If slipping on a banana peels is the most hilarious thing ever, the second most hilarious thing ever may be the squirting flower boutonniere. Banana peel humor is old - dating to at least the 1850s, but not as old as slipping-on-orange-peel humor, which is at least several decades older. (See my earlier post, A Slippery History of the Banana Peel Gag - and the Orange Peel Gag.)
Squirting boutonnieres are not quite so old, but may be older than one might expect. The “Surprise Bouquet” was new in 1881, when an advertisement pronounced it “just out, and the best practical joke of the season.”
THE SURPRISE BOUQUET
Just Out, and the Best Practical Joke of the Season.
This beautiful Button-hole Bouquet is made of Artificial Flowers and Leaves, which so closely resemble natural flowers that not one person in a thousand would detect the difference. After placing the Bouquet in your button-hole you call the attention of a friend to its beauty and fragrance. He will very naturally step forward and smell of it, when to his utter astonishment, a fine stream of water will be thrown into his face. Where the water comes from is a mystery, as you can have your hands at your side or behind you, and not touch the Bouquet in any manner. You can give one dozen or more personas a shower bath without removing the Bouquet from your button-hole, and after the water is exhausted it can be immediately refilled without removing it from your coat. Cologne can be used in place of water when desired. We have many funny things in our stock, but nothing that equals this. . . .
EUREKA TRICK AND NOVELTY CO., Box 4614
7 Warren Street, New York.
Puck, Volume 9, Number 231, August 10, 1881, page 395.
There is a common misconception that the squirting flower was invented by Soren Sorensen Adams, the inventor of the joy buzzer.i Adams was born in 1880, however, which means he would have had to have been one year old at the time of the invention.
The gag was still going strong a decade and a half later. An article about making “fortunes in patents” claimed it netted annual royalties of $12,000 in 1895.
Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1895, page 28.
A practical and familiar invention mentioned in the same article is the lemon juicer.
The glass lemon-squeezer, familiar to everybody, is one of the simplest of them all. It has the merit of working well, of being easy to keep clean, and never getting out of order. The purchaser paid $50,000 for it.
Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1895, page 28.
The practical “joke” was just as hilarious in 1916 as it had been in 1881 and still is today.
Heh! Heh! Heh! Wah-he! He!
Why all the merry guffawas, stupid?
We just can’t restrain ourselves from lawfing at the merry antics of the practical joker, he’s so clever and funny.
We think you should be spouting sympathy for this rummy instead of the tickle exhausts. He’s the feeble-minded Luke that wears the trick flower and tells you put your horn down and smell it, then he presses a bulb that squirts rain up in your mush.
He’s the rummy that puts drinking water on the bookkeeper’s chair when he goes to answer the phone. Always has some clever little stunt where his victim is a full-bearded angora, but when somebody changes the act and uses him for the nanny, Oh! His record rattles off thusly: “That’s a dirty trick. I don’t mind a joke, but that ain’t no joke; a joke’s a joke, but that’s dirty,” etc.
The Day Book (Chicago), July 27, 1916, page 17.
Funny or unfunny in real life, Harold Lloyd put the squirting lapel flower to “uproarious” comedic use in his 1932 film, Movie Crazy.
After many quarrels with the leading lady (Constance Cummings), he receives, accidentally, an invitation to one of the major social events. There, a valet gives Harold a magician’s coat by mistake. The scenes that follow are not only funny, they’re uproarious. The coat yields, among other things, a rabbit, an egg with a live chick in it, a water-squirting lapel flower, a mouse, and a white pigeon. . . . In actual tests at Hollywood, this scene drew 17 minutes of continuous laughter - a record.
Asbury Park Press, August 29, 1932, page 4 (View clip here on YouTube).
But squirting flowers were not all fun and games. In 1939, for example, a twelve-year-old with a squirting flower triggered a chain of events that resulted in a fight, pulled hair, a gunshot, hospitalization and an arrest. It happened on 45th street in Cleveland. “Smell it” she said. What could go wrong?
(By United Press) Cleveland - a tiny pebble, rolling down a mountain, strikes another and thus begins an avalanche. Just so did a heap of trouble descend on East 45th street.
Naomi Devese, 12, began it with one of those trick flowers that squirts water in your face.
“Smell it,” she said to Dorothy Carter, 12. Dorothy smelled it and Naomi squeezed the bulb.
News-Journal (Mansfield, Ohio), June 24, 1939, page 1.
Dorothy retaliated, Naomi pulled her hair, Naomi’s parents intervened, Dorothy’s uncle Dan (a pistol-packin’ preacher) took aim at Naomi’s father but struck her mother instead, she was hospitalized, and Uncle Dan was hauled off to jail.
Some people just don't have a sense of humor.
i “The Wet and Wild History of the Water Gun,” Amanda Green, PopularMechanics.com, July 2, 2013. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/g1221/a-brief-history-of-the-water-gun/ (“1906: Soren Sorenen Adams founds the Cachoo Sneeze Powder Company. The prettiest prank in his bag of tricks: the water-streaming lapel flower.).” The Popular Mechanics article does not come straight out and say he invented the gag, but in the context of the article, placing it in a timeline of the history of the water gun, suggests that he did, or at least that it was invented after the first water gun in 1896. Several accounts posting on the social media site, TWITTER, have unambiguously claimed he invented it.
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