So I'm surfing the Web on Newspapers-dot-com and I find a 1913 Dothan Eagle editorial entitled "The Ingenue Crouch" reprinted in the Tuscaloosa News. It opened with "When it ain't one thing it's another, or things similar. About the time the space writers for the Sunday papers quit talking about the hobble skirt, making women knock-kneed, they spring another one on us. This time it's the 'ingenue crouch.' "

I immediately remembered that Buck Bannon's child bride in Devil Make A Third, Lota, wore a hobble skirt for her honeymoon and that put me on the strange trail of the hobble skirt and the ingenue crouch.

https://lastyeargirl.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-mannequin-glide.html

Dothan's HOBBLE SKIRTS

From pages 224 and 225 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

"She's coming down," Hearn said, grinning," And, man, is she frocked out?"

Buck saw her trying to stride across the lobby, but having to take short steps in a dark-blue tailored suit with a hobble skirt. The white collar of her silk blouse was soft and not high around her neck, but was held together at the hollow of her throat with a blue polka-dot tie with flaring ends. Her shoes showed black and shiny and the buttons seemed to dance in the bright lights of the lobby.

from the November 10, 1912 San Francisco Chronicle

from the August 13, 1910 Montgomery Advertiser 

from the September 2, 1910 Americus Times Recorder

 

Dothan Eagle editorial reprinted in the April 21, 1913 Tuscaloosa News

The next to last paragraph of the "Ingenue Crouch" Eagle editorial sez, "Buck Baker ought to appeal to O'neal for the privilege of calling out Company 'F' to suppress this walk if it is attempted." Pretty sure the Dothan Guards, Company "F" of the 1st Infantry of the Alabama National Guard, were organized in 1899. In 1916, they went to the Texas border to fight the Mexican Pancho Villa and Dothan had its first serviceman die when their bugle boy died of fever. In 1918, Company "F" was absorbed into the Rainbow Division and fought in WWI. After WWI, the National Guard Armory was named after Buck Baker's nephew who was T.E. Buntin. Buck was the model for "Buck Bannon" in Devil Make A Third. O'Neal was the Governor of Alabama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmet_O%27Neal  Also in 1913, prostitution was legal in Dothan so the Eagle was probably afraid the "working girls" of Dothan would adopt the "Ingenue Crouch" so the editorial had a lot of hidden meaning.