Digitized by the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
Around one hundred years ago, a new theme was introduced to the long-established images decorating paper Valentines. While hearts and flowers, little birds and rosy-cheeked children still predominated, the Valentines of 1924 often featured something new—the motor car.
While innocent enough when surrounded by lace and flowers, the motor car had already begun to arouse the suspicions of Cincinnati parents. The old fogies suspected that automobiles represented much more than transportation to the kids. Those jalopies might be nefarious vehicles of illicit lust!
Well, the old folks were correct. Young people throughout Cincinnati were tootling out to the nearest country byway and canoodling in extended make-out sessions known as “petting parties.” The Cincinnati Business Women’s Club got together to grumble about “rolled stockings, petting parties and abbreviated bathing suits as they affect the adolescent girl.” The Cincinnati Post [4 April 1924] quoted Alma Hillhouse, educational director of Cincinnati’s Social Hygiene Society:
“The child gets its instinct for petting from the mother. When a babe she is held on the mother’s knee and fondled. When she grows up she seeks satisfaction in petting parties. It is the standards in the home that count. The daughter of the wise mother will come through petting parties unscathed; the uncontrolled girl comes to grief.”
You will notice that neither Dad nor any adolescent males are assigned any sort of accountability in this matter. Some things never change.
From University of Cincinnati Cincinnatian yearbook for 1925, Page 337; Digitized by University of Cincinnati Archives & Rare Books Library
While the Business Women’s Club debated, the Indian Hill Rangers, organized, according to the Enquirer [3 June 1924], to “trail horse thieves, cattle rustlers and pillagers of hen roosts,” were confronted with a new threat to village security.
“Indian Hill Rangers are after motorists who have been using the shady lanes and sylvan retreats of that pretty hilltop east of the city and the adjoining countryside for ‘petting’ and gin parties.”
One evening, the Rangers encountered a limousine parked on Drake Road, its windows curtained with newspapers. While not disturbing the occupants, the Rangers copied the license number and mailed a letter to the owner, a woman living in Avondale. They never saw that particular vehicle again.
While Indian Hill was dealing with limousines, the real action was out in the Western Hills among the still-rural expanses of Delhi and Green townships. According to the Enquirer [14 October 1924]:
“For months, residents have complained that autoists have forsaken the dim-lighted parlor and its sofa for the moonlit roadside and the cushioned seats of the automobile. Even private driveways and lawns have been converted into trysting bowers by these seekers for seclusion, who have openly defied property owners to the extent of drawing weapons on them, it has been stated.”
Alfred Bennett of Green Township blamed the recent crackdown on Cincinnati’s “red light” district in the West End for the flight of depraved and lustful characters into the hinterlands. He told the Enquirer [25 October 1924] that illicit smooching was just the beginning. “‘Much of the objectionable practices in country districts is not entirely “petting parties,”’ Mr. Bennett stated, ‘but gross immoralities that shock the residents.’”
So gross were these alleged immoralities that they inspired a flurry of ecumenism between the Catholic and Protestant congregations of Bridgetown, with the Rev. Paul Schmidt of the Evangelical Protestant Church standing shoulder to shoulder with Father William Spickerman of Saint Aloysius Catholic Church in demanding more patrols by the county sheriff. The clergymen offered to recruit volunteer deputies from among their flocks. In neighboring Delhi Township, Justice of the Peace M.J. Roebling lumped petting party participants among nuisances such as “bootleggers, bandits and hold-up men.”
From University of Cincinnati Cincinnatian yearbook for 1925, Page 341; Digitized by University of Cincinnati Archives & Rare Books Library
The Delhi magistrate wasn’t that far off, it seems. Widespread outrage about romantic parkers, combined with very public statements by the county sheriff that he did not have the budget nor the manpower to patrol the county’s lovers’ lanes, suggested a business opportunity for the local footpads. The Enquirer [28 July 1924] reported that outlaws impersonating county deputies were robbing couples caught on deserted roads:
“Two more hold-ups were committed late last night by a gang of five bandits who are blamed for a total of 17 known hold-ups and who, it is said, have collected hundreds of dollars by swooping down on ‘petting parties’ on county highways and extorting money under the guise of deputy officers.”
Many of the township roads favored by passionate petters led to roadhouses established outside city limits to avoid enforcement of Prohibition laws. Cincinnati’s Juvenile Protective Association claimed that the immoral environment promoted by these roadhouses spilled over into steamy backseats. And, of course, the media were blamed as well. A new film, “Daughters of Today,” written by a one-time Cincinnati newspaper reporter named Lucien Hubbard and starring Zazu Pitts, opened that year. According to the Enquirer [29 September 1924]:
“It is an ultra jazz production, with petting parties, cocktail shakers and syncopation distributed throughout the lengthy of its half dozen or more reels.”
By October 1924, the scandal had reached such an extremity that the Cincinnati Automobile Club passed a strongly worded resolution condemning “petting parties” as a safety hazard and demanding more patrols by the sheriff. So vehement was the public condemnation of “petting parties” that the Enquirer actually editorialized in favor of passionate parking because a total crackdown would force hormonal youngsters into petting while driving and thereby endanger pedestrians!
Although it is unlikely the Automobile Club’s wrath had any effect, by the next year the Cincinnati Post [20 July 1925] reported that petting parties, the bane of 1924, seemed to be passé in 1925. Two deputy sheriffs spent a long and fruitless summer evening looking for lovers along the East Miami River in Anderson Township:
“In two hours, we found only one spooner. That was on Broadwell-rd, where a boy and his sweetie were spooning in the moonlight to the strains of a victrola on the back seat of their machine.”
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