28075017 6 the Victorian Age

A History ofFashion andCostumeThe VictorianAge

Peter Chrisp

The Victorian Age

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in-Publication Data

Chrisp, Peter.A history of fashion and costume.The Victorian Age/Peter Chrisp.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and

index.ISBN 0-8160-5949-7

1. Clothing and dress—GreatBritain—History—19th century.2. Clothing and dress—UnitedStates—History—19th century.3. Great Britain—History—Victoria,1837–1901. I.Title:Victorian Age.II.Title.

GT737.C57 2005391'.00941—dc 22

2005040044

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Victoria & Albert Museum: 15 (top),

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Contents

Introduction 5

Chapter 1: Early Victorian Fashions 6

Chapter 2: The Clothing Industry 16

Chapter 3: The Stages of Life 30

Chapter 4: Occasional Clothes 34

Chapter 5: Working Clothes 38

Chapter 6: Late Victorian Fashions: 1860–1901 52

Timeline 60

Glossary 61

Further Information 62

Index 64

IntroductionThe British queen,Victoria, has given her name to the erabetween 1837 and 1901, the years of her reign, the longest ofany British ruler.The Victorian era was a period of world aswell as British history, for the queen ruled at a time whenBritain had a vast global empire, including a quarter of theplanet’s population.

It was a time of massive social change. Railroads were builtacross America and Europe, where many new industriesdeveloped. Britain led the way in manufacturing, earning thenickname the “workshop of the world.”The growth of Britishindustries drew vast numbers of people from the countrysideto rapidly growing towns and cities. Between 1837 and 1901,the population doubled, from 18.5 to 37 million. By 1901,three quarters of British people lived in towns and cities.

Clothing was transformed by factory production, and bynew inventions such as the sewing machine. Cheap clothescould now be mass produced.The period saw the birth of atrue fashion industry, with the first department stores,fashion magazines, and mail-order catalogs, allowing peopleliving in Melbourne and San Francisco to follow the latestEuropean styles.

Just as people have always done, the Victorians used clothes as atype of language, sending signals to others about their class,status, and attitudes. In the Victorian age, the language ofclothing was understood by everybody, who could instantlyplace someone’s social position by their dress. It was alsointernational: in Moscow or NewYork, a Victorian gentlemancould be recognized by his tall silk hat and gold-topped cane.

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As fashions changed in the early1820s, the waist of dresses moveddown to the real position of awoman’s waist, allowing corsets, alsocalled stays, to be worn again. For therest of the century, all women wouldwear corsets. In the 1820s these weretightly laced to give a narrow waist,contrasting with puffed-out sleevesabove and wider skirts below. Dresses

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, theclothes of men and women were simple and

comfortable.Women wore light, white dresses, withwaists that fell just below the bust.This allowed them todress without corsets, which had been worn by womensince the fifteenth century. Men wore knee breeches orclose-fitting trousers, white shirts, waistcoats, and a coatwith a cutaway front and two tails behind.This wasoriginally an eighteenth-century riding outfit, designedto free the legs on horseback.

Chapter 1: Early Victorian Fashions

now came in bright colors,decorated with stripes and floralpatterns. Outdoors, women worewide hats trimmed with feathers,flowers, and ribbons.

In the 1820s, men, like women, usedartificial methods to change the shapeof their bodies. Fashionable men,called dandies, padded their chests

In 1823, when this pictureof a London ball wasmade, women still woreloose, comfortabledresses.

and shoulders and wore tight stays.An 1825 poem by BernardBlackmantle declared,“Each lordlyman his taper waist displays / Combshis sweet locks and laces on his stays.”

Attitudes to FashionThe nineteenth century was an ageof satirical cartoons and writings—works poking fun at the foolishnessof people’s behavior. Satirists, like thecartoonist George Cruikshank, foundplenty to make fun of in thechanging fashions of the day, with theconceited dandies, and ladies withtiny waists.Throughout the Victorianage, every new fashion would besimilarly mocked.

More than any previous people, theVictorians were aware of howfashions had changed over the courseof history.Thanks to new public artgalleries, people could see paintingsof the rich in the strange-lookingclothes of earlier centuries.This ledto serious attacks on the very idea offollowing fashions. In 1882 the writerOscar Wilde declared,“From thesixteenth century to our own daythere is hardly any form of torturethat has not been inflicted on girls,and endured by women, inobedience to ... unreasonable andmonstrous Fashion.”

The Victorians were the first peopleto study fashion, in an attempt tounderstand the underlying causes forchanges in style. In 1899 TheodoreVeblen published The Theory of theLeisure Class, in which he explainedfashion as a competition in which

rich people tried to outdo each otherby displaying their wealth.The bestway to show off wealth, wroteVeblen, was to wear clothes whichwere obviously expensive and couldonly be worn for a short time beforethey had to be replaced by a newfashion. Impractical clothes, such astight corsets, were also perfect, forthey showed that the wearer did nothave to work for a living.

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Early Victorian Fashions

The fashionable womanmocked in this 1825cartoon has just learnedthat she has dropped herbustle, a layeredundergarment worn to puffout her skirt at the back.

CravatsDandies wore elaborate cravats, large squares ofstarched muslin that were folded into bands andwrapped around the neck to be tied at the front. Thesewere so full and high that they made it impossible forwearers to lower their heads, giving the impressionthat they felt superior to everybody else. An 1828book, The Art of Tying the Cravat, gave advice on thebest knots or bows to use. It might take an hour ormore to arrange the cravat every morning.

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Women’s FashionsA middle- or upper-class Victorianwoman was not expected to do anywork, for she had servants to doeverything for her. Her role was to bethe “chief ornament” of her husbandor of her father’s household.According to the journal The SaturdayReview, “It is the woman’s business tocharm and attract and to be keptfrom anything that may spoil thebloom of her character and tastes.”

Modest ClothingThe ideal woman of the 1840s wassupposed to be quiet, modest, andshy. Modesty was reflected in clothingstyles. Dresses worn in the daytime,which had previously revealed a

The women in this Frenchengraving wear the modestfashions of the period,including bonnets whichhide their faces.

woman’s shoulders, now covered herwhole body, from the neck to thefeet. Shoulders were only revealed byevening dresses worn at balls anddinner parties.Wide hats, worn untilthe late 1830s, went out of fashion,giving way to narrow bonnets, tiedunder the chin, which covered thesides of a woman’s face.

It was fashionable to look small likeQueen Victoria, who was five feet(1.52 m) tall, so women wore flatshoes, like slippers.The new dressshapes also made women looksmaller, with tight sleeves, droopingshoulders, and long, narrow waists.Skirts were full and heavy, touchingthe floor, so that only the toes of awoman’s shoes were ever seen.Thepreferred colors of the 1840s weremodest dark greens and browns.

CorsetsBeneath her dress, a woman woreseveral layers of petticoats and atightly laced corset, stiffened withstrips of whalebone, which stretchedfrom her chest down to her hips.Thiswas thought to be medicallybeneficial, helping to support awoman’s weak body.A tightly lacedcorset was also considered a sign of agood character.A “loose woman” wasone who behaved in an immoral way.

Tight corsets affected the way thatwomen moved. According to TheHandbook of the Toilet, published in1841, “The gait of an English-woman is generally stiff andawkward, there being no bend or elasticity of the body.”

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Tight lacing made breathing difficultand led to fainting fits. Such fits werefashionable, for they demonstratedthat a woman was delicate andneeded to be looked after. The Girls’Book of Diversions, published in the1840s, offered advice on how tofaint:“the modes of fainting shouldall be as different as possible and maybe very diverting.” Women carriedsmall bottles of “smelling salts”suspended from the waist of theirdresses by chains. If they felt dizzy

they would sniff their smelling salts,and when another woman faintedthey would revive her by holding thebottle under her nose.

JewelryIn the 1820s, women wore masses ofjewelry with their evening dresses,including earrings, necklaces, goldchains with lockets, bracelets, andarmlets. By the 1840s, such displayhad come to be seen as vulgar andshowy.The modest woman of the1840s often wore no more jewelrythan a pair of bracelets and a chainfor her bottle of smelling salts.

CosmeticsIn the early 1800s, women wore rouge makeup on their lips andcheeks to make themselves look healthy and lively. Respectablewomen stopped wearing rouge in the 1830s, preferring to look delicateand even sickly. The aim was to have what Victorian novels describedas an “interesting pallor.” Many drank vinegar, believing that this wouldgive them pale skin. Victorian cosmetics were mostly lotions designedto hide freckles, and white face powders, used sparingly.


These decorative bottlesonce held “smellingsalts”—a mixture ofammonia and perfume,which irritated the nose and lungs to stimulatebreathing.

A woman of the 1840s in an evening dress,revealing her neck and part of her shoulders.

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Clothes for MenAs women’s clothes were growingmore impractical to wear, men’sfashions went in the oppositedirection. In the 1840s, men gave upwearing jackets with tiny waists andpadded shoulders. Bright colors andstripes were replaced by dark blues,browns, and blacks.The high cravat,which took so long to put on,disappeared, replaced by a ready-made neckpiece, called a stock, orties with simple bows.There wasmuch less variety of headwear, asmen took to wearing top hats madeof felt and silk.

The Middle ClassesThis change in fashion reflected alarger change in society.The earlynineteenth century saw the rise ofthe middle classes—the group whoranked higher in society than theworking classes, who worked withtheir hands, yet were lower than theupper classes, who inherited theirwealth and did not have to work atall.The middle classes included menfrom a wide range of professions,including factory owners, bankers,merchants, engineers, architects, civilservants, teachers, business managers,and office workers.What they allshared was a belief in hard work,and a desire to be seen asrespectable gentlemen.They did notwant to stand out from other menby wearing striking clothes, whichthey saw as ungentlemanly.Theyalso wanted clothes that were easyto put on, for they were too busy tospend half their mornings tyingcravats or being strapped intocorsets.

Canes and UmbrellasOne of the signs of an eighteenth-century gentleman wasthat he had the right to carry a sword. Although swordswent out of fashion in the 1770s, gentlemen found a newaccessory in the form of a walking stick or cane made ofpolished wood, such as black ebony, topped with a goldenor silver knob. Long umbrellas were also carried byfashionable men, who used them like walking sticks.

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In the eighteenth century, both menand women had displayed theirwealth with expensive, colorfulembroidered fabrics, lace trimmings,jewelry, and impractical clothing suchas high heels and wigs.The Victorianmiddle-class man left it to his wife ordaughters to show off his wealth withexpensive dresses, while he pursuedthe business of making money.

ConservativeAttitudesAlthough men’s fashions continuedto change, such changes took placemuch more slowly than the shifts inwomen’s fashions. Developmentswere usually of minor features, suchas the size of a jacket lapel or theshape of a top hat. In clothing, mostVictorian men were conservative,meaning that they resisted change.They wanted a simple set of rules tofollow about the correct clothes towear for different occasions, such asgoing to work or calling on friendsfor tea.These were provided for themby books of etiquette (rules of politebehavior).

The middle classes admired the upperclasses and followed their lead infashions. Many of their attitudes wereshared by the British royal family, forQueen Victoria and her husband,Prince Albert, were also conservativeand serious-minded people whobelieved in the value of hard workand who distrusted flashy dressers.

The British taste in simple, darkclothing for men was imitated acrossEurope and in the United States.

One reason for this was that the bestmen’s tailors were said to beEnglishmen, who had a long traditionof making well-cut clothes fromwoolen cloth.


A fashionableyoung man of the1840s, wearing afrock coat and atop hat.

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Women’s HairNineteenth-century women grewtheir hair long, only cutting it intimes of serious illness, when shorthair was supposed to aid recovery.Asadults they never wore their hairdown in public, but always pinned itup behind their heads. Until the1860s, it was fashionable for womento have a center part, with their haircombed flat and drawn into a neatknot or bun behind.At first the knotwas worn high at the back of thehead, but in time it moved loweruntil, by the 1850s, it reached theneck. In the 1840s, there werefashions for long side ringlets andsmooth loops worn over the ears.

Every evening, women let downtheir hair and combed it in front of amirror, often saving the strands thatfell out in a jar called a hair receiver.

This 1844 portrait of aGerman princess shows theflat hairstyle of the period.As a child, her daughterwears her hair in a looserstyle.

