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Who really said it

None of This Nonsense about Women and Children First

Not coined by Noël Coward — a travellers’ joke already in print by 1917 Anonymous (a travellers’ joke in print by 1917) Earliest known printing 13 September 1917 · credited to an unnamed New York traveller
Disputed Free to reuse

Coward almost certainly did say it, which is why the credit sticks — but he was passing on a joke, not making one. Quote Investigator ↗ finds the quip in the Kansas City Star on 13 September 1917, where Henry J. Allen, stuck in a Paris taxi scramble, recalls the reason “a New York traveler once gave for traveling on a French liner.” The joke reached Coward in 1932, and the target was French ships, not Italian ones.

Last verified 16 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“None of This Nonsense about Women and Children First” Anonymous travellers' joke, earliest known printing: Kansas City Star, 13 September 1917 — not coined by Noel Coward, who repeated it in 1932. · Verbatim: “there is no foolishness about women and children first”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Noel Coward. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the themes of character and courage. Theme: "None of This Nonsense about Women and Children First". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "None of This Nonsense about Women and Children First". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest known printing
Kansas City Star, 13 September 1917, page 4
Article
Diving for French Verbs: Henry J. Allen Finds Language as Exciting as War
Credited there to
An unnamed “New York traveler”
Reached Coward
14 August 1932, in an Associated Press profile
Verdict
Repeated by Coward — not coined by him

When we reached the outside our trouble began. There were some thirty or forty women from the train and as we watched the scramble for the very small number of taxicabs and 1-horse vehicles we were reminded of the reason a New York traveler once gave for traveling on a French liner: He said, “there is no foolishness about women and children first.”

The 1917 printing, as transcribed by Quote Investigator. Note the wording: “no foolishness,” not “none of this nonsense” — the phrasing drifted as the joke travelled.

Quote Investigator: None of This Nonsense about Women and Children First

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗ is the anchor here, and we read it in full rather than relying on a summary. It transcribes the 1917 Kansas City Star instance and cites it as “1917 September 13, Kansas City Star, Diving for French Verbs: Henry J. Allen Finds Language as Exciting as War, Page 4, Column 2” (consulted via GenealogyBank).
  • The Coward attribution is dated from the same chronology: an Associated Press profile of 14 August 1932, under the sub-heading “King of the Jesters,” reports that “some years ago, he said facetiously that he was sailing on a French boat where ‘there is none of this nonsense about women and children first.’” QI cites it as Aberdeen Daily News, page 4, column 4, by Mark Barron.
  • QI’s stated conclusion, which this page adopts rather than going beyond: the earliest version “was credited to an anonymous New York traveler in 1917,” and “Evidence suggests that Noël Coward did use this quip, but he was probably repeating a joke that already existed.”
  • Limit of what we checked: we did not see the 1917 or 1932 newspaper pages ourselves — both sit behind subscription newspaper archives — so the transcriptions and page locators here are Quote Investigator’s, attributed to it rather than claimed as our own.
Public domain

The passage above comes from a United States newspaper published in 1917, which is in the public domain. The later wordings discussed in the fact-check below — the 1932 Associated Press report in particular — are quoted only as short excerpts for identification and verification.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This is a joke that has been handed from one famous wit to the next for a century, growing a little more elaborate at each stop.

Noël Coward Quoted, not authored

He does seem to have used it. Quote Investigator ↗ records an Associated Press profile of 14 August 1932 reporting that he said, of sailing on a French boat, “there is none of this nonsense about women and children first” — and notes that “several humorless persons accepted the statement as a serious one and criticized Coward severely.” But the joke was already in print in 1917.

Joe Drum Earlier claimant, now forgotten

The syndicated gossip columnist O. O. McIntyre attached the tale to one Joe Drum in March 1932, months before Coward — a French ship, “where there is no hanky-panky about women and children first.” See the chronology ↗.

W. Somerset Maugham No evidence

The version in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (1985) has Maugham asked why he always sailed in French ships. Quote Investigator “has not yet located compelling direct evidence” that Maugham used the joke. See the chronology ↗.

Winston Churchill Refuted

The Churchill version — three things he likes about Italian ships — first appears in a 1993 speakers’ humour collection. Quote Investigator ↗ reports that the Churchill specialist Richard M. Langworth called it “entirely bogus,” finding neither the quotation nor its key words in digital scans of Churchill’s fifteen million published words, and no record of Churchill cruising on an Italian liner after 1955.

An American rear-admiral Another anonymous teller

A footnote in Alan Houghton Brodrick’s Cross-Channel (1946) gives a 1925 version from an unnamed American rear-admiral, with the food and drink added. See the chronology ↗.

The honest answer is that nobody knows who first told it. Quote Investigator’s conclusion ↗ is that “the earliest version of this basic jest known to QI was credited to an anonymous New York traveler in 1917,” and that Coward “was probably repeating a joke that already existed.”

Context

Why it mattered

The joke only works because “women and children first” was a real and seriously held rule of the sea, fixed in the public mind by the Titanic five years before the first printing. Pretending to prefer a ship that would not bother with it is a way of being rude about a whole nationality while sounding merely practical.

That is also why it keeps being re-pinned. The joke needs a famous wit to carry it, and each generation supplies one — a forgotten Joe Drum in 1932, Coward the same year, Maugham by 1985, Churchill by 1993.

A joke that needs a famous wit to carry it will always find one.

Read the full story

Watch the target move. In 1917 and through the 1930s the ships are French; by the 1993 Churchill telling they are Italian, and that is the version that surged on social media in January 2012 after the Costa Concordia sank. The joke did not change, only the nationality it was aimed at — which is a fair warning about any anecdote whose punchline depends on who is being sneered at.

It is worth being precise about what is and is not disputed here. That Coward said something like this in the early 1930s is reasonably documented. That he invented it is not, and that is the claim the internet makes on his behalf.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Character Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology, 1917 to 2012, with newspaper citations for each telling.
Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Noël Coward (1899–1973), English playwright, composer and actor.
Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Henry J. Allen (1868–1950), the Kansas newspaperman whose 1917 piece carries the earliest known printing.
Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the novelist W. Somerset Maugham, one of the wits the joke was later pinned on.
Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on Winston Churchill, the statesman the most elaborate version is pinned on.

The author

About Anonymous (a travellers’ joke in print by 1917)

Anonymous (a travellers’ joke in print by 1917)

In print by 1917 · American newspaper humour · popularly mis-credited to Noël Coward

The joke has no known author. Its earliest documented appearance is a Kansas City Star piece of 13 September 1917, in which Henry J. Allen recalls the reason “a New York traveler once gave for traveling on a French liner.” That traveller is never named, and the line circulated anonymously in American newspapers for fifteen years before any celebrity was attached to it — first a now-forgotten Joe Drum, then, within months, Noël Coward.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented source (Chicago)

“Diving for French Verbs: Henry J. Allen Finds Language as Exciting as War.” Kansas City Star, September 13, 1917, 4. Earliest documented appearance, per Quote Investigator.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘None of This Nonsense about Women and Children First’?” Last verified 16 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/none-of-this-nonsense-about-women-and-children-first/

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