CRINOLINE : A REAL SOCIAL EVIL.

New Zealander, Volume XVIII, Issue 1640, 4 January 1862, Page 5

CRINOLINE : A REAL SOCIAL EVIL.

cent deaths resulting from the prevailing fashion among ladies of wearing extended crinolines—stronglv denounces this “ real social evil.” The “ kiss-me-quick” bonnets are declared by our physicians to be the cause of the great increase of maladies of the heads and eyes, —the rheumatism, the neuralgic pains, the decaying teeth, the inflamed eyes ; yet the bonnets are nothing to crinoline, which has become “ responsible for more deaths than any other fashion ever caused.” “ During these five years,” says our contemporary, “ we have done onr best to be patient under an evil which we hoped would be short-lived. We have had no comfort in social meetings, because no dinner table and no ballroom, no box or stall at the theatre, no carriage, and no boat, could accommodate both our families and ourselves. We have found it difficult and disagreeable to walk with our wives and daughters on pavements, and in lanes and country footpaths, made for people more naturally dressed. We have seen the choicest flowers in our gardens, and the most, cherished plants in our greenhouses cut off by the hoop. We have paid a fare and a half each for wife and daughters in travelling by coach in rural districts, and have lost all our pleasure on board steam-boats, from the anxiety of watching lest any of our party should sweep a child over into the lake or river. Our wardrobes afford no room for our clothes, because the women of the family want more space than they can get. For five years we have not had room to turn ourselves round in our own homes. The cost of female dress in a household when every gown and petticoat, from the wife’s to the cook’s, is twice as large as it ouaht to be, is no small consideration to the bread-winner of the establishment; and a graver one still is the effect on the morals, sense, and taste of the maid servants. In the recent report of the Education Commissioners there is an anecdote of a school filled by 150 girls, nearly all of whom would afterwards be domestic servants. Of these 150, scarcely one had a pocket-handkerchief, and scarcely one had not a hoop. After an. address by a lady who remonstrated against the folly, and cited Miss Nightingale’s excellent remarks on crinoline petticoats in her “Notes on Nursing,” many hoops disappeared, and pocket handkerchiefs became more common. The girls who did not yield had the example of ladies and their maids to plead for continuing to require yards of space apiece wherever they went. But what a prospect was before them! ’ The cook could not pursue her business without incessant personal danger ; the housemaid may meet the fate ot other housemaids, and be burnt to death upon the hearth ; and the nursemaid is more likely than not to push some one of the children off a footbridge, or a river side path, or from the causeway into the road. It is now a question whether we can be justified iu permitting a practice which we were anxious to keep our tempers with as a nuisance, but which is now recognised as dangerous to life. It would be a public service if somebody would publish a list of the known casualities from this cause. Besides the deaths by fire there have been many by crushing under carriage wheels and in machinery anil in narrow spaces where a women reasonably dressed would be in no danger. There have been cases of actual disembowelling from the gashes inflicted by broken steel springs and hoops. There have been drownings, wounds, crushings, bur-

nings —many torturing modes or ueaiu ; auu n, no wonder that juries and coroners now appeal to the sex to cease their subornation of murder. Our country'vvomen are apt to follow a fashion abjectly, we are told, because they have a horror of appearing independent in their judgment about external appearances, and of earning the name of being ‘ strong-minded women. Has it never occurred to them what dreadful strength of mind it must require to uphold a fashion which will inevitably cause the death by torture of a certain number of persons before the end of the year ? We are told that the imagination of women are too strong for their judgment; and that they are carried away by an idea. We should rather say that it is from the defect of imagination that they err in this case. If they could once see a girl in the agonies of burning, and hear her shrieks ; if they could once encounter the little procession carrying a child to the hospital, his back broken by a lady’s petticoat having swept him under the wheel of a dray ; if they could see a factory worker caught by the skirt, and crushed before the shaft could be stopped, they would gladly wear any shape of gown for the rest of their days rather than be responsible, in the millionth degree, for any more such intolerable spectacles. But who is to move ? There are ladies, and not a very few, who have throughout declined making themselves

foolish and raischevious; there are millowners who have interdicted crinoline in their factories, and hospital authorities who insist on rational and inoffensive dress in the wards. But who will introduce a change in places of less grave occupation—at home, and in scenes of public resort ? Surely we may look for this to the first lady in the land. She has, never exhibited the extreme of that or any other fashion, and it must naturally be a consideration with her, that whatever mode she adopts will be exaggerated by others. When her daughter was on fire, some years since, from her hanging sleeve catching the flame as she was sealing a letter, the Queen adopted in the royal laundry' the mode of starching muslins which prevents their ouniino- dangerously ; and in multitudes of private houses the example has been followed. If it had been as veil known in America the home of the poet Longfellow would not now have been desolate, and the six ballet dances at Philadelphia, whose fate has shocked us all, would have been living still. If the Queen were known io discountenance, practically and expressly, the fashion of hoops which renders it but too easy to set women and children on fire, and impossible to put it out, the evil would immediately disappear from our drawingrooms—presently after from the farmhouse, the shop, and the schoolroom-andere long from thekitchcnand the workhouse. Meantime, a coroner’s jury has pointtol out to our countrywomen a responsibility which we ',rpt will, of thei* PWP free tts

as to ready to follow the royal example which wo anticipate : or, if that should be wanting, to act without it in that sphere of home in which every English matron is a queen.” . ♦

A young lady named Carter, residing in ‘London, was standing before the fin: the other day, when her dress ignited, and she was so dreadfully burned that she died next day. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death, but strongly recommended that, from the numerous fatalities which had occurred in all classes of female society, the present fashion might be immediaiely abandoned. The Deputy Coroner agreed with the jury, and thought, at least in the house, such acquirement of fashion might be dispensed with. A distressing and fatal accident occurred in the Continental Theatres Philadelphia, on September the 14th. As some female members of the crop de ballet were dressing for a ballet introduced into a representation of the Tempest, one of them named Gale, in standing upon a setee to reach down her dress, was accidentally set on fire by the flame of a gas-jet. One of her sisters —there were three of them—endeavoured to extinguish the flames, but in the effort her own clothes were ignited. The third sister ran to the rescue, and she also was set on fire. In a frantic state they rushed into au adjoining room filled with ballet girls, whose gauze also caught fire, and in a state of extraordinary terror some of them ran down stairs and on to the stage, while others leaped from the windows into the adjoining street. All of them were more or less severely, some of them frightfully, burned, and the result was that six of them died within a few hours of the accident having occurred, and four more were not expected to survive.

CRINOLINE IN EXKTER-IIA.LL. To the Editor of the Evening Mail. Sir, —I have applied for some reserved seats for the oratorio of Elijah both at Mr. Mitchell's and at Mr. Sams’s libraries, and was told there are none to be had. On inquiry I ascertained the somewhat amusing fact that nearly 400 seats have been sacrificed to —crinoline! The hall holds 3,000 seats, of 16 inches each ; but the present fashion requires 18„ and reduces the number of sittings by 370 or 375. When Handel produced his Messiah for the benefit or a charity in Dublin the managers are reported to have requested the ladies to dispense with hoops for the occasion. Might not the precedent bo followed on the 22nd to enable a greater number of persons to witness the wondrous performance, and to add nearly £4OO to the charities in aid of which Madame Lind-Goldschmidt has consented once more to leave her retirement ? I beg to subscribe myself, Sir, you obedient servant, Oct. 17., Mnsicus.