They called it ‘mashing’ and ‘spooning.’ You could once get arrested for it in Fort Worth

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“Standing on the Corner” was a popular song in the 1950s (recorded by the Four Lads, Dean Martin, and others) with lyrics that said:

“Standing on a corner watching all the girls go by.

“Standing on a corner giving all the girls the eye.

“Brother, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking ...

“Or for that woo-hoo look in your eye ...”

Actually, there was a time you could go to jail for doing just that. Your grandparents’ generation, raised on Victorian morality, called it, “mashing,” and it was one form of the public display of affection that was criminalized, along with “spooning.” The Fort Worth police enforced laws against both mashing and spooning in the early 20th century.

“Mashers” were men who made unwanted advances toward a lady. Exactly what constituted mashing, however, was hard to define. One letter-writer to the Star-Telegram in the aftermath of Fort Worth’s 1911 race riot did not stop with excoriating the rioters and the craven police who did not stop them. He also deplored the “mashers” who hung out on lower Main, insulting decent women with rude comments.

The Fort Worth city council first criminalized mashing in 1915. It passed an ordinance making “flirting [or] smiling at one of the gentler sex” a violation, carrying a fine of “not less than $5 nor over $500.” In other words, giving them “the eye.” It was left up to the beat cop to enforce the new law, though commissioners were moved to take action when one outraged lady complained to them by ordering police to be more vigilant upholding public morality.

The number of cases prosecuted against mashers increased in the 1920s, reflecting a backlash against the nation’s new, more permissive morality. While many women shrugged off boorish male behavior, others refused to suffer such behavior in silence. In August 1921 an unidentified “Riverside resident” was arrested at a downtown movie theater after a lady complained he was coming on to her. When the case came up in corporation court the next day, the complainant was a no show, so the man was released.

That same month, Nick Naum approached Mrs. Lomax Haskell on West 13th on her way to her husband’s drugstore. “Hello, kid,” he said, and asked where she was going. He picked the wrong woman to be so familiar with. A few minutes later her husband returned with a policeman to arrest Naum and haul him into municipal court.

Edward Botto also landed in municipal court. His mistake was winking (twice!) at the wife of Fort Worth Detective Winston Lewis. Naum was fined $50, and Botto was fined $25. They got off easy. In an earlier case, a masher was fined “$100 and costs” in Judge Raymond Buck’s city court for “accosting” a young lady on the street, though there is no indication he touched her.

The size of the fine was based on the prominence of the victim and her willingness to testify, as well as the seriousness of the crime. What mattered was that the authorities took mashing as a serious offense against public morality. The irony was that this was the same town that had long tolerated prostitution and wide-open gambling in Hell’s Half-acre.

Dallas had similar morality laws

Dallas authorities likewise took the job of preserving public morality seriously, but like their Fort Worth counterparts they had a hard time defining it. In 1917, Dallas Judge Bennett Hill ruled that winking at a woman was not an “indecent gesture” and therefore did not constitute mashing. The case came about when a “young woman” minding her own business on a public street was winked at by a “young man.” She complained to the nearest policeman who took the accused into custody, charging him with mashing. The case came before Judge Hill in city court who ruled that the accused had committed no crime.

“Spooning” was another affront to public morality. It was what later generations would call “petting” or “necking.” As criminalized in Fort Worth ordinances, it could be charged to either sex or to both members of a couple. It was up to the arresting officer’s discretion. By 1909, spooning was perceived as such a problem that Fort Worth commissioners took it up in council.

The immediate problem was that students were doing it in “darkened school buildings” and on school grounds at night. Clearly, there was a lot to be learned at school that wasn’t on the regular curriculum. School principals had tried putting janitors on night patrol, but since the janitors were not paid extra, they did not do much patrolling. Commissioners decided this was a job for the police. Unwilling to take regular officers off their duties, they authorized hiring “special officers” to do the job. No word on how successful they were.

Fort Worth authorities were not alone in being alarmed at declining public morality, and the problem outlived the “Roaring Twenties.” In 1930, police in the Houston suburb of West University Place arrested a man for “kissing his young lady in the dark.” The case went to trial in county court, and a jury fined him $67.30, focusing on the fact that the criminal act had been committed in a darkened car. The case took an odd turn when the defense counsel and prosecutor got into a debate over whether kissing was an “inherent and therefore constitutional right.” The prosecutor asserted, “Kissing may be a constitutional right, but we don’t want petters in West University Place!” The jury agreed.

Mashers, spooners, and their ilk were just one aspect of the changing urban landscape in the early 20th century: public morality, crime, and other issues were alarming to a large segment of society. Historically, for instance, sexual openness had not been a problem for rural communities, where hanging out in front of the general store did not offer the same opportunities for ogling the girls.. The problem was not that a new generation had discovered sex; it was that urban living provided more opportunities to act out those urges.

Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.