Hairstyles

A chair covered with an“antimacassar,” to protectit from men’s oily hair.

The saved hair was used to decoratelockets given to loved ones, and waseven made into jewelry such asearrings, bracelets, and watch chains.

As women grew older, they usuallykept the hairstyles of their youth.So in the 1860s, when young women were wearing elaboratehairstyles with artificial curls, theolder ladies still had straight hair with center parts.

Men’s HairVictorian men generally wore theirhair short, with side or center parts.From the 1840s onward, they beganto slick their hair down withperfumed Macassar oil, named after aregion on the island of Celebes,where it was produced from seeds oftropical plants. Macassar oil wassupposed to promote hair growth.Toprotect chairs from the greasy stainsfrom hair oil, their tops were drapedwith cloth covers called antimacassars.In American speech this waseventually corrupted to “AuntieMcCastor’s.”

In the early 1800s, all men shavedtheir chins. Beards had not beenworn since the seventeenth century,and fashionable men wanted to lookas youthful as possible. Only sidewhiskers and small moustaches,popular with army officers, wereacceptable as facial hair. In the 1820s,the side whiskers grew longer untilthey met under the chin, forming aframe for the face.The firstfashionable beard was a tiny tuft ofhair under the chin, called a favorite.


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Joseph Palmer (see panel), whoshocked America in the early 1830swith his beard, was ahead of his time.By the 1850s, many men werewearing full beards. In 1854 theWestminster Review described thebeard as “identified with sternness,dignity, and strength ... the onlybecoming complement of truemanliness.” Even so, full beards werenever popular with young men, whowanted to keep up with the latestfashions. Refusing to shave was away of showing that a man had more important things to thinkabout than fashion.

Joseph PalmerIn the United States in 1830, a man called JosephPalmer shocked the town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts,by growing a full beard. He was deeply religious, andgrew his beard because they were worn in Biblicaltimes. His appearance was regarded as so shockingthat children threw stones at him in the street, and hewas denounced in church by the local preacher. When agroup of four men tried to shave him by force, Palmerdefended himself with a knife, only to be arrested andcharged with “an unprovoked assault.” Palmer refusedto pay the fine and was sent to Worcester prison for ayear. He became famous across the nation as “theBearded Prisoner of Worcester.”

Three examples of the wide variety of facial hairstyles worn by Victorian men.

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Bloomers and CrinolinesIn the early 1850s, skirts grew widerwith every year.The effect wasachieved by wearing up to twelvelayers of petticoats, including onesstiffened and padded with horsehair.Such clothes, both heavy and hot,were the most uncomfortable wornby women throughout thenineteenth century. People began tolook for alternatives.

BloomersIn 1851, Mrs.Amelia Jenks Bloomer,editor of a New York ladies’ paper,The Lily, promoted a new costumefor ladies combining a jacket and alight, knee-length skirt over baggytrousers, which were tight at theankles.When she traveled to Englandto spread her ideas, Mrs. Bloomerwas met with hostility and mockery.Women in “bloomers” were accusedof “wearing the trousers,” or trying tocontrol their husbands. Only a fewladies attempted to wear bloomers,but soon gave them up.Writing in1893, the early American feministLucy Stone recalled,“The bloomercostume was excellent....When weundressed we felt no great sense ofrelief....We could go upstairs withoutstepping on ourselves.... But useful asthe bloomer was, the ridicule of theworld killed it.”

Crinoline1856 saw the invention of a set oflight steel hoops worn under thedress.This was called an artificialcrinoline, originally the name of thestiffened petticoat, from crin(horsehair).The lightness of thegarment was welcomed by women,and all classes quickly took towearing crinolines.The earlierstiffened petticoats were forgotten,and the name crinoline now appliedonly to hoops. Even Mrs. Bloomergave up her bloomers and dressed in crinolines.

By 1862 crinoline hoops accountedfor a seventh of the weekly output ofmetal from Sheffield, center of the

The “Bloomer” costume,promoted by Mrs. AmeliaBloomer in the early1850s.


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British steel industry. In 1865 thejournalist Henry Mayhew wrote,“Every woman now from theEmpress on her Imperial thronedown to the slavey in the scullery,wears crinoline, the very three yearolds wear them....At this moment ...men and boys are toiling in thebowels of the earth to obtain the oreof iron which fire and furnace andsteam will ... convert into steel forpetticoats.”

Bigger DressesThe effect on fashion of crinolineswas to make dresses continue toincrease in size, until they were sixfeet (1.8 m) wide. It becameimpossible for two women to gothrough a door at the same time.Men complained that they could nolonger offer ladies their arm whenwalking with them.Women had tobe careful in windy weather, whentheir dresses might be blown into theair.There were also women whoaccidentally set fire to themselveswhen they walked too near afireplace.The Irish writer OscarWilde had two half sisters who burntto death at a party in this way, theone trying to save the other who hadcaught on fire.

Crinolines, which also allowedshorter corsets to be worn, gavewomen a new sense of freedom.Many rebelled against the earlyVictorian idea that women should bemodest, serious, and quiet. In an 1866essay in The Saturday Review, ElizaLynn Linton complained of modernwomen whose “sole idea of life is

plenty of fun.” She wrote,“No onecan say of the modern English girlthat she is tender, loving, retiring ordomestic....All we can do is waitpatiently until the national madnesshas passed and our women havecome back to the old English ideal.”

As this 1864advertisement shows,there were many kinds ofcrinoline, including somewhose steel bands werecovered with horsehair-stuffed padding.

Ankle BootsThe crinoline, whichexposed the feetand ankles,resulted in a newfashion for heeledankle boots, lacedhalfway up the calf,replacing theearlier flat slippers.A shorter crinoline,the crinolinette,followed, to displaythe boots properly.

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Chapter 2: The Clothing Industry

By the middle of the nineteenth century, peoplearound the world were wearing fabrics produced in

British factories. Different areas specialized in differenttextiles.Woolen cloth wasmanufactured in WestYorkshire, while Cheshireproduced silk.The biggestindustry of all was cottonmanufacture, based inLancashire, where it wassaid that “cotton wasking.” Lancashire cottonmasters boasted that theysupplied the home marketbefore breakfast and therest of the world afterward.

Cotton: From Plant to Shirt

Cotton plants need a hot, dry climateto thrive. Five-sixths of the cottonmanufactured in Britain came fromthe southern states of the UnitedStates, with the remainder comingmostly from India and Egypt, bothpart of the British Empire.

PlantationsUntil the 1860s,American cottonplants were tended by black slavesworking on large plantations.Theyplanted the cotton in the spring andweeded the fields through thesummer. In August the pods burstopen, revealing seeds enclosed in whitefluffy balls.These were picked by handand then passed through a toothed

machine called a gin, which separatedthe cotton from the seeds. It was thenpacked into bales to be shipped to themills of Lancashire. Five million balesof cotton a year were shipped abroadfrom the United States.

In 1865, the American slaves werefreed, but their working lives did notchange greatly.The landownersinvented a new system, called sharecropping. Freed slaves continued towork in the fields in return for ashare of the crop they produced.Theplanters still owned the land and theshops where the workers had tospend their earnings.At the end of ayear, it was common for a

A West Indian cottonplantation of the 1820s,where black slaves pickand process cotton, underthe eye of a whiteoverseer.

Child LaborFactory work required little physical strength, and sochildren and teenagers, who could be paid less thanadults, supplied a large part of the labor force. In 1844William Cooke Taylor, author of Factories and the FactorySystem, wrote, “We would rather see boys and girlsearning the means of support in the mill than starvingby the road-side.” Yet there was a longstandingcampaign against the use of child labor, which wasgradually limited by the British government. Between1833 and 1891, the minimum age for factory workerswas raised from nine to eleven years of age.

The Clothing Industry

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sharecropper to be in debt to thelandowner.

FactoriesIn the Lancashire factories the cottonwent through several processes. It waspassed through a carding machinewhose teeth straightened the tinyfibers.The fibers were then drawnout, twisted, spun into thread, andwoven into cloth on a loom. Cottonmills were hot and stuffy places towork, for the process required warm,still air. In the 1830s, the working daylasted from twelve to sixteen hours.

was so low that workers, oftenwomen, had to work long hours tomake enough money to survive. In1849 the journalist Henry Mayhewinterviewed a woman who madeshirts for a living. She said,“Thecollars, wristbands, and shoulder-straps are all stitched, and there areseven buttonholes in each shirt. Ittakes full five hours to do one.... Ioften work in the summer time fromfour in the morning to nine or ten atnight—as long as I can see.”

Sweated LaborMaking clothes such as cotton shirtswas usually a “sweated” trade,meaning that the employer paidworkers for the number of pieces, orshirts, they completed rather than thehours they worked.The piece rate

Seamstresses sewing dresses in a Frenchworkshop of the 1890s, under an electriclamp, a late Victorian invention.

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Beavers and Whales

Two wild animals played a major rolein the Victorian clothing industry.These were the North Americanbeaver, whose dense fur was used tomake hats, and the baleen whale,whose bony mouth plates were usedto line corsets and make umbrellaribs.As a result of the Victoriandemand for these products, both ofthese animals were driven to the edgeof extinction.

BeaversSince the Middle Ages, Europeanshad made hats from beaver fur,scraping away the long outer hairs toreveal the thick wool underneath.Using steam and irons, this wasshaped by hatters to make hard-wearing waterproof felt hats, with asilky sheen.As a result of the hat

industry, beavers had disappearedfrom western Europe by thesixteenth century. In the seventeenthcentury, a rich new source of beaverswas found in North America. Muchof the exploration of the continentwas carried out by beaver-fur tradingcompanies, such as the Hudson’s BayCompany. By the 1830s, beaverscould only be found in the far northand west.

Hat CityOne of the biggest centers of hatproduction was the city of Danbury,Connecticut, known as the Hat City.The number of hats produced eachyear in Danbury rose from one and ahalf million, in 1860, to five millionin 1890.Although the industry hasnow disappeared, large amounts of

Hatters using steam,shown rising in thebackground, to shape feltinto top hats.


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mercury, used in hat production, stillpollute the soil where the hatmakers’factories once stood.

BaleenBaleen whales are animals with longplates of horny material, calledbaleen, which hang down from theirupper jaws.These resemble giant,hairy combs which the animals uselike a net, to trap food from the sea.Springy and tough, baleen was theperfect material to line corsets.TheAmerican whaling harbors ofBridgeport and New Haven, inConnecticut, were also centers ofcorset manufacture, where thegarments were made by hand infactories and workshops.

By the 1860s, the slower types ofbaleen whale—bowheads and rightwhales—had been almost wiped outby hunters, who chased them inrowing boats with handheldharpoons.The whalers now turnedtheir attention to other species ofbaleen whales, called rorquals, whichswam too quickly to be caught byrowing boats. In the 1860s, whalersbegan to use fast, steam-powered“catcher boats,” from which theyfired harpoons with exploding shells.

Between 1870 and 1901, the value ofbaleen increased sixfold. Other whaleproducts were no longer needed, forwhale oil—previously used forlamps—had been replaced bykerosene, a product of petroleum.Whalers were now ripping out thebaleen and throwing the rest of theanimal back into the sea.

Mad HattersAs beavers became scarcer, hatmakers were forced touse cheaper materials, particularly rabbit furs. In orderto turn this into felt, it had to be coated with a solutionof mercury, which roughened the fibers, helping themmat together. To shape the felt, it was boiled, dried, andthen steamed. This led to hatters breathing in mercuryfumes, which are highly poisonous. Many hatters endedup suffering from mercury poisoning, the symptoms ofwhich included muscle twitching, a lurching walk, mentalconfusion, and slurred speech. This is the origin of theVictorian expression, “as mad as a hatter.”

Lewis Carroll’s 1865 children’s book, Alice in Wonderland, includes a“Mad Hatter.” He wears one of the top hats from his own shop, itsprice tag left in place.

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The Sewing Machine

Singer’s first sewingmachine was powered by ahandcrank, labelled “D” inthis drawing. He went on toreplace this with a foottreadle, leaving both handsfree to move the cloth.

Elias Howe claimed thatthe idea for his sewingmachine came to him in a dream.

