irish traffic control system was woefully outdated and desperately in need of modernisation. ‘Mechanisation seemed the logical solution – the Robot Signals could take over for humans. The work to be carried out by robot signalling apparatus.’ They were not ‘robotic men’ standing to direct drivers, but it was unsettling to many, nonetheless.

To sceptics, the concept of using any type of robot seemed like a threat to humanity. The Evening Herald chimed in with an article titled ‘The Conquering Robots’, describing them as already dutifully at work in helping to modernise Irish life:

The ‘robot army’ of machine tools and small machines, some entirely automatic … a gas cooker left in charge of dinner, a spot-welding machine, kitchen appliances, etc, etc. …

Elderly readers, some dating back to the 1860s and beyond, sat reading about a ‘conquering army’ of robots being let loose in Ireland. The Irish Independent devoted an editorial to ‘Men and Machines’ in an effort to put the topic in perspective. It quoted the wisdom of Sir Alfred Ewing, an authority on the subject:

The influence and effects of science are everywhere apparent in the life around us. Civilisation has, so to speak, become mechanised. The machine is replacing men in every department of human activity.

It was a welcome, yet troubling, development in traditional Ireland, so long an agricultural, rural country. For as the invention of tractors, farm machinery and factory tools benefited productivity, they rendered manual workers jobless. The Irish Times went so far as to assert that ‘in the modern world the men of science have us at their mercy’.⁶

Professor Walter Hobart explained the irony of it all: ‘The Machine Age! It is a strange and striking paradox – it has brought us luxuries and comforts, but also unemployment.’ Meanwhile, Fr Peter Conefrey warned the Irish not to fall into ‘idolatry of the mighty machine’ which, according to him, could cause materialism and immorality, as he had already seen in some other countries. ‘Machinery should be the servant of a Christian community – not its master.’

The controversy was becoming a common issue for debate in Irish newspapers, leaving many readers conflicted in their view of the Machine Age. One reader, Margaret M. McDonald, was determined to have her say on the subject in a letter to the press. ‘If the machine becomes the master of this land, then God Save Ireland!’

Yet the majority of Irish society happily favoured the progress of the Machine Age. Several modern inventions, such as the gramophone, the wireless and the cinematograph machine, had a profound impact on the culture and most people embraced them with glee. All were regarded as miracles of modern technology in the early 1930s, especially influencing the younger generations. Without them, the transformative Jazz Age music, dancing and lifestyle could not have been transferred from Hollywood, New York and London to Ireland, sending shockwaves through the traditionally conservative culture, liberalising and enlivening Irish life while also drawing warnings from the pulpit and moralists.⁷ In February 1932, the Irish Independent published the Archbishop of Dublin’s admonitions about what he called the ‘Modern Evils’ facing Irish society:

Grave warnings against jazz music, dancing, drink, the licentious picture house … modern pictures are dangerous … danger lurks in dancehalls as morals are being sapped.

These warnings would be repeated as jazz music and dancehalls proliferated and the ‘talkie’ films, largely from Hollywood, flooded Irish culture.

The Sunday Independent issued a gentle warning of a different sort, a reminder, really, that the national elections were now only weeks away. Its headline declared the opening of the election campaign:

A number of candidates for the Dáil have been selected and meetings held in the Four Provinces mark the opening of the election campaign … a contest between Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil, with Labour bidding for the balance of power in the Dáil.

The Irish Independent chose a more combative, and fitting, title for its editorial: ‘The Battle Opens’. Opponents W.T. Cosgrave and Éamon de Valera were portrayed as representing contrasting philosophies, plans and personalities for the future of the new Irish Free State, with armies of loyal supporters ready to march to victory. The article warned that every vote would count.

Anxious campaigners rushed to get a fast start. Supporters were exhorted to begin setting up platforms for speakers, hanging flags and banners and decorating to make the scene more festive. In towns and villages across the land, the pounding of hammers was heard, as men were seen climbing ladders, strategically placing tar barrels along the road for fires. Women scrubbed the pavements as shopkeepers were busy washing front windows and arranging displays, tidying up for the campaigners and tag-along reporters and photographers. Children scampered amidst all the activity.

