Can someone please explain to me why Andy Divine says that in this movie when everyone is boarding the stagecoach in the beginning? I'm curious about it historically. What was the reason for doing it and was it considered common practice of the time? I've looked in my book on the "Expressmen" and I can't find anything on it. Please give me a source if you have it, also.
Thank you.
These are a few of the links I found after googling "women facing forward in stagecoaches".
The first link is apropos since it refers to the film right away. It appears that most stagecoaches in the west were of the 3 row design (forward facing rear bench w/back, forward facing middle bench w/o back and rearward-facing front bench w/back) seating up to 9 passengers inside and more on top outside. The Ford film evidently had a coach with only 2 rows which wasn't historically accurate for that region. I don't recall seeing a middle bench and there weren't 9 passengers inside. Anyway, Buck (Andy Devine) was probably trying to be kind-hearted to the ladies as to where they could sit more comfortably, which in a standard 3-row coach would have been the front-facing rear bench. The links go into more detail about all this but there was more legroom sitting on the rear bench.
http://www.desertusa.com/mag00/may/stories/butter.html
http://thewritersvineyard.com/2012/08/stagecoach-travel-in-west-riding -shotgun.html
http://romancingthewest.blogspot.com/2011/07/paty-jager-stagecoach-rid es.html
As a mass transit commuter (train), I can tell you that a lot of people don't like riding backwards. So this may have been a courtesy to the "womenfolk" to spare them the possibility of being sick.
shareThat's a good point because it seems that women back then were always fretted about with their "fragile sensibilities", so including that along with the more room they would have sitting in the rear forward-facing bench and not having to knock knees with fellow passengers as they would have to if sitting in the front rearward-facing bench makes sense.
shareAs a woman, travelling by train I would expect male companios to let me have the forward facing seats as a polite gesture, like holding the door and such thing. Perhaps it has since been lost in the US...
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