In the first half of the nineteenthcentury, dozens of inventors in theUnited States and Europe weretrying to invent a sewing machine.There were many problems withearly machines, in which threadusually broke after a short time.Thefirst effective machine was the workof three American inventors:WalterHunt, Elias Howe, and Isaac MerritSinger.

Rival InventorsWalter Hunt was a brilliant inventor,whose most famous invention was thesafety pin. In the 1830s, Hunt built a

sewing machine that used thread fromtwo different sources.A curved needlewith an eye at its point passed onethread through a piece of cloth,making a loop on the other side.Thena shuttle passed a second threadthrough the loop, making a“lockstitch.” Hunt lost interest in hisinvention, and did not bother to applyfor a patent (an official documentgranting an inventor the sole right tomake and sell his invention, for alimited period).

In 1846 Elias Howe patented amachine which operated in the same


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way as Hunt’s, though he invented itindependently.The machine wasimproved in 1851 by a third inventor,Isaac Merrit Singer, whose machineused a straight needle which movedup and down rather than from side toside, and which was powered by afoot crank rather than a handle.Unlike Howe’s machine, which couldonly sew straight seams, a few inchesat a time, Singer’s could sew any typeof seam continuously.

Singer’s machines went into massproduction in 1851.A betterbusinessman than Hunt or Howe,Singer sold his machines, which wereas expensive as cars are today, oninstallment credit plans. Housewiveswere able to pay for the machine ininstallments over a long period of time.

Howe accused Singer of stealing hisideas and sued him. Singer foughtback, arguing that the lock-stitch hadfirst been invented by Hunt, and heeven paid Hunt to build a replica ofhis 1830s machine. Despite this,Howe won the case because Hunthad never applied for a patent. Singerwas forced to pay Howe a share ofhis profits and, as a result, both Singerand Howe became millionaires.

Effects on FashionThe sewing machine allowed clothesto be mass produced cheaply infactories. It also changed fashion, forit made it much easier to adddecorative trimmings to dresses. Inthe 1870s,“Sylvia,” the author ofHow to Dress Well on a Shilling a Daywrote,“We owe much of the over-

Clothes FactoryAlthough the sewing machine speeded up one part ofclothes production, cloth still had to be cut by hand.Then, in 1860, John Barron, an English tailor, turnedthe woodworking band saw into a band knife, whichcould cut through several layers of cloth at one time.Barron’s factory in Leeds, which used Singer sewingmachines, was the first to mass produce ready-madeclothes, including uniforms for railroad workers, thepolice force, and the British Army.

With its ornamental base, this 1899 sewing machine is a much moredecorative object than the early Singer example on the opposite page. It is powered by a foot treadle.

trimming now prevalent to thefacilities offered by the sewingmachines, which have become valuedfriends in many a household.”

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Until 1856, all clothes were coloredwith dyes made from naturalproducts such as plants, minerals,insects, and shellfish. Purple, forexample, was made from the murexshellfish, while red came fromcochineal beetles. It required 17,000beetles to make just one ounce (28grams) of red dye, so natural dyeswere often expensive to produce.Over time, the colors of naturallydyed clothes also faded, as a result ofsunlight and washing.

New ColorsWilliam PerkinIn 1856 an eighteen-year-old Englishchemistry student named WilliamPerkin was attempting to makeartificial quinine, a drug to treatmalaria. He was using aniline, asubstance derived from coal tar.Theexperiment failed, leaving a dark, oilysludge. Perkin was about to throw itaway when he decided to make asolution of it, and found that he hada bright purple liquid. On applying itto a piece of silk, he discovered thatit worked as a dye.

Perkin had invented the first artificialdye, a bright purple, which he calledmauveine. Unlike cloth dyednaturally, cloth colored withmauveine did not fade over time.Mauveine was also cheap to produce,for coal tar was an abundant wasteproduct of gas manufacturing.

In 1857 Perkin opened a dyeworkson the Grand Union Canal in westLondon, and began to producemauveine.The color first becamefashionable in France, thanks toEmpress Eugénie, who discoveredthat it matched her eyes. In 1858,after Queen Victoria wore a mauvedress to her daughter’s wedding, therewas an outbreak in England of whatPunch magazine called “mauvemeasles.”The novelist CharlesDickens wrote,“Oh, Mr. Perkin,thanks to thee for fishing out of thecoal hole those precious stripes andbands of purple on summer gowns.”

Meanwhile, Perkin was developingother artificial dyes, including

Perkin’s new color,mauveine, is displayed inthe dazzling stripes on thedress on the right.


Synthetic PerfumeWhile experimenting with coal tar, Perkin made another accidentaldiscovery: a substance which smelled like new-mown hay, which hesold as a perfume. Chemists proceeded to use coal tar to make moreartificial scents, including musk, violet, jasmine, and rose. Previously,the only way to make a perfume which smelled of roses was to usereal rose petals. Perkin had invented the synthetic perfume industry.

A day dress of the 1850s.

Britannia Violet and Perkin’s Green.The color of the canal water by hisdyeworks was said to change fromweek to week, depending on whichdye the company was producing. Henow had competitors—French andGerman chemists who used anileneto produce Verguin’s fuchsine(magenta), Martius yellow, bleu deLyon, and aldehyde green.A race wason to make the brightest colors fromcoal tar.

The range of new colors wasdisplayed at the London InternationalExhibition of 1862.The report bythe exhibition judges described “aseries of silks, cashmeres, ostrichplumes, and the like, dyed in a

diversity of novel colors, allowed onall hands to be the most superb andbrilliant that have ever delightedthe human eye.”

Until the 1860s, womendressed in a limited range ofcolors, chosen to go witheach other in a pleasing way.The new aniline dyes led towomen wearing outfitswhich combined severalbright, contrastingcolors. In 1872 aFrench visitor toLondon, HippolyteTaine, complained,“the glare isterrible.”

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Paris FashionEarly Victorian dressmakers weremostly women, who visited richladies at home to measure them andtake orders for clothes. It was thecustomer, not the dressmaker, who

chose the fabrics and the dress styles,from magazine illustrations.Thedressmakers’ work was seen as a craftrather than an art, and few of theirnames are remembered.The firstfamous dressmaker was anEnglishman, Charles Frederick Worth(1825–95), who is called the father of“haute couture,” or exclusive high

fashion.

House of WorthAs a thirteen-year-old boy,Worth worked in a linendrapers, where he learnedabout fabric and trimmings.Fascinated by the history offashion, he spent his sparetime visiting art galleries tostudy dresses in oldpaintings. In 1846 hemoved to Paris, where he

began to work as a designer.In 1857 he opened his own

business, Maison Worth (Houseof Worth), at 7 Rue de la Paix,

Paris.

Worth was an expert designer, whosaw himself as an artist, not acraftsman, and behaved as if he weredoing women a favor by makingclothes for them. Instead of visitingcustomers in their homes, they wereexpected to come to him. In order tomake his business appear as exclusiveas possible,Worth refused to serveladies unless they had a letter ofintroduction from a previouscustomer.

It was an advantage to Worth that hewas an Englishman in Paris. As a

Empress EugénieThe one client whom Worthwould serve in her home wasEmpress Eugénie (1826–1920),the beautiful Spanish wife of theFrench emperor Napoleon III.Eugénie spent vast sums ondresses and led rich women’sfashions by her example, not justin France, but across theWestern world.


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the daylight, was lit by gas, so that aclient could see how a dress mightappear on her at a ball.

Worth pioneered methods used bycouturiers today. He made hisdesigns using patterns of linen ormuslin, known as toile, which hedraped over his client’s body,adjusting them to make sure of aperfect fit.The toile patterns werethen used to make the dress.Worthwas also the first designer to make aseasonal collection of clothing ratherthan one-off garments.

Worth dressed the royal courts ofEurope and attracted rich customersfrom as far away as Russia and theUnited States. In the capital cities of the United States and westernEurope, other couturiers went intobusiness. All of them followed the Paris fashions invented byWorth.

foreigner he stood outside theFrench class system and couldbehave in ways which would haveseemed offensive coming from aFrenchman.The French writerHippolyte Taine described whathappened when a lady who had notbeen properly introduced tried toorder a dress from Worth:“‘Madame,’ he said, ‘By whom areyou presented?’ ‘I don’t understand.’‘I’m afraid you must be presented in order to be dressed by me.’ Shewent away, suffocated with rage.But others stayed, saying, ‘I don’tcare how rude he is so long as hedresses me.’”

The showrooms at Maison Worthincluded wooden mannequinsmodeling dresses, with mirrorscarefully placed so that a customerwould contrast her own inferiorclothes with those on display. Oneroom, thickly curtained to keep out

Magazine illustrations,such as this 1880example from The Queen,displayed the latestfashions from MaisonWorth.

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New Ways of Selling

Every American farmingfamily was said to own twobooks, the Bible and theSears Roebuck mail-ordercatalog.

The mass production of clothingrequired new ways of selling goods.The Victorian period saw the firstshops offering ready-made clothes aswell as the first department stores.People living far away from cities, inthe American West, could now ordertheir clothes from mail-ordercatalogs.The result was the birth ofwhat is now called consumer culture.For the first time, shopping was seenas a leisure activity rather than achore.

Department StoresThe first department stores to open,in the late 1840s and early 1850s,were A.T. Stewart’s in New York,Bainbridges in Newcastle, and BonMarché in Paris. For the first time, acustomer could buy a completeoutfit, including accessories, in asingle store. Unlike earlier clothesstores, which usually kept goodslocked away in glass cases,department stores displayed ready-made clothes in the open,encouraging browsers. Becausedepartment stores bought their goodsin bulk, they could get better dealsfrom their suppliers and chargecheaper prices. Customers also hadthe right to return goods and get arefund.

Window ShoppingThe invention of a glass-pressingmachine, in Boston in 1827, meantthat large sheets of “plate glass” couldbe made.As a result, between 1830and 1860, the size of the largest storewindow panes increased from sevenby three feet (2 m by 1 m) tofourteen by eight feet (4 m by 2.4m).These bigger windows allowedstores to display goods in new ways,to tempt passersby. In 1857 theEnglish journalist George AugustusSala described the windows offashionable London stores as“museums of fashion in plate-glasscases.” Describing the windowdressers, he wrote,“By their nimbleand practised hands the rich piledvelvet mantles are displayed, themoire and glacé silks arranged inartful folds, the laces and gauzes, the


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largest number went to the French,who were world leaders in fashionand design.This was just one of manyVictorian exhibitions, which showedthe public new fashions, andencouraged manufacturers to improvetheir products.

The novelist Charlotte Bronte, whovisited the exhibition in June, wrote,“Whatever human industry hascreated you find there, from the greatcompartments filled with railroadengines and boilers ... to the glasscovered and velvet spread standsloaded with the most gorgeous workof the goldsmith and silversmith.”

innumerable whim-whams andfribble-frabble of fashion, elaboratelyshown, and to their best advantage.”

The Great ExhibitionIn 1851, Britain held the “GreatExhibition of the Works of Industryof All Nations” in London, invitingmanufacturers from around the worldto display their finest goods.Between May and October, sixmillion people visited the GreatExhibition, in the specially builtCrystal Palace, which resembled avast greenhouse of glass and iron.More than thirteen thousandexhibitors competed for prizes.The

This engraving shows thevast size of the CrystalPalace, which included293,655 panes of glass inits construction.

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Secondhand Clothesclothes dealers, often Jewishimmigrants from eastern Europe.

A Shop in St. GilesIn 1877 the photographer JohnThomson and the journalistAdolphe Smith published Street Life in London, the earliestcollection of social documentaryphotographs.Thomson took aphotograph of a secondhand clothesstore in St. Giles, London.Describing the picture, Smithwrote, “The dealer whose portrait isbefore the reader cannot boast of alarge business. She had beenunfortunate in previousspeculations, and illness had alsocrippled her resources, so that herstock is limited, and her purchasingpower still more restricted.”

RecyclingOld clothes were recycled by thedealers. If they could be cleaned andrepaired, they went to a man called aclobberer.Adolphe Smith wrote thatthe clobberer “has cunning admixturesof ammonia and other chemicals,which remove the grease stains, he cansew with such skill that the rents andtears are concealed with remarkablesuccess, and thus old garments aremade to look quite new.”

