I’ve had this article about sharpshooter Elizabeth “Plinky” Toepperwein saved for a while. No reason why I thought of it again! Just an interesting read on a thing a woman could do!
In the days before television or air-conditioning, hundreds of men in suits—and a few women, decked out in Victorian-era dresses and corsets—braved heat and cold to watch Plinky shoot shotgun shells off [her husband] Ad’s fingers and Ad hit a bull’s-eye while standing on his head. Crowds loved to see Plinky “peel” a potato, held by Ad, by chipping it away with bullets. […]
The Toepperweins’ advertisements often extended a special invitation to women, and they came in droves. Syndicated columns touted the healthful nature of outdoor trapshooting and proclaimed that, as Plinky wrote in 1917, “there is absolutely no reason why a woman should not shoot as well as a man.” Some women formed female trapshooting clubs, and tournaments added amateur women’s divisions. Annie Oakley, now in her fifties, joined the upswell by giving shooting clinics for women. When Oakley and Plinky met at one of them, in 1915, the older sharpshooter reportedly told the younger, “You’re the greatest shot I’ve ever seen.”