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Accounts of real tickling in historic newspapers

Storm Tickler

Registered User
Joined
May 28, 2019
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Hi all, I've recently been looking at some historic US newspapers and thought I'd see if there were many referencing to tickling in them- there was surprisingly quite a bit! Nothing mindblowing or too interesting, but I've summarized the stories below and linked the newspapers. At the very least it's an interesting insight into the early 1900s

Might be useful if anyone ever writes a whole 'history of tickling' book






Tickling leading to divorce:
A surprising number of women in the early 1900s were reported to have filed for divorce due to being tickled so much by their husbands, especially on their feet.

In 1900 one woman in an article about men no longer having any rights asked for divorce as her husband was in “the habit of tickling her feet [as]… when he came home at night he wished to be greeted by laughter and that there was no other way to make his home happy with peals of laughter except by tickling her feet” https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99021999/1900-03-11/ed-1/seq-28/#date1=1789&index=15&rows=20&words=her+tickling&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

In 1912 Mrs Gertrude Draught went to the police to have her husband punished for “tickling her feet to keep her sleeping”: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89052038/1912-12-20/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1789&index=7&rows=20&words=her+tickling&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

In 1913 Mrs Betty Killingsworth alleges “her husband took delight in tickling her feet… she never had a full night’s sleep: ‘Slumber Disturber’ https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86058226/1913-09-10/ed-1/seq-3/#date1=1789&index=1&rows=20&words=her+tickling&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
(this was reported in several papers)
This one is not sympathetic to Mrs Killingsworth (assuming it’s the same case)
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026897/1913-04-09/ed-1/seq-5/#date1=1789&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=her+tickling&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=3

Also in 1913 Mrs Edith Esther Perdy had a court rule her husband could no longer tickle her: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1913-03-24/ed-1/seq-5/#date1=1789&index=18&rows=20&words=her+tickle+tickling&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1



“Too ticklish for robbers”
A number of papers in 1912 reported the attempted robbing of Mrs Frances Roberts, who hid her purse somewhere on her body. Apparently the robbers kept accidentality tickling her whilst searching her, causing her to laugh so much they ran off

Account with ‘visual representation’:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88085187/1912-09-23/ed-1/seq-8/#date1=1789&index=0&rows=20&words=TICKLISH+WOMAN&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="ticklish+woman"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
Another account of the robbing:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86069395/1912-11-09/ed-1/seq-7/#date1=1789&index=7&rows=20&words=TICKLISH+Woman&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="ticklish+woman"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
Same story, different paper:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042354/1912-09-13/ed-1/seq-11/#date1=1789&index=11&rows=20&words=TICKLISH+WOMAN&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="ticklish+woman"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Female criminal tickled by police
At the other end of things, it was reported in 1909 that a young woman who was suspected of stealing a gold tooth had her neck tickled by police to make her open her mouth and reveal the tooth: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87078082/1909-06-16/ed-1/seq-6/#date1=1789&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=HER+Her+her+TICKLING+Tickling+tickling&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=9&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=3

Young woman awakened by man tickling her feet
Adela Romarkowa, a “pretty Polish girl” reported in 1912 that she was awoken by a stranger tickling her feet: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042354/1912-08-17/ed-1/seq-7/#date1=1789&index=6&rows=20&words=her+HER+tickling+TICKLING&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="tickling+her"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1



Discussion about why people are ticklish from 1901 (not overly interesting)
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026824/1901-08-08/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1789&index=4&rows=20&words=Feet+feet+ticklish+Ticklish&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="ticklish+feet"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Not entirely sure what the tickling is in this one:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-06-23/ed-1/seq-5/#date1=1789&index=15&rows=20&words=Feet+Ticklish&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext="ticklish+feet"&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
 
Excellent post! It's rare that I see something on here that hasn't been seen many times before. This was great, thank you.
 
Good thing correlation doesn't equal causation here regarding tickling and divorce...
 
clearly not having modern tickling media and the internet led to these ticklephiles having to find alternative outlets which clearly didn't go well in certain cases!
 
Hope the article is legible. Illustrated Police News, London, December 11, 1869.