Upper-class fashions, such as dresscoats, would not be worn by thepoor. So they were cut up and madeinto new items of clothing by a mancalled a translator. He used the skirtsof coats to make waistcoats or jacketsfor children.The rest of the cloth wasoften used to make caps.

The rich were always getting rid ofunwanted clothes.When a jacketshowed the slightest sign of wear, agentleman would give it to hisservants to dispose of. Ladies gavedresses that were no longerfashionable to their maids.The maidswould have no opportunity to wearsuch clothes themselves, so they soldthem to secondhand clothes dealers.All of the big cities of Europe andthe United States had secondhand

A secondhand clothes store in London.Photography, a nineteenthcentury invention, providesa rich source of evidencefor Victorian dress.


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Many of these re-modeled garmentswere taken for sale to London’sfamous Petticoat Lane street market,which became a great clothingexchange. Here, a poor man couldbuy a cabinet minister’s heavyovercoat; a poor bride a fine gownfor her wedding.

When clothes were too worn outfor the translator or clobberer, theywere sold to wool manufacturers tobe turned into new cloth. Oldclothes from all over Europe endedup in the mills of Yorkshire where,according to Adolphe Smith, “Theyare torn into shreds by toothedwheels ... till they are reduced to thecondition of wool.They may thenbe mixed with a certain amount ofnew wool, and finally reappear asnew cloth, woven according to thelatest pattern....Thus the cloth ofour newest coat is, after all, probablymade from the cast-off garment ofsome street beggar!”

StealingThe most common Victorian crime was stealing clothes, to be sold to thesecondhand dealers. The London Victorian clothes dealers had areputation as “fences,” or receivers of stolen goods. In his novel OliverTwist, Charles Dickens depicts a Victorian fence, Fagin, who trains a gangof child pickpockets to lift handkerchiefs from gentlemen’s pockets.

The easiest way to steal clothes was to take items left to dry on thewashing lines of laundries. Many of these operated in the outersuburbs of Victorian cities, away from the smoke of the center, wherethey cleaned the white shirts and petticoats of the middle and upperclasses. Stealing clothes from washing lines was called “snowing.”Thieves always found a ready market for good-quality linen and cottonamong secondhand clothes dealers.

A young pickpocket runsoff with a gentleman’spocket watch.

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Chapter 3: The Stages of Life

Like people throughout history, the Victorians usedclothes to mark the different stages of life, from a

child’s white christening robe to a bride’s white dressand a widow’s black veil. Growing up was marked byboys putting on long trousers, and girls wearing longerdresses and pinning their hair up.

BabiesBabies wore diapers of folded linen orcotton, which might be knotted orfastened with a safety pin, after thiswas invented in 1849. Infants of bothsexes wore long, white dresses, oftentrimmed with lace. Once a baby wasold enough to crawl, the dress wasshortened to ankle length.When theywere taken out for a walk in a“perambulator” (baby carriage), babieswore elaborate bonnets.

BoysBoys continued to wear dresses, andhave their hair long, after they learnedto walk. Between the ages of threeand seven, depending on theirmother’s wishes, they would havetheir hair cut short and be“breeched,” or put into trousers.

The skeleton suit, worn from the1790s until the 1830s, was the firstoutfit specifically designed forchildren to wear. Previously, childrenhad worn scaled-down versions ofadult clothes. Its name came from itsclose-fitting style, said to make boyslook as thin as skeletons.The outfitwas described by Charles Dickens in1839 as “a contrivance for displaying... a boy’s figure by fastening him intoa very tight jacket, with an

ornamental row of buttons over eachshoulder and then buttoning histrousers over it so as to give his legsthe appearance of being hooked onjust under his arm pits.”

The most popular boy’s outfit, wornfrom the 1840s until the early 1900s,

A baby’s christening robe,made of shiny satin.

The “Little LordFauntleroy” suit,

fashionablein the 1880s.

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Wedding DressesIn the early nineteenth century, wedding dresses couldbe any color. For her wedding in 1840, Queen Victoriachose to wear a satin dress that was white, a colorlinked with purity, and set a fashion for all future brides.She also wore a veil with orange blossoms, which wouldbecome the favorite flower worn by Victorian brides,usually on their dresses.

was the sailor suit.This originated inBritain, but then spread to the restof Europe and the United States. Itwas originally worn for patrioticreasons.The British had the mostpowerful navy in the world, andboys loved to read about great navalheroes and battles.

In 1885 the American novelist FrancisHodgson Burnett published LittleLord Fauntleroy, whose boy hero isdescribed as “a graceful, childishfigure in a black velvet suit, with alace collar, and with love locks wavingabout the handsome, manly littleface.” From the 1880s until around1910, there was a craze for the “LittleLord Fauntleroy” costume, which wasbased on clothes worn in theseventeenth century. It was loved bymothers but detested by little boys.

GirlsThe standard dress for a girl was ashort skirt, with a blouse, jacket, andhat. Between the ages of four andsixteen, the hemline of a girl’s skirtgradually lowered, until it reached theankles.A sixteen-year-old girl wasconsidered to be a young woman andshowed her new status by pinning herhair up.

In 1935 the writer Eleanor Aclandrecalled that, as a girl in the 1880s, shehad to wear six items of underwear: awoolen vest, drawers, a calicochemise, stockings, stays, and apetticoat. She wrote,“What I ...most envy the little girls of today is the fewness and simplicity of their garments.”

The Stages of Life

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years, yet she would never again wearany color except black, white, ordeep violet.

High MortalityThe Victorian period was a time ofhigh mortality, even among the upperclasses.The death of children, inparticular, was a common event,caused by diseases such as cholera,typhoid, diphtheria, influenza,measles, and chicken pox. In 1899, inthe wealthiest part of Liverpool, 136babies in every thousand died beforethey reached the age of one. So mostfamilies had to wear mourningclothes at some time or another.

Rules for MourningUpper- and middle-class Victoriansfollowed strict rules about the clothesthey wore following a death in thefamily.The period of mourningdepended on the family relationship.It ranged from two and a half years,for a widow grieving for a husband,to six weeks—the time mothersmourned the parents-in-law of theirmarried children.

The rules were simple for men, whowore a black armband over anordinary black suit. It was morecomplicated for women, who had towear different clothes at fourdifferent stages of mourning. During“first,” or “deep,” mourning, widowswore a plain black dress covered withcrepe, a dull, crinkled black silk.When they went out, they hid theirfaces beneath a black veil.After a yearand a day, widows moved on to“second mourning,” when the crepe

In MourningOn December 14, 1861, PrinceAlbert, husband of Queen Victoria,died of typhoid, leaving a forty-two-year-old widow and nine children.The royal family immediately dressedin black, the color of mourning. Forthe next eight years, the royal servantsall wore black armbands.The queenwould live on for another thirty-nine

Jet JewelryJet is a black stone made from fossilized monkey puzzletrees. With its soft texture and high polish, it was the ideal material for mourning jewelry. The best jet was found in Whitby in Yorkshire, where it was mined fromcliffs or collected from beaches. In 1873 two hundredWhitby men worked as jet miners, while a further 1,500men and boys were employed in making mourning jewelry.

The Stages of Life

33

on their dresses was limited todecorative trimmings and they couldnow wear the veil back, revealingtheir faces.After a further ninemonths, they reached the third stage,“ordinary mourning,” when theystopped wearing crepe, replacing itwith shiny black silk, trimmed withribbons and jet.The last stage,“halfmourning,” lasted for six months ormore, when they could wear softcolors such as lilac and gray.

By wearing mourning for thirty-nineyears, Queen Victoria was acting inan unconventional way. In 1862 sheeven wore black to her seconddaughter’s wedding, although widowswere expected to wear half-mourning colors at weddings so thatthey would not spread gloom.As thequeen, she could exhibit behaviorwhich would have been criticized incommoners.

Observing the rules correctly wasextremely expensive. Fashions inmourning dresses changed just asquickly as those in everyday clothes,and so women could not save theirmourning dresses for the next deathin the family. It was said to beunlucky to keep crepe in the houseafter the mourning period ended. Sothe dresses were always sold tosecondhand clothes dealers.

This portrait shows Queen Victoria in 1887,still dressed in half mourning for herhusband Albert, who had died twenty-sixyears earlier. The blue sash is the emblem ofthe Order of the Garter.

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Astriking feature of the Victorian period was thenumber of times each day that upper- and middle-

class people changed their clothes. Different dresses andcoats were worn in the daytime and in the evening, andthere were also particular outfits for different activities,such as horse riding or playing tennis.

BedtimeWomen wore a long nightgown in bed, and both men and women often wore white nightcaps to sleep in. Men slept in long nightshirts until the 1880s, when they started to wear pajamas, a fashion brought over from India by returning British soldiers and civil servants. The Hindi word pajama means “leg clothing,” referring to the light trousers worn by both Indian men and women as day wear. Pajamas came in various colors and were often striped.

Chapter 4: Occasional Clothes

DishabilleUnlike women, who dressed formallythroughout the day, men could wearcomfortable clothes, called dishabille(undress) at breakfast or whenrelaxing in the evening. Over trousersand a shirt, they would wear a richlycolored dressing gown and a roundembroidered cap, often with a tassel.In the 1870s, there was a fashion forbreakfast jackets, which were blue ormaroon velvet with quilted satinlapels.The next decade saw thecoming of smoking jackets, whichwere velvet with cord edging.

Morning and EveningDressesWomen wore a morning dress in thedaytime, changing into an evening dressfor dinner.There was a wide variety ofstyles for both types of clothes.Themain difference was that morningdresses were less richly decorated, andcovered a woman’s shoulders.

According to The Habits of GoodSociety (1855),“There are four kindsof coat which a well dressed manmust have; a morning coat, a frock-coat, a dress-coat, and an overcoat.”The frock coat was a jacket with along, square front, while the morningcoat had swallowtails. Both came in avariety of colors and were wornduring the daytime. In the evening,men dressed for dinner, switching toformal evening dress, consisting ofblack trousers and a tailcoat, a lowblack or white waistcoat, a starchedwhite shirtfront, and a white bow tie.

HatsEverybody wore hats outdoors, andformal male dress required a black,silk top hat.This was raised, ongreeting a lady, or simply touchedwhen meeting another gentleman.Failure to greet someone, called“cutting” them, was a terrible insult.There were books of etiquette

A gentleman in adressing gown.

Occasional Clothes

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“Formerly no man in full rig [formaldress] would have walked downPiccadilly with a man in a round hatand short coat; and a lady on meetingthe latter would have pretended shedid not recognize him.”

explaining the right time to take ahat off when visiting someone.Gentlemen did not leave their hats inthe hall, but carried them into thedrawing room to greet the hostess,where they left them on a table or achair.According to an Americanbook, Martine’s Handbook (1866),“agentleman never sits in the housewith his hat on in the presence ofladies for a single moment. Indeed, sostrong is the force of habit that agentleman will quite unconsciouslyremove his hat on entering a parlor,or drawing room, even if there is noone present but himself.”

Wearing the wrong clothes for thewrong occasions was almost asshocking as wearing no clothes at all.In 1899, The Tailoring World declared,

A lightweight overcoat, or top coat, worn bygentlemen during the daytime.

This pink satin eveningdress was designed byCharles Frederick Worth.It is richly decorated withbead embroidery.

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Leisure Wear

A game of mixed doubles.Victorian women wore longdresses to play tennis.

Upper- and middle-class Victoriansenjoyed many different sporting andleisure activities, including riding,hunting, fishing, boating, cricket, golf,tennis, croquet, archery, ice-skating,and hill walking. Different leisureactivities demanded different sets ofclothing. In 1884 The Gentleman’sFashion Magazine pronounced,“Everyman with a grain of respectability, onthe river puts on white trousers, withwhite flannel shirt, straw hat, stripedflannel coat.”

HuntingThere were various hunting outfits,depending on the sport. Forfoxhunting on horseback, men andwomen wore bright scarlet jacketswhich were called hunting pink.Thename derived from the tailor ThomasPink, a popular maker of huntingcoats in the late eighteenth century.Stalking and shooting deer in theScottish highlands called for subdued

colors, so that the hunter wouldblend into the surroundings and notstartle the animals. Men wore thickwoolen socks, brown jackets, andknee-breeches made of tweed, ahard-wearing wool fabric with adiagonal weave.There was also atweed “deerstalker” hat, with earprotectors, which could be tied upon top.This is the hat associated withthe famous Victorian fictionaldetective, Sherlock Holmes.