On the same day that the election ‘battle’ was declared, election rhetoric was heard on the streets of Dublin. On Cathal Brugha Street a diminutive figure appeared, darkly dressed and purposeful in manner. As she was assisted to the speaker’s platform, the crowd of about 500 strained to get a good look at her. She was warmly greeted with much respect.

The meeting was held under the auspices of the People’s Rights Association. A number of gardaí were present but no trouble was expected. When Madame Maud Gonne MacBride stepped forward to speak, the crowd hushed. She respectfully urged people in the coming election to vote for Fianna Fáil and Mr de Valera, reminding them that he had promised that all Irishmen imprisoned under the Constitution Amendment Act would be released if his party was placed in power. De Valera was a man of honour and could be counted on to keep his word. Cheers were heard all along O’Connell Street. After the meeting, the crowd quietly dispersed. The campaign was underway.

During campaigning season, electioneering plans were sporadically disrupted by a series of fierce gales that raged through many counties. Scheduled travel and speeches had to be cancelled or postponed due to high winds and widespread flooding which turned large areas into lakes. Counties Cork, Limerick and Tipperary were especially struck with storm havoc. Road and train travel were halted as telegraph and telephone lines were torn down. Some campaigners became isolated, caught in perilous floods. Harrowing rescue scenes were witnessed both on land and at sea.

The gale-force winds also brought a bit of whimsy and excitement. In Ireland’s normal workaday life, people relished a spectacle in any form. On Manor Street in Waterford, a prominent local businessman walked out of his bank after withdrawing a bulging wad of pound notes, stuffed casually into his jacket pocket. Caught by an ill wind, the notes scattered far and wide, into the air and along the street. As one local newspaper said, it looked as if a sweepstakes winner was tossing away his fortune. Pandemonium erupted as children and adults alike engaged in a mad scramble. By evening, most of the notes had been returned to the gentleman.

The stormy seas also stirred up fantasies of gold. Just off the coast of Kinsale, the huge Cunard liner Lusitania had been torpedoed in May 1915 and, for 17 years, it had rested on the seabed in about 40 fathoms of water, holding a vast fortune in gold which had not been salvageable by the technology of the age.

By the early thirties, however, technology had advanced immensely. The Cork Examiner had followed the subject closely over the years and now reported that a modern diver, aided by his robot-like equipment, electrical grabs and submarine lights, could begin to retrieve some of the gold.

A powerful gale had churned up the seas and seabed around the Lusitania, making such a recovery project both feasible and profitable. Capt. H.N. Bailey was to lead the expedition, equipped with the most modern salvage technology.

When the story came to light in an alluring article in the Sunday Independent, people’s imaginations were stoked. They reasoned that the rough seas may well have washed some of the gold ashore in the sand and stones and that salvage operations would likely further loosen the gold from its hold. The title of the article was enticing: ‘Millions from the Ocean Bed – Lure of Sunken Treasure’.

The newspaper went on to say that the Lusitania ‘is reported to have hidden in [a] bullion room a million in gold’. And what if the bullion room had been blasted apart by torpedoes? Or rusted away? The fantasy persisted that gold might well be along the coast nestled in sediments and sand. Word went out to ‘keep an eye out for the glitter of gold’!

When the gale force winds swept across Dublin they did extensive damage, even knocking down about 60 yards of strong wall at the Consumer’s Gas Company. However, one structure was left standing that most Dubliners of the modern era would have welcomed seeing toppled over: Nelson’s Pillar, or ‘Old Nelson’. There he still stood, as erect and prominent as ever. A striking and, to many, offensive anachronism glaring down smugly, defying the arrival of Ireland’s modern period amidst the hectic street life of cars, trams, buses, neon-lit cinemas and glamorous Jazz Age flappers waiting at his pillar base for transportation.

Since 1809 Nelson’s Pillar had survived the blasts of nature and revolutionary explosions to stand as a striking icon of past foreign domination (although he still had undeniably sentimental value to all those who met their friends routinely at his feet – ‘meetchaatthepillar!’ had become a unique Dublinese word).

By the early 1930s, however, the consensus was that it was time to end his reign. For years this decision had been a perennial controversy. As Thomas S. Cuffe, writer for the Sunday Independent, put it, ‘columns of correspondence in our newspapers’ had been devoted to the Nelson dilemma, suggesting every imaginable scheme for his demise. Many, of course, simply wanted him dynamited into oblivion – a fitting end, they argued. Others wanted to preserve the pillar base for a truly deserving historical figure such as Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, Arthur Griffith or St Patrick (clearly the people’s favourite, in this anniversary year).

