Mind Your (Subway) Manners

While visiting the New York City Transit Museum, I noticed among the posters and car cards a sizable number aimed at the unmannerly or otherwise in-need-of-reprimand traveler. I’ve collected some here; if you have favorites you’ve seen in other cities, share them!

I was going to spend a little time on the trains last week to record the current-era crop of signs, but instead am following this spring’s primary manners poster: Stay Home and Stay Safe!

As the picture above hints, animals are popular in these circumstances; perhaps it takes a bit of the sting out of being called a slob. The chihaha and the hamster are from the Bay area. The long dog below telling you to give way to the tram is from Brussels, and the shark that warns of moving vehicles bears the marks of many European transit operators; it was part of a continent-wide safety campaign.

In New York, at least in my youth, we didn’t have animals, we had a fairly stern Father Knickerbocker calling us to our better natures—or sometimes calling on our civic pride.

Miss Subways, a contest for aspiring models who were always described as future mothers and home-makers, didn’t give orders; she just set an example of smiling and getting on with it. Unlike Miss Rheingold, who shilled for beer.

But some people really needed reminders; in this case there appears to be a bit of class anger as Mrs. Nose-in-the-Air claims the whole seat leaving an older man to lean on his…could it be a shillelagh? Below that, a manners story with a truly surprise ending…

Some people, apparently, can’t take a hint; for them the subway provided a large and ominous threat. Similar signs threatened arrest for spitting. Littering has always been a problem, too. Chicago tried a bit of humor with it, and the Wrigley Company even used it in ads.