The Golden Age of Fraternity "Pranks"

[SWTXBelle]

Apparently, these were quite the thing for fraternal lodges - I wonder if any college fraternities used them?

From the book:
"Once or twice a year, the most peculiar mail-order catalog ever published was stuffed into canvas bags and thrown off mail trains across the United States. Between its covers were the nuttiest, most bizarre inventions and prank devices ever offered for sale.
Had you been a high-ranking clerk of a fraternal lodge at the end of the nineteenth century or early twentieth century, you would have retrieved from the post office one of these little catalogs every now and then. Published by the DeMoulin Brothers Company of Greenville, Illinois, in limited numbers to a very specific readership from 1896 to 1930, these catalogs of fraternal initiation devices and regalia were inaccessible to the public—practically unknown. If the catalogs were as scarce as hens’ teeth then, they are as scarce as goats’ feathers now."

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/03/the_...es/slide_show/