Whisky Cocktails Among New York Society Women
THE growing use of whisky “cocktails” among the society women of New York City is creating a sensation. Even the head waiter at the Waldorf hotel said that the Four Hundred “imbibe more freely of the decoction than is right and proper.” Commenting upon the situation, one of the leaders of “the Four Hundred” says: “I fully realize that women are every day seizing upon new liberties. They have laid hold of the cocktail, but they must let go. The American cocktail is strictly unfeminine, and was never meant for a woman’s palate. It is essentially a man’s drink.” To these words the Union Signal wisely adds: “And why ‘essentially’? Will some authority on diet tell us what foods and drinks essentially belong to man’s stomach, and what to woman’s?”87 LAST year’s consumption of whisky was the highest ever reached in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, it being more than a gallon for each man, woman, and child. Compared with 1878, there has been an increase in deaths from chronic alcoholism, of 82½ per cent among men, and 145½ per cent among women.