The Leap Year Man Hunt in 1908

"The Man Hunt—in 1908. Leap Year. Ha! Ha! A butts! Foiled curse you! 1067."

Many Leap Year postcards from the early twentieth century depicted gender stereotypes that seem outrageous to us today. This series of comic postcards (see examples above and below), for instance, featured women using guns, axes, dogs, nets, and traps to capture men, who could easily be lured with food and drink (pretzels, cheese, and beer) or money.

The Leap Year lemon logo on each of these 1908 cards likely derives from the fad that began in 1906 or 1907, when handing someone a lemon was a way of saying "scram," "beat it," or in the slang of the day, "skidoo" or "23 skidoo" (for additional information, see my Skidoo 23 Is Now 37 postcard and Skidoos and Lemons album).

For more on Leap Year postcards, see Katherine Parkin's Leap Year Postcard Database on Monmouth University's Web site and Gwen Sharp's posting, Leap Year, Gender, and Reversing the Proposal Script, on the Sociological Images blog, Feb. 29, 2012.