BoatingFor cricket and boating, men worewhite flannel trousers and shirtsbeneath a bright jacket, often withcolorful stripes, called a blazer.This isthought to have originated with theSt. Margaret Boat Club inCambridge University, whosemembers wore a red striped jacketwhich was said to “blaze” on thewater. In the late Victorian period,the blazer was adopted as school

A striped blazer and strawhat was worn for boating—rowing on a lake or river.

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uniform for boys and girls.Acolumnist in The Ladies’World of1887 wrote,“The striped flanneljackets, under the familiar name‘blazer’ brilliant in coloring, createdfor the river and the cricket field areworn on nearly all occasions now bygirls and boys.”

Croquet, Archery, andTennisThe most popular sports for wealthywomen were croquet, tennis, andarchery.Women wore hats, gloves,and long dresses, which were notvery different from their usualdaywear, and just as impractical. Onereason why croquet was so popularwith women was that it requiredlittle physical effort, and could beplayed while wearing a tight corset.

MountaineeringIn the 1850s, adventurous Englishmentook to mountaineering as a sport,forming climbing clubs, and scalingpeaks in Wales and the Swiss Alps.Mountain climbers wore similarclothes to those used in deerstalking,with thick jackets and knee breechesmade of tweed or whipcord, anothertough material.The jackets andtrousers were waterproofed bypainting them with a paste made ofsoap and boiled linseed oil. Bootswere given hobnail soles, to makethem grip the mountainside.

SeasideUntil the nineteenth century, theBritish seaside was not considered aholiday location. However, smokyVictorian cities made fresh sea air

Bathing CostumesVictorian bathing costumes were made of thick serge andcovered as much of the body as possible. For womenthis meant a body stocking beneath a short skirt, oftenstriped. It did not matter that such clothes were hard toswim in, for women usually wore them only for wading.Few people learned how to swim properly until thetwentieth century. Wearing a bathing costume was agreat relief from the usual corset and layers of clothing.

attractive, and the railroads placed thecoast within reach of everyone. Eventhe working classes could go to thesea for day trips from the big factorytowns. Suntans were not fashionable,for they were associated with countrypeople, who had to work outdoors.To protect their white skin, ladiescarried parasols and wore wide strawhats, while men wore straw boaters.

Occasional Clothes

Women in heavy bathingcostumes, wading up totheir necks in the sea.

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Chapter 5: Working Clothes

A Danish newspaper seller,whose cart is being loaded,wears a short light jacketand a peaked cap.

Butchers and FishDealersIn certain trades, men wore distinctivecostumes, which allowed them to berecognized, and which were oftenworn with pride. In Britain, the bestbutchers wore blue coats, a customgoing back to the seventeenthcentury.They also had aprons withhorizontal stripes, while fish dealerswore aprons with vertical stripes.

The commonest sight in any Victorian town was ofmen in black suits.This was like a uniform, worn

by businessmen, bank managers, store assistants, railroadstation masters, teachers, civil servants, and the manythousands of office clerks.The black suit was an idealgarment for wearing every day in a town where the airwas smoky from coal fires. Its color also suggested thatthe wearer was serious and trustworthy.The dark suit,still worn in offices around the world today, is onelegacy of the Victorian era.

Such clothes inspired trust in thecustomers, who needed to know thatthe meat and fish they bought wasfresh. In 1867 the writer JamesGreenwood contrasted a butcherserving his middle-class readers withanother in a slum district:“Yourbutcher wears a hat, generally agenteel hat, and a blue coat, and arespectable apron; perhaps, evensnowy sleeves and shiny boots....Contrasted with him the butcher ofSqualors’ Market ... wears on his heada cap made of the hairy hide of thebison or some other savage beast; hisred arms are bare to the elbows, andhe roars continuously.”

Skilled craftsmen, and moststorekeepers, wore white aprons,which were sent to the laundry to becleaned. Like the butcher’s blue coat,a gleaming white apron was said toinspire pride in the wearer andconfidence in his customers. Peoplein less skilled jobs, such as knifesharpeners and market sellers, worecheap aprons made from brownsacking.

At the market: a fishseller(left) and a baker (right)

Working Clothes

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Mayhew wrote that you could telldustmen from coalmen at a glance,for “the latter are invariably blackfrom coal dust, while the dustmen,on the contrary, are gray with ashes.”

The dirtiest workers of all were thechimney sweeps, who spent most oftheir lives coated in soot. Eventhough they wore black suits andtop hats, they were seen as thelowest order of workers and werelooked down on by almosteverybody else. According toMayhew,“The peculiar nature oftheir work giving them not only afilthy appearance, but an offensivesmell (forces) them to herd togetherapart from others.”

Practical ClothesSome work required clothingdesigned for practical reasons.Market porters, who carried piles ofboxes and baskets on their heads,wore hats with large leather pads.Sewer workers wore long leatherboots that rose above the knees andthat were covered with grease toprotect them from the water.

In every town there were coalsellers, who delivered coal to houses,and dustmen, who collected the ashfrom fires. Both wore knee-breecheswith short smock frocks, and hatswith a wide, fan-shaped neck-pieceat the back, like the sou’wester wornby fishermen.The journalist Henry

Paper HatsCarpenters, stone masons, painters, glassblowers, and plumbers wore box-shaped hatsmade from a large square of folded paper. This hat served no practical purpose, but wasworn as a sign that the wearer belonged to a skilled trade. It showed that he knew how tofold the paper correctly to make one.

At the market: a barrowwoman and a shrimp seller,carrying her net.

Men in typical workingclothes buy shellfish froma market stall.

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Judges and WigsBritish judges wore white horsehair wigs and long red and white gowns, clothing which datesback to the seventeenth century. The purpose of this deliberately old-fashioned dress was tomake the judge appear as a representative of a long legal tradition. Wigs were thought togive a judge a dignified and solemn appearance.

Uniforms

A policeman’s uniformincluded his individualnumber; in this case“345.” This allowedmembers of the public toidentify an officer if theywished to make acomplaint about him.

PoliceThe modern police originated inBritain in 1829, when Sir RobertPeel founded the LondonMetropolitan Police Force, the firstfull-time professional police force inthe world.The “peelers,” as they wereknown were so effective that otherforces were set up throughout Britainand abroad. In 1845 New Yorkestablished its own police forcemodeled on the British one.

The purpose of a police uniform isto allow a member of the public torecognize an officer. Early uniformswere carefully designed to win publicsupport for the police. Officers woredark blue coats with shiny brassbuttons, like clothes worn byservants.This was to show that thepoliceman was there to serve thepublic. Police uniforms were unlikethose worn by soldiers, who werefeared by the public for the violencewith which they broke up riots anddemonstrations.

The first policemen wore top hats.This was a sign of respectabilitywhich made a policeman stand out inworking-class areas where nobodyelse wore them. By making an officerlook taller, the hat was supposed togive him greater authority.The

The word uniform means “with novariations.” People in uniform arethose who dress alike, such assoldiers, policemen, firemen,prisoners, and nurses.The Victorianperiod saw an increase in the numberof uniforms, which gave theVictorians a sense of order in a worldwhich was going through rapid andbewildering changes.

Working Clothes

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Maybrick spent fifteen years in prisonfor poisoning her husband, thoughshe claimed she was innocent. Shedescribed the prison haircut in herautobiography:“The warder ...stepped quickly forward, and with apair of scissors cut off my hair to thenape of my neck.This act seemed,above all others, to bring me to asense of my degradation [low state],my utter helplessness.”

problem with top hats was that theygave no protection in a fight, andwere easy to knock off with a stoneor a brick. Knocking policemen’s hatsoff was a popular sport in somedistricts.As a result, in 1864, inBritain the top hat gave way to a tallhelmet.

In the United States, the firstpolicemen refused to wear uniforms,apart from a badge.They did not wishto look like “liveried lackeys”(servants), a term they used todescribe British policemen. It wasonly in 1853 that the New York citypolice adopted a blue frock coat withbrass buttons, and a peaked cap,replaced by a tall helmet in the 1880s.

PrisonersWhen convicted prisoners entered aVictorian prison, the first thing theyhad to do was to surrender theirclothes and put on a prison uniform.This included a badge with anumber, which would be theprisoner’s name while serving thesentence. Like giving up personalclothes, losing their names meant thatthey had lost their individualidentities.This was part of thepunishment. In some prisons,convicts even had to wear maskswhen exercising to prevent themfrom getting to know each other.Other prisoners were thought to be abad influence.

After putting on their uniforms,prisoners had their hair cut short, andmale prisoners had their beards andmoustaches shaved off. Florence Uniforms worn by men and women in the prisons of London in the 1840s.

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Military UniformsMilitary uniforms were invented bythe ancient Romans, whose soldierswore identical armor over short redtunics.This encouraged the men tothink of themselves as members of agroup rather than as individuals,making them better disciplined, andmore effective fighters. Uniforms alsoallowed them to tell a friend from anenemy in the heat of a battle.Nineteenth-century uniforms servedthe same purpose. In the early 1800s,armies still went into battle in brightcolors. British soldiers fighting theFrench at Waterloo, in 1815, wore

scarlet coatees (short jackets) and tallbearskin hats, to make themselveslook more imposing.

Tight ClothesWaterloo was followed by a longperiod of peace in Europe, whenuniforms became stiffer and tighter.Such clothes were designed for theparade ground rather than thebattlefield.The difficulty of fightingin tight clothes, which restrictedmovement and made it hard tobreathe, was revealed during theCrimean War of 1854.The British

Uniforms were worn todisplay rank, with the mostelaborate dress worn by thesenior officers, as shown inthis illustration of men andboys in the British Navy.

Working Clothes

army then adopted a loose tunic,which covered the hips and offeredmore protection.

Blue against GrayIn 1861 a civil war broke out in theUnited States between the southernstates, or Confederacy, and thenorthern states, or the Union. Eachside had to quickly raise armies andsupply uniforms.At first, all sorts ofstrange uniforms were adopted,including Highland kilts and brightlycolored baggy trousers. Eventually, theUnion clothed its soldiers in blue,while the Confederacy chose gray.

Although Wisconsin was part of theUnion, its soldiers wore gray at thestart of the war.The disadvantage of

this was shown at the first big battleof the war, at Manassas, in July 1861,when the Wisconsin soldiers foundthemselves being shot at by bothsides.After the battle they werereissued with blue uniforms.

Scarlet againstBrownThe shortcomings of scarlet weremade clear in 1880–1, when Britainfought a war against the Boers,Dutch settlers in South Africa. InFebruary 1881, at the Battle ofMajuba Hill, a force of scarlet-coatedBritish soldiers was defeated by Boermarksmen, who found it easy toshoot at the men in their brighttunics.The Boers wore drab browns,which helped them to blend in withthe dry African scenery.

After Majuba Hill, a governmentenquiry suggested the adoption ofgray for battle dress.The Duke ofCambridge, army commander-in-chief, resisted the change. In 1883 hesaid,“I should be sorry to see the daywhen the English Army is no longerin red.... I think the soldier hadbetter be taught not to hide himself,but to go gallantly to the front ... theman who does that has a much betterchance of succeeding than the manwho hides himself.”

It was not until the late 1890s thatthe British army was given khaki(brown) uniforms for battlefieldservice. Khaki, originally adopted by the British army in India, comesfrom a Hindi word meaning “dusty colored.”

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RiflesA great change to uniforms wasmade necessary in the 1850s,with the introduction of mass-produced muskets which wererifled. Unlike earlier muskets,which had smooth barrels, rifleshad spiral grooves carved insidethem, which made a bullet spinas it flew through the air,increasing its accuracy. A riflewas deadly at three hundredyards (274 m), triple the range ofa musket. For a marksman armedwith a rifle, a soldier in a scarlettunic made an excellent target.Soldiers would now have to wearuniforms which helped them toblend in with their surroundingsrather than stand out.

A Confederate (top) and aUnion soldier (bottom)during the American CivilWar.

ServantsServants formed one of the biggestgroups in Victorian society, and morewomen worked as servants than inany other job.The number ofservants employed in a single houseranged from fifty, in a great countryhouse, down to a single “maid-of-all-work” in a lower-middle-class home.

