An interesting snippet I discovered yesterday from the Montreal Gazette, August 29, 1968:

“Women who carry heavy handbags sometimes suffer from unpleasant finger tingling… Dr. Ronald Barber, a diagnostic expert, told a group of physiotherapists heavy handbags can cause women to walk slightly off kilter. The result is pressure on certain nerve paths that causes the unpleasant sensation in the fingers… It was prevalent among women in Britain during the Second World War because they were forced to stand in queues for hours with heavy shopping bags to buy goods in short supply…”