29. Escort Cards Meant Something Else in the Victorian Era
Victorian “escort cards” were not business cards with the contact information of those who offered “intimate” favors for money. Instead, they were printed cards that allowed nineteenth-century single men to cheekily get around the era’s rigid rules of social interaction between men and women, and ask a woman if they could, literally, escort her home. The cards were basically the Match dot Com or Tinder of the day in ink and paper. Many posed variations of the question: “May I see you home?” Some put that in abbreviated slang along the lines of “May I.C.U Home?”
Others went for cute rhymes like “If You Have No Objection, I Will Be Your Protection”. Others simply got down to the point: “Not Married And Out For a Good Time”. To bypass the strict social mores that frowned upon men simply approaching women with whom they were unacquainted to chat them up, a man would surreptitiously slip her an escort card. If she was piqued enough to want to read it, she might hide it inside her glove or fan.
