Immorality of artificial legs

I'm thinking a "Louisiana club woman of Baton Rouge" is some sort of female who goes around Louisiana with a huge club over her shoulder. Preferably, this large stick is red, of course.

I couldn't understand the purpose of Ms Grudger's story until I saw it was published in Wichita. Apparently, it was to reinforce – uh, inform – those good folk about the evils of New Orleans.

If she purchased those which were in the window, how long would it have taken the shopkeeper to pull more from the back room and put them in the window? Five minutes? He'd probably also leave them on display longer, hoping for someone else to come along and buy the whole batch.

The good old bible belt... Years ago my father worked for a large retail store. He told the story that the good folks in the bible belt expected the nipples to be filed off of mannequins. I'll bet those artificial legs were bare, making them scandalous. Perhaps socks would have been a cheaper, and quicker way to fix the problem...

It's hard for me to imagine a window display of artificial legs. It's not like people go window shopping for prosthetics. More likely, it was a display of hosiery on mannequin legs.

It sounds like Ms Grudger came upon the display window with these legs along Canal Street, near the river. Beside being the location of department stores and clothing shops in 1928 New Orleans, that's the upriver boundary of the French Quarter. I wonder if she realized she could have walked a few blocks downriver from there and likely seen genuine bare legs, among other interesting items. Storyville, alas, had closed before WW1, so much of that moved to the Quarter.

I know about these things; I was once a French Quarter resident. I was just doing a scientific study then, however; like Pete Townshend was just doing research on child porn when he was picked up by Scotland Yard.

The story about filing the nipples off mannequins is really special.