Now, with the spectacular events scheduled for the summer, and half a million visitors from foreign countries expected to arrive in Dublin, many felt an urgency to dispose of Old Nelson lest he stand out as a ‘bloody anachronism’, an embarrassment and insult to modern Irish people.

It was rather amusing to think that Nelson’s Pillar had unwittingly stumbled into the Jazz Age and was captive to all the clamour surrounding him day after day along O’Connell Street. The Jazz Age was born in the wake of World War I when the war’s appalling loss of young lives led younger generations in America and Europe to be struck with the harsh reality that life is short and unpredictable and should be lived free, fast, gay and carefree. This thinking spawned the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age – a new era in modern society.

In Ireland, the Jazz Age coincided with the first decade of the Free State and remained ebullient into the mid-1930s, disseminating its intoxicating music, dancing and lifestyle through the growing popularity of the gramophone, wireless and cinematograph. Returning emigrants from America also brought jazz records, music sheets and fanciful notions of a free-spirited, rebellious style of behaviour quite different from that of older generations.

For Ireland’s younger generations, jazz became all the rage. Jazz music and dancing were an irresistible thrill, a wild expression of self, titillating to the senses and taking them to what was called the ‘terrain of fantasy’. The music was liberating and uninhibited, as described by the Sunday Independent: ‘Music is a powerful force in arousing the emotions … the zeal for happiness … as people go rapturously foolish about jazz.’⁸

There was a generational gap in attitudes towards the jazz craze. Older folk variously dismissed it, tolerated it or found it benign and ‘bouncy’. But a good many critics voiced disapproval, if not condemnation. Some moralists and religious figures ranted that it was the ‘devil’s music’ and that it encouraged paganism. Fr Peter Conefrey, one of its most virulent critics, reviled it in fiery speeches as ‘primitive … the language of savages in Africa’. However, most older Irish people did not endorse such extreme condemnation.

As the jazz craze became entrenched during the early 1930s, a distinction was made by many Irish people between jazz music and jazz dancing. While the music may have been accepted, the proliferation of unlicensed all-night jazz dancehalls became a serious legal and moral issue. To the explosive tunes of a jazz band or blaring gramophone record, people feverishly danced the ‘black bottom’, ‘shimmy’, ‘Charleston’, ‘shag’ and ‘jitterbug’ rhythms that made their bodies jerk, convulse and lunge in uninhibited movements never before seen on an Irish dance floor. Oldsters were aghast at such indecent dancing.

Jazz dance devotees had a difficult time trying to explain to the uninitiated why it was so irresistible, sweeping them away in emotion. As a contributor to the Irish Radio Review put it:

My feet begin to tap the floor if I hear a jazz band … a natural instinct for me to move my body in all sorts of ridiculous ways … jazz can wake other animal instincts in me … to go into ecstasy … to be carried away.

This was precisely what Ireland’s religious and moral guardians feared. Newspapers carried volumes of letters from readers putting the subject into their words – from ‘inspired’ to ‘insane’. While many people followed the jazz saga with a passing interest, to others it became a serious matter, as expressed by one writer to the Irish Independent:

It is to be feared, with the advent of our new freedom, that our morals are not improving, with a continuous round of Saturday and Sunday night jazz dancing – and other forms of imported amusements.

GAA authorities took a tough stand against jazz dancing amongst their members, with some imposing a strict ban on any such dancing at their functions. At the annual convention, one GAA secretary argued: ‘A man who plays Gaelic football and goes to jazz dances – foreign dances – is the hallmark of shoneenism!’ The secretary favoured a complete ban on jazz dancing for all GAA members – who, being young and athletic, loved jazz in all forms.

It is not known what the campaigning politicians thought of the flamboyant flappers, the most exhilarating icons of Ireland’s modern jazz culture. It is probably safe to assume that Cosgrave and his conservative cohorts did not exactly enjoy watching the black bottom or shimmy being performed at full pitch before their eyes.

There are several claimed origins of the term ‘flapper’, one of the most graphic being that of a chick desperately flapping her wings trying to fly, having not yet grown adult feathers. According to the Oxford