Butch and Sundance: More On Fashion And Travel In 1900.

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in the middle of a series about two of America's most famous and successful outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In the last post we were with Butch, Sundance and Etta Place while they explored New York City for three weeks.

I called it the New York Celebration because they were having a grand old time living it up on their new found stolen riches and experiencing everything the city had to offer. I like to think of them looking like this as the movie portrayed them:

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Of course that's Katherine Ross who played Etta Place with Robert Redford and Paul Newman as Butch, is seated. The movie went to great lengths to attain period accurate costumes although I'm sure the men didn't wear their guns out in public. Although it's a great look!

I must admit I got a little side tracked when researching fashion and street scenes of NYC in the year 1900. I know some of my women readers really enjoy seeing what the women wore back then so here's a couple of photos I found from the year 1900.

Ladies fashion

Young lady fashions:
Is that lady on the left smoking a cigarette? Nahh surely not.

Ladies fashion:
(All the women have their hair up)

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Street scenes

The Little Italy section of the city:

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Here's a fascinating look at 5th Ave on Easter morning, 1900. I thought there would be more cars but in this photo there are only two cars. One is one the left side column near the center of the picture, do you see it? I'm not sure where the second one is but let me know if you think you see it.

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That photo above is from the National Archives but they only pointed out where one of the cars were. Outrageously busy for an Easter Sunday morning. I assume everyone is heading to church? lol.

Those guys had to have had the time of their lives there in the big city but after three weeks they got ready to board a passenger liner headed to Argentina.

Those ships back then were marvels of engineering, for their time, and super elegant with no expenses spared to impress their guests who were treated like royalty.

This is not their ship but a similar one, this photo taken in 1900:

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Of course since I was on the subject I had to do some research so bear with me while I talk about the ship for a second, this is a history post afterall! lol. My main curiosity was about the food.

I knew the rooms were super plush and built with many exotic woods from around the world. The craftsmanship was amazing, the rooms and furnishings were a work of art unto themselves.

The ocean liners prided themselves on matching the quality and luxury of 5 Star hotels on land. But I was thinking..ok but how do you do that in the food department with no refrigeration? Well, they didn't have the modern refrigeration systems onboard yet but they did have refrigeration.

The ships DID have refrigeration

It took TONS of ice for each voyage. Down in the lower part of the ship they had well insulated rooms and the temperature varied for each product.

One room would have birds hanging from hooks: chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigeons(yes pigeons!). Another room would be for the salted meats: hams, bacon, tongues(yes tongues! They were a very popular delicacy).

Another room was full of live fish like lobsters, crabs, clams and oysters. One would be full of sterilized milk, eggs and cream. The ship had huge fresh water tanks for the massive amounts of tea and coffee consumed.

The tea and coffee were made in ten gallon urns. And of course the alcohol... which took railroad cars to fill the amount of alcohol consumed on each trip! lol. Barrels and kegs by the hundreds.

Entertainment

Dang near everything you could find on Broadway. Orchestras, concerts, bands, dances, theater, all manner of shows and entertainment. Also indoor cricket, badminton, table tennis, shuffleboard, chess, dominoes, cribbage, card games.

No gambling officially but come on, you know those old rich boys got games going in their private rooms while the ladies attended concerts!

Ok guys, I done burned up all my space for today and will continue tomorrow when the trio lands in Argentina. What they find there is astounding.

-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck

PS- ya know...you might just be a redneck if:

There's an electronic singing fish in more than 2 rooms of your house!