In a great house the servants wereorganized in ranks.The mostimportant were the housekeeper andthe butler.The housekeeper was amiddle-aged woman in charge of theaccounts. She paid the bills and hiredand fired most of the female servants.The butler was the head of the malestaff and had responsibility for thehousehold silver and the winesupplies. He wore black eveningdress, similar to a gentleman’s, thougha butler’s attire would usually includea visual clue, such as a stripedwaistcoat, to show guests at dinnerparties that he was not one of thembut a servant.

FootmenFootmen were the servants whoanswered the front door, deliveredletters, and waited at dinner.Theirrole was to display the wealth andtaste of their employers to visitors.Footmen wore a uniform calledlivery, consisting of an eighteenth-century style coat, knee-breeches, andwhite stockings.They often worewigs, or powdered their hair. JohnJames, a footman in the 1890s,described the unpleasant daily task ofpowdering:“After the hair had beenmoistened, soap was put on andrubbed into a stiff lather, and the

ButtoningDuring the Victorian period, clothes became standardized, with men’s buttons on the right andwomen’s on the left. It is thought that the reason for this was that rich ladies were dressed bytheir maids. Most people are right-handed and find it convenient to hold the button with theirright hand. For men, who dressed themselves, the best place to have buttons was on the rightside. This was reversed for ladies’ maids, who faced the clothes they buttoned.

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A footman in liverywith white-powderedhair.

Working Clothes

Lady’s MaidThe lady’s maid was the personalservant of the mistress of the house,brushing her hair at night, andhelping her to dress in the morning.She had to look after her mistress’sclothes, repairing them with a needleand thread and ensuring that theywere cleaned and pressed. Oneadvantage of her job was that shewould usually be given the lady’scast-off clothing.

HousemaidsMost of the hard work in a housewas done by housemaids.They madebeds, carried coal, lit fires, cleanedfireplaces, laid tables, beat rugs, andscrubbed floors.A housemaid’suniform consisted of a dark dress, awhite apron, and a tall white cap,which covered the hair.The state ofthe housemaid’s white apron was agood guide to how clean she was,and therefore how good she was ather job.

combing was done.... Powder wasthen applied with a puff and the wetmess allowed to dry on the headuntil it became quite firm.”

The taller the footman, the more hecould expect to earn, so you couldjudge the wealth of a rich family bythe height of its footmen.A footmanover six foot (1.8 m) tall coulddemand twice the salary of one whowas only five feet six (1.7 m).Hippolyte Taine, a French visitor toEngland, was impressed by the size ofthe footmen:“They wear whitecravats with large faultless bows,scarlet or canary-coloredkneebreeches, are magnificent inshape and amplitude [fullness], theircalves especially are enormous.”

Left: This woman is beingtied into her dress by her“lady’s maid,” her personalservant.

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A housemaid, dressed inapron and white cap, doesthe ironing.

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The Victorian era was a time of vastbuilding programs, as railroads spreadacross Britain and factory townsgrew, doubling in size every tenyears.This expansion dependedmainly on unskilled laborers, such asthe “navvies” who tunneled throughhillsides and laid railroad lines, andthe miners who dug the coal out ofthe earth. Such laborers dressed forpractical reasons, in tough fabrics thatwithstood the wear and tear of theirwork.

NavviesIn the mid 1840s, 200,000 men werebuilding railroads in Britain.They

Laborers

were called navigators, shortened tonavvies, a name originally given toeighteenth-century canal builders.Athird of them were Irish, driven bypoverty and a terrible famine to leavetheir homeland in search of work.

Navvies wore shirts made of calico, acoarse, light cotton named afterCalcutta in India, where it was firstmade.Their jackets were made of atough material called jean, a mixtureof cotton and wool, named afterGenoa in Italy. For trousers the menwore knee-breeches made ofcorduroy, a hard-wearing cottonfabric with raised ridges.This was

Here, German laborers laya telegraph cable in atrench which they havedug. The man in chargecan be identified by hismore expensive bowler hat.

Working Clothes

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am the only girl in the pit; there areabout twenty boys and fifteen men,all naked. I would rather work in millthan in coal-pit.”As a result of theinquiry, a law was passed preventingthe employment of womenunderground.

invented in France in the lateeighteenth century, and was firstcalled the king’s cord, perhapsbecause it was worn by royal servants.There were just two items ofclothing which navvies wore fordisplay rather than practical reasons: apatterned waistcoat, which might bered with black spots, and a brightlycolored “neckerchief.”

Coal MinersLife in Victorian times depended oncoal. Coal was the fuel which wasburned in every fireplace and whichdrove the factory machines and trainengines. Coal was also used to makegas for lighting, and at the end of thecentury it was burned in powerstations to make electricity. Unlikeother Victorian industries, coalmining was all done by hand, by menworking deep underground innarrow tunnels, hacking at the coalface with picks.The men were oftennaked, for it was hot, and few clothescould stand up to crawling on handsand knees along a mine shaft, oftenthrough water.Women and childrenalso worked in the mines, carryingcoal, opening and closing ventilationdoors, and “hurrying,” or pulling andpushing the wheeled coal carts.

In 1842 the British governmentcarried out an inquiry into coalmining that shocked the nation, for itrevealed that women, wearingtrousers, had to work with nakedmen.A seventeen-year-old hurrier,Patience Kershaw, told the enquiry,“Ihurry in the clothes I have now goton—trousers and a ragged jacket.... I

JeansIn California in the 1850s, gold prospectors began to weartrousers made of denim, named after Nimes in France. Thiswas a cotton fabric with a diagonal weave, using threads ofblue and white. Harder wearing than jean, it eventuallyreplaced it in the United States as the favorite cloth for hard work, and the trousers made from this material wouldacquire the name “jeans,” from the earlier material. Like thedark suit, denim jeans—now worn by all classes of societyaround the world—is another legacy of the Victorian era.

A navvy. A collier.

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Country WorkersWorkers in the countryside wereaffected little by changing fashions.Across western Europe laborers woretraditional folk costumes that had notchanged for centuries.There werestrong regional variations in thecolors and decorations used. In onearea, all of the men might wear bluesmocks, while in another the colorwould be light gray. In Britain, thisregional variation declined as moremen took to wearing the dark suitsof townspeople.

Smock FrocksThe main garment worn in Britainby early-Victorian country laborerswas the loose cotton smock frock,worn since the seventeenth century.The smock was worn over corduroyknee-breeches and gaiters (leatherbands wrapped around the calves).Alaborer would usually own twosmocks: one for working in, and abest one to wear to church onSunday.A smock frock wascomfortable, hard wearing, and

These women are pickinghops, used in brewing. Likemany Victorian paintings,this presents an idealizedview of life in thecountryside.

Working Clothes

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practical. It kept out the wind, and itcould be waterproofed with linseedoil. Looking back to the Victorianage in 1904, the garden designerGertrude Jeckyll wrote,“No betterthing has ever been devised for anyoutdoor wear.... It turns (repels) anastonishing amount of wet.”

During the Victorian period, thespread of the railroads brought townand country together for the firsttime. Large numbers of countrypeople moved to the growing townsto find work.At country fairs, peoplecould now see salesmen and othertownspeople wearing black suits.Those who could afford to wanted toimitate them.

There were different classes in thecountryside, with tradesmen,wheelwrights, and blacksmithslooking down on farm laborers, whowere the lowest-paid British workers.From the 1830s onward, men andboys from these upper ranks began toimitate townspeople, dressing injackets and trousers made of a cheapfabric called shoddy. Shoddy wasmade by tearing apart older cloth andmixing it with new fibers.The wordhas come to mean anything poorlymade or of inferior quality.

Joseph Arch (1826–1919), the son ofa shepherd, was one of the fewcountry people to write hisautobiography, which he published in1898.As a boy he wore a smockfrock to school along with all of theother sons of farm laborers, while thesons of tradesmen and wheelwrights

CountrywomenLike men, countrywomen imitated the dress oftownspeople. In Dorset, the younger women gave upwearing the traditional plain bonnet, cotton gown, and flatboots. They began to wear hats with beads and feathers,brightly dyed dresses, and boots with heels, like those oftown ladies. Country folk preferred wearing such clothes,even though they were secondhand, to brand-newtraditional clothes.

wore coats of shoddy.Archer recalled,“These peacocky youngsters wouldcheek the lads in smock-frockswhenever they got the chance, andmany a stand-up fight we used tohave—regular pitched battles ofsmock-frock against cloth-coat, theywere, in which smock-frock held hisown right well.”

From the 1860s onward, growingnumbers of farm workersabandoned their smocks andgaiters for jackets andtrousers, boughtsecondhand.Writing in 1884, the novelistThomas Hardy described the changeshe had seen in Dorset fairs:“Aglance up the high street ... twentyor thirty years ago revealed a crowdwhose general color was whitey-brown.... Now the crowd is as darkas a London crowd.The change isowing to the rage for cloth clotheswhich possesses the laborers oftoday.”

A farm laborer wearinga smock, sharpenshis scythe.

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Crossing SweepersIt was illegal to beg in Victorian Britain. To get around the law, poorboys swept the streets, asking people who crossed for money. Theycould be arrested for doing even this. In 1856, Jack, a fifteen-year-oldLondon crossing sweeper told Henry Mayhew, “If there’s a policemanclose at hand we mustn’t ask for money....We never carries no pockets,for if the policemen find us we generally pass the money to our mates,for if money’s found on us we have fourteen days in prison.”

The Poorest of AllEvery large Victorian city had slumdistricts, where the poor lived incrowded conditions, in badly builthouses without proper drains orrunning water. Large numbers of thepoor were homeless, sleeping in thestreets.These people had no choicein the clothes they wore, and oftendressed in rags.

The Victorian public was aware ofthe terrible suffering of the poor,which was described in the popularnovels of Charles Dickens, and thework of the investigative journalistHenry Mayhew.Yet there were bigdisagreements about what, ifanything, could be done about thesituation. Many Victorians blamedthe poor for their poverty, arguingthat it was their laziness that was toblame.

In his book London Labour and theLondon Poor (1862), Mayhewdescribed the Asylum for theHouseless Poor, an East Londoninstitution offering temporary shelterto the homeless when thetemperature dropped below freezingpoint.There was room for threehundred people, though many more

tried to gain admittance. Mayhewsaw a crowd of five hundred waitingfor the doors to be opened at fivep.m. He described them “shivering inthe snow, with their thin cobwebbygarments hanging in tatters aboutthem. Many are without shirts....Some have their greasy coats andtrousers tied around their waists withstring, to prevent the piercing windfrom blowing up them.A few arewithout shoes; and these keep onefoot only to the ground.”

WorkhousesFrom the 1830s onward, largeworkhouses were built to housethose who could not supportthemselves. In many ways aworkhouse resembled a Victorianprison. So that the poor would onlyuse it as a last resort, conditions weredesigned to be harsher than those ofthe lowest-paid workers outside.Men, women, and children all livedin different wings, and the separationof families was bitterly resented.

The men broke stones, ground bonesto make fertilizer, and unpicked oldrope, also a punishment given toprisoners.The women cooked,

Hans Christian Anderson’sstory, The Little Match Girl,tells the sad tale of a poorgirl who freezes to deathon the street on NewYears’ Eve.

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cleaned, and sewed the workhouseuniforms, made of coarse linen.Charles Shaw, who as a boy in 1842was taken to a workhouse with hisfamily, later wrote,“We youngsterswere roughly disrobed, roughly andcoldly washed, and roughly attired inrough clothes, our under garmentsbeing all covered up by a rough linenpinafore.Then we parted amid bittercries, the young ones being takenaway and the parents ... taken as wellto different regions.”

The same system operated in theUnited States, where workhouseswere called poorhouses.According toan 1898 newspaper article about theBoston poorhouse, in the previousyear the female inmates had made1,412 aprons, 891 dresses, 492nightgowns, 993 petticoats, and 43shrouds.A shroud was a plain whitecotton garment worn by the deadinmates for burial.

Working Clothes

Many poor children wentbarefoot, like two of theboys here, photographed ona London street in 1885.

A poor woman, dressed inrags, holding her baby.

