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I am too proud to eavesdrop, and so I could only wedge myself into the pearls, avoiding the hatpins, with Camilla’s garnet ring gouging into my back and Beatrice’s nose in my ear.

And the Smithsonian Magazine reports that in the US, women used hatpins even in the 1900s to stab men who got too close for comfort.

“Says the girl who impaled a man with her hatpins.”

She fought with her own weapon — an 8-inch hatpin — while the other boys ran for help.

She reacted with wit to London’s nightly blackouts, sprinkling her pages with luminescent hatpins and brooches and a selection of jaunty gas mask totes.