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And secondly, an 'etching' from 1800s France. I found it more expedient when entertaining young ladies in the pre-Pornhub era to have a selection of interesting historical material to hand.
That way the subject could be broached as a byproduct of 'high culture', and the lady could be induced to laugh hysterically but in a highly refained feshion.

odTZ4oA.jpg
 
Last edited:
In 1899 “The Missionary Review” journal mentioned a bizarre religious sect in Siberia: "In their services, the males tickled the females so long that the latter fell into swoons. And as it was believed that each death added to the holiness of the service, no effort was exerted to revive the exhausted ones."

And one more story, if only a modern newspaper would be relevant here. About ten years ago one large-circulation Russian tabloid published an intriguing article “She Died Laughing”.

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The story goes like that:

Early in the morning an anonymous caller reported a young woman found unconscious by a lake in the countryside near Moscow. Sure enough, she was of surpassing beauty, as she was lying there in the nude. The tabloid savors every inch of her naked body from her tangled long dark hair, her ample breasts barely covered by a skimpy white sundress, her prominent nipples still visible against the thin cloth, to the eye-catching blood-red toenail polish at her bare feet. The only problem was that this gorgeous woman was dead with no marks of violent death on her body.

The coroner was puzzled by this case, as an autopsy revealed that she died of asphyxiation, but the forensic pathologist was unable to determine how exactly it happened. She wasn’t drowned or strangled, and there was no alcohol or drugs in her blood to explain her sudden respiratory arrest. It wasn’t a robbery, as her gold necklace wasn’t stolen, but the scene provided telltale signs that she was involved in some amorous activity right at the time of her sudden death.

Tracing the victim’s cell phone calls, police soon found a married man who finally admitted that he was having a love affair with her, and explained how she died. That night he gave her a lift, and on their way home they pulled over next to a lake to spend some time together. With nobody around to disturb them, she took all her clothes off as they were swimming and splashing in the water when it turned into a spontaneous sex.

The paper describes it the way one may think the couple enjoyed their passionate intercourse still swimming in the lake, but in my humble opinion such a spectacular feat of dolphin-like agility is simply impossible for human beings to perform, so I take the liberty to assume they were rather standing chest-deep in the water, her arms around his neck to keep her head above water as he was much taller than her.

Anyway, he went on caressing her after she came, kissing and tickling her playfully, when at one point she started kicking and laughing. Amused by her ingenuous sensitivity, he continued to tickle her, playing over her ribs. They had only been dating for a month or so, and he had no idea she could be so ticklish. She just kept laughing, pushing his hands away as he was tickling her, when suddenly she’s gone silent with an abrupt flinch as if she’d choked on water. He let go of her waist in surprise only to watch her limp body slowly sinking in the lake. He grabbed her, but she never moved, her eyes open in a blank stare.

Terrified, he pulled her to shore. She was no longer breathing, so he tried to provide her an emergency life support, but all his efforts to revive her have been in vain. He called an ambulance without giving his name, then draped her sundress across her naked body, got into his car and drove away, as he was afraid that the circumstances of her sudden death would ruin his marriage. The coroner, though, didn’t believe that a healthy young woman could die in a minute merely from laughing, so another specialist expertise was conducted.

After a re-examination the chief forensic expert came to an unprecedented conclusion that the victim indeed died of tickling. She was so insanely ticklish, that uncontrollable fits of her laughter resulted in a spasm that prevented her from breathing. The forensic expertise couldn’t reveal, though, if the victim was being tickled accidentally, or on purpose. But the coroner knew that the suspect had no reason or intention to kill his mistress. If she wasn’t in the water that moment, and not so exhausted after long swimming and intense lovemaking, she would easily have escaped his gentle hands, so the investigation finally turned up no foul play.

The article is followed by a compilation of short tickling-related notes, form an ancient torture when a bug was placed on each nipple of a woman and covered with halves of a nut shell to crawl there for hours and drive her, well, nuts; to a modern-day account of a wife who died of tickling during her honeymoon when her husband began licking her toes while they were having sex, as the mind-blowing orgasm she had just reached rendered her nerve system extra sensitive to a touch.

The article is signed by a female journalist, but the tabloid’s reputation casts doubt on its credibility, to say the least.
 
"A New York woman is suing for divorce because her husband had a habit of tickling her feet. Is a man not to be permitted progress from tickling under the chin before marriage to the soles of the dear one's Trilbys after marriage? - The State"

You got to satisfy your fetish some way when you don't have the internet at your disposal.
 
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