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From the 1860s until the end of the Victorian era,women’s fashions went through major changes as

the crinoline fell from favor. Late-Victorian womenaimed for a curving “hourglass” figure with a tiny waistand large hips and bust.This was achieved with long,shaped corsets which were tighter laced than at anytime since the 1830s.The fashionable female shape alsogrew taller and more imposing, with high heels andhairstyles piled up on top of the head. Men’s fashions,as always in the nineteenth century, saw only minorchanges.

The BustleIn 1864 the designer CharlesFrederick Worth decided that it wastime to do away with the crinoline,now worn by even poor women. Inits place he designed a dress whichwas flat at the front and sides, with along train behind. It had a cushionpadded with horsehair sewn to theback of the skirt, later called a bustle.Piled over the bustle he put a mass ofcloth in folds decorated with rufflesand bows.Worth’s new look madethe fabric tumble behind, like awaterfall. It required far more fabricthan the crinoline and it was muchmore impractical to wear. It washeavy, making the dress trail alongthe ground, and it was difficult to sitin comfortably.Worth saw the bustleand train, which was soon to be theheight of fashion, as his greatestachievement. He would later boast,“Idethroned the crinoline.”

Like most new women’s fashions, thelong, trailing dress was mocked by

This corset shows howtightly laced women had tobe to achieve an“hourglass figure.”

Chapter 6: Late Victorian Fashions: 1860–1901

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Late Victorian Fashions

a shift to looser, more comfortableclothes. In 1878 The Tailor and Cuttertrade journal complained,“We arerapidly degenerating into a slipshodstate of things.After a time Frockcoats and even Morning coats will beentirely a thing of the past and ifthings go on in this way will only beseen at museums where they willserve to amuse a wondering andawestricken group of sightseers.”

Dundreary WhiskersIn the 1860s, there was a fashion for men to grow waxedmoustaches with long “Dundreary” side whiskers, namedafter Lord Dundreary, a character played by the Englishactor Edward Sothern in a stage comedy, Our AmericanCousin. This was such a popular hit that it ran foralmost five hundred nights in London. It was at anAmerican performance of the play, in 1865, thatPresident Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Despite the assassination, Sothern continued to play the role topacked audiences until the 1880s.

men.An 1867 cartoon in Punchshows a lady whose dress disappearsbehind a door. She says to a malecompanion,“Oh, how tiresome!Somebody must be standing on mydress! Would you just run down-stairsand see who it is Mr Brown!” In1876 the writer John Ruskincomplained,“I have lost much of thefaith I once had in the commonsense ... of the present race of averageEnglish women by seeing how theywill allow their dresses to sweep thestreets.”

The bustle shrank to a small pad inthe late 1870s, only to reappear in anexaggerated form in the 1880s, whenit stuck out like a shelf, two feet (0.6m) behind the wearer.This shelf wasachieved with half hoops of steelbands, sewn into the lining ofunderskirts. Cartoons showed peopleresting tea trays on the shelf bustles.

Relaxation for MenWhile men continued to dressformally in the evening, day wear saw

These two women wearthe long trailing eveningdresses of the 1880s, withlarge padded bustles.

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CombinationsFor underwear, Dr. Gustav Jaeger promoted knitted woolen “combinations,” a body stockingwhich covered the body from the neck to the ankles. Jaeger claimed that the itchiness of woolagainst the skin stimulated blood circulation. Woolen combinations, recommended by manydoctors, were widely worn from the 1880s onward. One London woman later recalled, “I stillremember the childhood misery of tickly Jaeger combinations.”

Dress ReformThe late nineteenth century sawseveral attempts to reform the waythat both men and women dressed.Some reformers claimed thatVictorian clothes, especially thoseworn by women, were unhealthy andimpractical. Others rejected them ongrounds of aesthetics (concern forbeauty).

Dr. JaegerDr. Gustav Jaeger was a Germanzoology professor, who invented the“Sanitary Woolen System” in the1870s. Jaeger argued that, for healthreasons, all clothes should be made ofwool, claiming that cotton and linendid not “breathe.” He rejectedtrousers in favor of knee-breechesand socks, which he said were alsobetter for the circulation.AlthoughJaeger’s theories were scientificallyincorrect, he found more followersthan any other dress reformer.Themost famous of them was the Irishplaywright George Bernard Shaw,who wore woolen “Jaeger suits”from the 1880s until his death in1950.

Oscar WildeThe Irish writer Oscar Wilde wasanother reformer who wanted mento wear knee-breeches, though hisarguments were based on aestheticsrather than health. In 1890 he wrote,“The costume of the nineteenthcentury is detestable. It is so sombre,so depressing.”Wilde preferred thefashions of the seventeenth century,when men wore long hair and richlycolored clothes with wide hats andcloaks. Describing trousers as “boringtubes,” he took to wearing satin

Gustav Jaeger proudlymodels his all-woolen suit,which he promoted forhealth reasons.

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knee-breeches with silk stockings.Wilde was mocked in the newspapersand found few imitators. His clotheswere seen as effeminate (unmanly).

Rational DressIn 1881 two Englishwomen, Mrs.Emily King and ViscountessHarberton, formed the Rational DressSociety, dedicated to making womendress in a rational, or sensible, way.Each issue of the society’s monthlygazette began with this statement:“The Rational Dress Society protestsagainst the introduction of anyfashion in dress that either deformsthe figure, impedes the movements ofthe body, or in any way tends toinjure the health. It protests againstthe wearing of tightly-fitting corsets;of high-heeled shoes; of heavily-


weighted skirts, as rendering healthyexercise almost impossible.”

The society saw dress reform as part ofa wider campaign for women’s right tovote, which was not won until 1920 inthe United States, and 1928 in Britain.Viscountess Harberton argued that bydressing in a foolish way, womenshowed men that they were notsensible enough to be given the vote.

Harberton promoted the “dividedskirt,” a pair of baggy trousersdesigned to resemble a skirt. LikeAmelia Bloomer before her, she wasmocked for dressing in a manly way,and was once refused entrance to ahotel for wearing trousers. Only afew upper-class women were braveenough to follow her example.

An illustration from anexhibition of “rationaldress” for girls andwomen. None of themwear tight corsets, hugebustles or trailing dresses.

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New York Societywore their most expensive clothes,including elaborate bonnetsdecorated with flowers, feathers, andribbons, to stroll along Fifth Avenueto and from church.This grew into atourist attraction as ordinaryAmericans went to Fifth Avenue towatch the rich on their “EasterParade.” In 1890 the New York Tribunereported,“The Easter bonnets andthe Easter trousers rioted ingorgeousness.... From MadisonSquare to Central Park the sidewalkswere rivers of beautiful raiment andhappy faces.”This is one Victoriancustom which continues in thetwenty-first century.

High SocietyIn Europe, the leaders of fashionablesociety were the royal families andnobles.The United States, however,had no royal family and no dukes orduchesses. In the late nineteenthcentury, upper-class Americanscreated their own aristocracy inwhich families that had been rich forgenerations looked down on thosewith “new money.” Ward McAllister,who organized balls and parties, said,“With the rapid growth of riches,millionaires are too common toreceive much deference.... So wehave to draw social boundaries onanother basis: old connections, gentlebreeding.”

Four HundredThe leading figure in New Yorksociety was Mrs Caroline Astor,whose family wealth came fromproperty development. Her ballroomwas large enough to hold four

In the late nineteenth century, therewere more millionaires living in NewYork than in any other city in theworld.These were men who hadgrown rich by investing in newindustries such as the railroads, steel,and oil.They built huge mansionsalong New York’s Fifth Avenue,which came to be called Millionaire’sRow, and their wives spent vast sumson Parisian fashions.

Easter BonnetsFrom the 1870s onward, EasterSunday was a day when the rich

Wealthy New Yorkers spentlarge sums of money onFrench evening dresses,such as this exampledecorated withchrysanthemums.


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hundred guests, which was said to bethe number of New Yorkersbelonging to High Society.McAllister, who controlled theinvitations to Astor’s balls, told thepress,“There are only about fourhundred people in fashionable New-York society. If you go outside thatnumber you strike people who areeither not at ease in a ball-room orelse make other people not at ease.”

Fancy DressMany of the balls were costumeparties, in which guests competed towear the most inventive, luxurious,and expensive outfits. One of themost costly balls was held byCaroline Astor’s great rival,AlvaVanderbilt, in March 1883.The guestsincluded people dressed as kings,queens, famous explorers, andshepherdesses. Mrs.W. Seward Webbcame as a hornet, and Alva’s sister-in-law,Alice Vanderbilt, dressed as“Electric Light,” the recent inventionof Thomas Edison. She wore a whitesatin gown decorated with glisteningdiamonds, and a battery-operated hatwith lights.

FeathersIn late-Victorian New York society, it became the fashion to decorate hatswith feathers from birds, including gulls, ostriches, hawks, and songbirds.Some women even wore stuffed birds on their hats. Every autumn,hundreds of thousands of wild birds were shot to adorn women’s hats.Bird lovers campaigned against the fashion, which was also denouncedin church by preachers. In 1898 Dr. H. M. Wharton, a Baltimorechurchman, said, “It is wholesale murder.... I have commented from thepulpit frequently upon the evil of women wearing birds’ wings or bodiesof birds on their hats, for I have long considered it a cruel custom.”

This pale, sleeveless evening gown from 1890 has a pointed waist, wateredsilk drapery at the back, and a sash of flowers across the bodice.

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In the 1890s, the clothes of both menand women grew simpler, with agreater emphasis on comfort andfreedom.The impractical bustledisappeared from women’s dresses.Men of all classes began to wearinformal straw hats. For formaloccasions, comfortable soft shirtsreplaced the heavily starchedshirtfronts of the previous decade. In

The End of the Century1898 The Tailor and Cutter journalpredicted that the starched shirtfrontwould be “of considerable interest tothe future historian of the sartorial[clothing-related] instruments oftorture of the nineteenth century.”

HatsIn the 1890s, instead of wearing tophats, many men took to wearing

Cycling offered late-nineteenth-century womena new freedom, shown inthe comfortableknickerbockers and relaxedposes of these Parisianladies.

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smaller hats, including straw hats,bowlers, and trilbies.The bowler wasa hard, dome-shaped hat with acurled brim. It was called a derby inthe United States, after the earl ofDerby who made it fashionable.Thetrilby was a soft felt hat with adented brim, named after a characterwho wore it in a popular Londonstage play of 1895.

In 1899 the clothing trade journalLondon Tailor complained of thedecline of the top hat:“So great isthe modern tendency to sacrificeappearance to comfort that beforelong it is feared the silk hat will onlybe seen in the City and Piccadilly.”

CyclingAlthough the Rational DressSociety’s 1880s campaign to makewomen wear divided skirts hadfailed, just ten years later, women inEurope and the United States couldbe seen wearing knickerbockersreaching to just below the knees.Thereason was the spread of a new crazefor cycling. In 1896 Susan B.Anthony, an American campaignerfor women’s rights, said,“the bicyclehas done more for the emancipation(freedom) of women than anythingelse in the world.”

Women’s bicycles were built withlow crossbars, enabling them to wearskirts if they chose. Most womenpreferred skirts to knickerbockers, butcycling required that they werepractical. Bustles and tight corsetscould not be worn by cyclists.Some older people were shocked by

The Tailor-MadeThe 1890s saw the coming of the “tailor-made” for women.Modeled on the male suit, thiswas a close-fitting plain skirt andjacket, worn over a simple whiteblouse. The tailor-made was thedress of choice for the growingnumber of women now working in new jobs, such as secretaries,telephone operators, storeassistants, and teachers. In 1898London Tailor announced, “Theonly really new dress developmentwhich has taken place during thelast half century has been theevolution of the tailor-made gownwhich is doubtless due to theactive life now led by women ofevery class.”


the sight of women riding bicycles.The English novelist Eliza LynnLinton, born in 1822, wrote,“Thismodern bicycling craze is not onlyfar beyond a girl’s strength but ittends to destroy the sweet simplicityof a girl’s nature. Besides, howdreadful it would be if by somestrange accident she were to fall offinto the arms of a strange man!”

End of an EraIn 1897, as the century drew to aclose, The Tailor and Cutter lookedback at the strange fashions, such asthe crinoline and the bustle, wornthroughout the Victorian era.Thejournal predicted,“Sixty years hencewe shall probably appear as ridiculousin the eyes of that generation as ourancestors appear today in ours.”

