Citation: Photo courtesy Middleton Place via Shameran81/Wikimedia.

When an enslaved mother named Rose learns her 9 year old daughter Ashley will soon be sold away, she grabs a three-foot long sack and fills it with pecans, a tattered dress, and a clipping of her hair, giving it to her daughter Ashley just before she is sold away. They never see each other again but Ashley keeps the sack. Decades later, Ruth Middleton, the great-granddaughter of Rose, embroiders the story of the sack on to the sack itself in three different color threads.

Citation: Collection of the National Museum of African American History & Culture shared with the Library of Congress. Photo circa 1870s. 

Harriet Tubman (1842-1921) travels with an “old-fashioned reticule”; she also keeps it close while giving abolitionist speeches. Inside her bag, she carries small photos of other anti-slavery activists, asking strangers to identify the people in the photos to make sure they aren’t slave catchers.  In 1873, Harriet Tubman is lured into the woods, chloroformed, and robbed of her purse by con-men claiming to have gold.

Citation: Circa 1890, the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Print Collection, New York Public Library. 

Nellie Bly flies around the world by herself with a single leather bag, just 16 inches wide and 7 inches tall. In her portrait taken before her departure, she appears in a hat, dark gloves, and full-length plaid coat, holding her “grip-sack” in her left hand.

Citation: “Spring Features in Women’s Apparel,” Sears, Roebuck and Co., Spring 1909, 26

The exteriors of many affordable bags sold at this time were constructed of black seal grain leather, reputed to be of “good” or “finest” quality. Lined interiors often featured a silky moiré cloth and interior pockets for additional storage and privacy. Many of these bags featured metal frames with a snap catch or double short leather handles. The largest bag for sale in this issue of Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s catalogue was eleven inches wide.

Citation: Suffragist bags, circa 1913-1920. Author’s photograph, August 2016, Schlesinger Library on American Women, Harvard University. 

Suffragists emblazon the slogan “Votes For Women” on canvas tote bags, using them to advertise their cause and hand out suffragist newspapers in the streets. During a research trip at Harvard, I encountered two cream-colored canvas suffragist bags, the smaller of which features a green and purple stripe and no interior pockets. The larger bag contains three interior pockets and was likely used to distribute suffrage newspapers.

Citation: Mar 25, 1911. International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Photographs (1885-1985), The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University.

Immigrant women working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in NYC are waiting in line to have their purses inspected to make sure they don’t steal fabric and trimmings when a fire breaks out. 123 women will die that day. Police use the contents of their purses to help identify the bodies. Two years before the fire, the “Uprising of the 20,000” in 1909, striking factory workers locked arms with other activists and more famous benefactors as they marched toward City Hall to protest police violence against the striking workers.

Caption: Archival assortment of purses representing different styles and periods, Author’s photo, New York State Museum, 2015.

The production and sales of purses expands dramatically.

Citation: US1518103A, Google Patent Image.  

Salvatore Picciotto receives a patent for his invention of a purse-sized vanity case designed to look like a gun. When the trigger is pulled, perfume squirts out the nozzle.

Citation: Good Housekeeping 104, is. 4 (Apr 1937), 190.

Tampax begins selling tampons for the first time, heavily relying on images of purses in their marketing materials. Ads note that women can store a “month’s supply” of Tampax in a “purse-size package.”

Citation: Author’s photograph, 2015. Katherine Keene Papers, 1941-1977, Box 5, MC 817,5CB.1m, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

World War II begins and American women begin enlisting in the WAAC (Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps). They are issued standardized brown leather bags as part of their uniforms. The purses have eight interior compartments and a brown hairnet was discovered in one of them. The women are specifically instructed to wear the bags diagonally across their bodies from the left shoulder. This bag belonged to Katherine Keene, who joined the WAAC in 1942.

Photo courtesy of Architect of the Capitol, https://www.aoc.gov/art/other-statues/rosa-parks

At the age of 42, Rosa Parks uses her purse to attempt to integrate a Montgomery city bus. Erected in the United States Capitol Building in 2013, this memorial shows Rosa Parks seated with her ankles primly crossed and her small, snap-close purse dangling from her fingers. She has her coat closed and wears a pillbox hat, short Oxford heels, and glasses.

Citation: Daisy Bates, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, U.S. National Park Service, Public Domain.

Civil rights activist Daisy Bates escorts the Little Rock Nine to school in Arkansas, while surreptitiously carrying a gun in her purse.

Citation: Author’s photos. Corner of Turk and Taylor streets, San Francisco, July 2022. 

Transwomen and drag queens use their purses to fight off the police at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The image on the left shows a current landmark on the sidewalk between Turk and Taylor’s Street. The corner of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district has been renamed “Gene Compton’s Cafeteria Way.”

Citation: Marsha P. Johnson during or before 1977, Hank O’Neal. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Transwoman Marsha P. Johnson climbs a telephone pole and throws her bag (with a brick inside) on to the windshield of a police car during the riots at the Stonewall Inn. 

Citation: Author’s photograph, July 2022. “Gay Bob,” LGBTQIA Realia Collection. San Francisco Public Library. 

Harvey Rosenberg spends 10,000 dollars to develop “Gay Bob,” a Ken-like doll that carries a leather purse. Gay Bob, whose wrists are hinge-able, is shown standing inside his closet. To play with him, of course, you must take him out of the closet. Note the brown cowboy boots, plaid shirt, gold necklace and stud in his left ear.

Citation: The U.S. border fence near EL PASO, August 2006, Office of Representative Phil Gingrey. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Two Mexican men are detained at the border because one of them is carrying a “woman’s handbag.” They are denied entry to the US for this reason. Months later, Canadian lesbian Ariane Brunet and her friends travel to the Michigan Womyn’s Festival and are asked about their sexual orientations at the border. One officer, intent on proving Brunet was gay, asked her, “Have you ever carried a purse?” 

Caption: Photograph of Jerry Falwell, evangelical and leader of the Moral Majority, by Deborah Thomas, 1984. Public domain via the State Archives of Florida.

66-year-old Jerry Falwell, founder and president of Liberty University, warns parents that Tinky Winky (of the children’s show Teletubbies) models the “homosexual lifestyle” for children. He cites Tinky Winky’s red purse as evidence of his homosexuality.    

Citation: Nashville riverside at sunset. Photo by Kortney Musselman on Unsplash

In Nashville, Tennessee, 38-year-old bus driver Willie Houston is murdered by a stranger after entering a men’s restroom with a male friend while carrying his fiancé’s purse. The two had just gotten engaged and were celebrating on a midnight river cruise with friends.

Citation: Photo courtesy of Sarah Cochran, Aug 2024.

Fisher-Price’s issues “Pretty Learning Purse,” now marketed as “My Smart Purse”, is still available for purchase at the time of this writing. Intended for use by baby girls between the ages of 6 and 36 months, the purse speaks and tells players, “Let’s go shopping!” It comes with a mirror and fake credit card.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, pundits predict the end of purses. Sales briefly dip.