Corsets and Codpieces: A History of Outrageous Fashion, from Roman Times to the Modern Era

by Karen Bowman

Needles themselves were extremely valuable, varying in worth from a yearling calf for a common needle to an ounce of silver for an embroidery needle.

Ultimately, dyeing was considered a woman’s craft, there being an air of taboo about carrying out the ‘alchemistic’ practice in the presence of men.

One ancient word for dyestuffs is ‘ruaman’; the word ‘ruam’ meaning red, a colour obtained from the madder plant, indicating that most dyes were sourced from plants, roots and vegetables.

If a lady appeared upon her balcony, slowly fanning herself, before returning inside and closing the windows after her it meant ‘I cannot go out’. If she did the same but fanned herself excitedly and left the windows open, it meant that she’d be out soon.

Unlike a handbag, however, pockets were rarely if ever seen as they were usually worn underneath the skirt, usually tied around the waist under a lady’s petticoats. To access her pockets a woman simply had to slip her hands into slits in the side seams of her gown and into the opening of the pocket.

Other positive effects accredited to the wearing of crinolines were revealed in 1858 when a girl named Martha Shepherd, attempting to commit suicide, leaped from the top of the balustrade of the bridge over the Serpentine in Hyde Park. She clearly had not thought things through as while falling her crinoline expanded to its full dimensions and ‘she came upon the water like a balloon floating there for several minutes’, as reported in the Ipswich Journal.

It was no wonder that Victorian ladies ‘swooned’ so frequently. Prolonged corset wearing meant the internal organs were unable to grow in their natural position and there were fears that a woman’s lungs could not function properly and that her liver could be almost cut in half.

One 23-year-old Parisian woman at a ball in 1859 proved to be the envy of all with her 13in waist; two days later she was found dead. An autopsy showed that her liver had been punctured by three ribs.

To the modern woman who wears silk or synthetic lingerie as opposed to bulky cotton, wool or flannel this is still a great deal of clothing, but that figure was actually half of what was worn by most women in 1850 when ladies were restricted by up to 14 pounds of layered undergarments.

The idea of a lady going about with her luggage in her bustle was possibly as startling to her as it is to us, but it was a great selling point and would save a woman from the problem of a lack of pockets which men did not suffer from.

As a rule of thumb a woman’s waist was supposed to measure, before she was married and had children, the same as her age in years!

Laws against hat pins of ‘excessive length’, or the wearing of them without protective stoppers, were proposed if not implemented in London, New York, Hamburg and Berlin as hat-pin-related injuries became common for both the wearer and unsuspecting fellow passengers in crowded places.