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Timeline1829 Sir Robert Peel founds the first

professional police force, whose officers wear uniforms modeled on those of servants.

1830 Joseph Palmer shocks the town of Fitchburg, Connecticut, by growing abeard.

1833 Walter Hunt invents the first practical sewing machine.

1837 Queen Victoria comes to the throne.1840 Wearing a white dress, Queen

Victoria marries Prince Albert.1846 Elias Howe patents his sewing

machine.1846–52 The first department stores open

in Paris, New York, and Newcastle.1849 Walter Hunt invents the safety pin.1851 The Great Exhibition in Britain

includes displays of fashion and textiles.Amelia Bloomer promotes a trousercostume for women.Isaac Merritt Singer produces an improved sewing machine.

1854–6 The Crimean War, in which Britain,France, and Turkey fight Russia,leads to the introduction of looser tunics for the military.

1856 The steel-hooped crinoline is invented.William Perkin makes the first

artificial dye, from coal tar.1857 Charles Frederick Worth opens the

first haute couture business, in Paris.

1860 John Barron uses the band knife tocut several layers of cloth at once.

1861 The death of Prince Albert. Queen Victoria goes into mourning dress.Knee breeches are now worn by men for walking in the country.

1861–5 The American Civil War, fought by the North in dark blue and the South in gray uniforms.

1864 The first dresses with bustles are made.

1870s Crinoline makers go out of business.1881 The first war between Britain and

the Boers, in which British soldiersfight in scarlet jackets.The Rational Dress Society is founded, to reform women’s clothing.

1883 The wide “shelf bustle” becomes fashionable.

1885 The publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy leads to a fashion for boys’ velvet knee-breeches.

1888 John Dunlop invents inflatable bicycle tires. The resulting cycling craze makes it acceptable for women to wear knee-breeches.The first Sears Roebuck mail-order catalog is produced.

1892 The zip fastener is invented by Whitcomb Judson.

1899 – The Second Boer War, with British1900 soldiers now fighting in khaki

uniforms.1901 The death of Queen Victoria.

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Glossaryboater A round straw hat with a flat brimand narrow flat crown, originally based onthose worn by sailors.bowler A hard felt hat with a narrow brimand a round crown.bustle A pad or frame worn at the back of adress, to make the rear stick out.calico Coarse light cotton, used forunderwear and shirts, named after Calcutta,India, its place of origin.combinations Body-stocking underwear, socalled because it combined vest andleggings.corduroy A hard-wearing, ridged cottonfabric worn by laborers. Its name derivesfrom the French corde du roy (king’s cord).cravat Elaborate neckwear worn by men inthe early 1800s. A long band of foldedmuslin was wrapped around the neck andtied in a knot or bow.crepe A dull, crinkled black silk fabric, wornfor mourning. Also spelled crape.crinoline Originally a petticoat stiffenedwith horsehair (crin in French). From 1856onward, the word was applied to the cagecrinoline, made of steel hoops.denim A tough cotton fabric, woven fromtwo different-colored threads, with a twill, ordiagonal, weave. The name comes fromSerge de Nimes (Nimes Serge).evening dress Formal dress worn for socialoccasions, such as dinners and balls, in theevenings. Men wore white shirts and tieswith black tailcoats and trousers, whilewomen wore low-cut dresses with jewelry.felt A fabric with matted fibers, usuallyanimal hairs.frock coat A long men’s jacket with asquare front.jean A tough twilled material made fromwool and cotton, used for work wear, andnamed after Genoa, Italy.knickerbockers Loose-fitting knee-breeches, named after Washington Irving’s

1809 book, Knickerbocker’s History of NewYork, which has illustrations of such clothesworn by seventeenth-century Dutch settlers.linen A fabric made from the fibers of theflax plant.morning coat A men’s coat with tails, wornin the daytime. Unlike a black evening coat,which had a cutaway square front, a morningcoat had a curved front and came in variouscolors.morning dress Formal daywear worn by menand women.mourning The period following the death ofa loved one, when special dark clothes wereworn to show sorrow.muslin A fine, delicately woven cottonfabric.navvy A laborer building railroads andcanals. The name is short for navigator.satin A glossy fabric made from silk.shoddy A cheap fabric made by tearing upold cloth and mixing it with new fibers.silk A fine, strong, soft fabric made fromthe cocoons spun by silkworms.smock A long, loose, thick shirt, usuallycotton, worn by farm laborers and othermanual workers.spin Draw out and twist fibers, such aswool or cotton, to make thread.starch Vegetable extracts used to stiffenmaterial, such as shirtfronts and collars.stays Another name for corsets.tailor-made A woman’s suit, with simplejacket and skirt, worn in the late nineteenthcentury.top hat A formal black hat, made from feltor silk, with a high crown.trilby A soft felt hat with a brim and a dentin the top, named after a character in an1895 stage play by George du Maurier.tweed A tough, thick woolen cloth with adiagonal weave, originally from Scotland. Itsname comes from a misreading of the wordtwill, spelt tweel on a bill.

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twill A diagonal weave, which gives fabricsextra strength.weave To form cloth by interlacing threadsfrom two different directions. Lengthwise, orwarp, threads are stretched on a framecalled a loom. A second thread, the weft, isthen passed from side to side.whipcord A tough wool fabric with raisedridges.

Further InformationAdult Reference SourcesBradfield, Nancy, Costume in Detail: Women’sDress, 1730-1930 (Eric Dobby Publishing,1998)Cosgrave, Bronwyn, Costume and Fashion: AComplete History (Hamlyn, 2003)Gernsheim, Alison, Victorian and EdwardianFashion: A Photographic Survey (DoverPublications, 1982)Grafton, Carol, Victorian Fashions: A PictorialArchive (Dover Publications, 1999)

Young Adult Reference SourcesNunn, Joan, Fashion in Costume 1200-2000 (A & C Black, 2000)Goodwin, Jane, All about the Victorians (HodderWayland, 2001)Kramer, Anne, Eyewitness Guide: The Victorians(Dorling Kindersley, 2003)Langley, Andrew, Victorian Britain (HeinemannLibrary, 1994)

Internet Resourceshttp://www.fashion-era.com/victorians.htmAll about Victorian society, with numeroussections on fashion and costume.

http://www.lahacal.org/gentleman/behavior.htmlThe Gentleman’s Page: A Practical Guide forthe Nineteenth-Century American Man.

http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/other/grtexhib.htmThe Great Exhibition of 1851.

http://www.charlesfrederickworth.orgCharles Frederick Worth.

http://www.hairarchives.com/private/victorian1new.htmWomen’s hair in Victorian times. Includesarchive photographs.

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http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/victcfsh.htmlSlightly silly Victorian fashions.

http://www.fathom.com/course/21701726/session1.htmlThe Secret History of the Corset and Crinoline.

http://www.rogerco.freeserve.co.uk/Victorian and Edwardian photographs.

http://www.costumes.org/history/100pages/victlinks.htmVictorian fashion links.

http://www.fashion-era.com/the_victorian_era.htmFashion Era: The Victorian Era.

http://www.fashionera.com/the_victorian_era.htmEras of Elegance: Victorian.

http://histclo.hispeed.com/Historical boys clothing.

http://www.fabrics.net/joan800.aspVintage Fabric: A History of Sweatshops.

http://www.geocities.com/victorianlace11/mourning.html“The Mourning After:” Victorian MourningCustoms.

http://www.costumes.org/classes/fashiondress/dress_reformblip.htmVictorian dress reform links.

Page numbers in bold refer toillustrations.

aprons 38, 45, 45, 51

babies’ clothes 30bathing costumes 37, 37bloomers 14, 14, 60Bloomer,Amelia Jenks 14, 55, 60blouses 31, 59bustles 7, 52–3, 53, 58, 59, 60, 61

canes 5, 10children’s clothes 28–9, 30–1, 36–7christening robes 30, 30clobberers 28, 29coats 6, 29, 34, 35, 38, 40, 44, 49, 50

dress coats 28, 34frock coats 11, 29, 34, 41, 53, 61morning coats 34, 53, 61overcoats 34, 35

colors 8, 10, 22–3, 32, 33, 34, 36,42, 43, 48, 54

corsets 6, 7, 8–9, 10, 15, 18, 19, 37,52, 52, 55, 59

cosmetics 9cravats 7, 10, 45, 61crinolines 14–15, 15, 52, 59, 60, 61

dandies 6, 7department stores 26–7, 60dishabille 34dressmaking 24–5dresses 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, 21, 22, 24,

25, 28, 30, 34, 36, 37, 45, 45, 49,51, 52, 58, 60day dresses 23evening dresses 8, 9, 34, 35, 53,

56, 57morning dresses 34mourning dresses 32, 33wedding dresses 30, 31, 31, 60

dressing gowns 34, 34dyes and dyeing 22–3, 49, 60

Eugénie, Empress 22, 24, 24evening dress 34, 44, 61

fabricscotton 16–17, 29, 30, 46, 47, 48,

51corduroy 46–7, 48, 61felt 10, 18, 61flannel 36fur 18, 19

linen 25, 29, 30, 51, 61muslin 7, 25, 61satin 30, 34, 35, 57, 61shoddy 49, 61silk 5, 10, 16, 22, 23, 26, 32, 33,

34, 55, 57, 59, 61tweed 36, 37, 61velvet 34, 60woolen cloth 11, 16, 29, 54

facial hair 12–13, 13, 41, 53, 60feathers 6, 49, 56, 57, 57footwear

ankle boots 15, 15boots 37, 38, 39, 49shoes 8, 50, 55slippers 8, 15

gaiters 48, 49gowns 22, 40, 49Great Exhibition, the 27, 27, 60

hairstyles 12–13, 12, 30, 31, 41,44–5, 52, 54

hats 6, 8, 18–19, 31, 34–5, 37, 38,39, 42, 49, 54, 57, 57, 58–9bonnets 8, 8, 30, 49, 56bowlers (or derbies) 46, 59, 61caps 28, 34, 38, 38, 41, 45, 45deerstalkers 36helmets 40paper hats 39straw hats and boaters 36, 37, 58,

59, 61top hats 10, 11, 11, 18, 34, 39,

40–1, 58, 59, 61trilbies 59, 61

jackets 10, 11, 14, 28, 31, 34, 36,37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 49, 59, 60blazers 36–7, 36breakfast jackets 34hunting pink 36smoking jackets 34

Jaeger, Gustav 54, 54jeans 47jewelry 9, 11, 12, 32

knee-breeches 6, 36, 37, 39, 44, 45,46, 48, 54–5, 60

knickerbockers 58, 59, 61

leisure wear 36–7"Little Lord Fauntleroy" costumes

31, 60

mail-order catalogs 26, 26, 60mourning clothes 32–3, 60

nightclothes 34, 51

pajamas 34perfume 23Perkin,William 22–3, 60petticoats 8, 14, 15, 31, 51poor people’s clothes 50–1

Rational Dress Society 55, 55, 59,60

sailor suits 30–1secondhand clothes 28–9, 33, 49servants’ clothes 44–5sewing machines 5, 20–1, 20, 21,

60shirtfronts 34, 58shirts 6, 34, 36, 58skirts 6, 8, 14, 31, 55, 59smelling salts 9, 9smock frocks 39, 48–9, 49, 61socks 36, 54stays (see corsets)stealing clothes 29stocks 10suits 32, 38, 39, 48, 49, 54, 59

tailor-made 59, 61toile 25translators 28–9trousers 6, 14, 30, 34, 36, 43, 46,

47, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56tunics 43, 60

underwear 31, 51uniforms 21, 38, 40–3, 44, 45, 51

livery 44, 44military uniforms 42–3, 42, 43, 60police uniforms 40–1, 40, 60prisoner uniforms 41, 41school uniforms 36–7

veils 30, 32, 33Victoria, Queen 5, 8, 11, 22, 31,

31, 32, 60

waistcoats 6, 28, 34, 44, 47wigs 11, 40, 44Wilde, Oscar 7, 15, 54–5Worth, Charles Frederick 24–5, 35,

52, 60

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Index

28075017 6 the Victorian Age

Documents

Transcript of 28075017 6 the Victorian Age