FATAL FASHIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 221, 28 July 1864, Page 6

FATAL FASHIONS.

(From the " Morning Star." Fighting against fashion is always very up-hill' work. There is 110 visible tribunal to which we can appeal lo rescind the law enacted by no visible power. Yet that law is not the less strengent in its operation because 110 one can tell who made it. Constitutional resistance to it is rendered impossible by the total absence of agencies, and open insurrection against it is beset with enormous diflicultics. Its prescriptions are sometimes absurd, and often inconvenient; but they are submitted to, if not. always without grumbling, at any rato without overt opposition. Tliis passive obedience to an unseen despotism is one of the phenomena of civilisation. Common sense seeks in vain for a reason why tlie cut of a coat or the shape of a bonnet should be determined by any authority save the will of the individual wearer. Yet the man who persisted in having liis garment made in a certain form after his tailor had informed him that it was " not worn this season," would give evidence of very exceptional independence of character ; and a woman who adhered to her intention of ordering a certain style of dress in the teeth of an oilicial intimation that it was " unfashionable," ought, if discovered, to be s'ent to the British Museum and allotted a glass case to herself in the collection of curiosities. But however irrational we may deem this slavish deference to the tyranny of custom, we can neither ignore its existence nor hope for its speedy extinction. Tlie time is probably very far distant when people will be allowed to attire themselves in the uitmner tliey deem most becoming, without being looked upon as ridiculous, simply because their dress difi'er from that of their neighbors. Moreover, we are quite aware that as matters at present stand even a suggestion from tlie rougher sex with regard to feminine apparel is looked upon as an invasion of prerogative, iso long as questions of taste are alone involved we may be content to observe the silence thus imposed upon us. Wo may deem that some fashions are supremely ugly, but at the same time admit that it is no al!air of ours. We may even do violence to our own opinion, and profess to admire that which we detest for tlie sake of pleasing those to whom we at e indebted for an enormous share of life's eiyoymcnts. But (hero are circumstances under

wliii h remonstration is not only allowable but becomes n duty. When a style of dress ig i n Vogue which is obviously fraught with peril to lift- ab=te?>. Hon from protest against it would be a crime: Oftiand over again We have had to chronicle deaths tb^ which eiiorir.ouslj- extended skirts arc alone loblains; Within h very brief spUco of time two similar fatal casualties have lately occurred, dillering in f onn though in euch case the result was mortal. Last Monday week Sirs. Hackett met her husband at the Fencliurch-street Station, and then went home by the train to Hackney Witt, he followed her on foot. When Mr. ITaekett reached the corner of Uedger's»rove, where lie reticles, the first thing he saw was a great blaze of light shining through the window of his own"house. It was his wile who was enveloped I hi a sheet of flame. Upon her arrival the pooil ladv had jyon'ft u> 1 3 ....... . . I - J 0 . auu t&Ken ou net dress, and while she was engaged in some toilet operations her wide hoops tilted against the bars of the grate, and her clothing instantly took fire. Slie stood for a moment-terrified, then rushed up the staircase a pyramid of flame, shrieking in agony. She was wrapped in blankets, but all in-vain. I.'iie f:r-j raged fiercely within the huge cage in which it was imprisoned, and, moreover, its si/o cS.UYed her straggles. t<? displace the cohering which had been placed upon her, letting the fresh air to feed the blaze. It seems probable that before help reached her she was too severrly burnt to have survived ; but, at any-rate-, within a few hours alter her admission to the- hospital she died in frightlul torture; and oi a newly-made bride, young, blooming and light-hearted; ilothmj* but a charred corpse remained. Only a week afterwords there occurred at Carlisle another catastrophe equally full of horror. Among a parly of friends who had gone last Monday 011 a visit of inspection to the biscuit factory of Messrs. Joseph Robinson and Co. in that city was Miss Mary Kelson, and she was accompanied by Mr. Burrows, to whom she was to have been married within a few weeks. The party had not been more than two minutes in the mill, and were still examining the basement story, when a piercing shriek from Miss ]Nelson, who had tarried slightly in the rear, made them pause in terror. Her attention had been attracted by ail Archimedian screw, Which was fenced by a brass rod, breast high j but when she stooped to look at it licr expanded skirts were caught by the machinery, and when her friends turned to look at licr it was rapidly drawing her into its grasp. Mr. Burrows clasped his betrothed round the waist, and strove to draw her back, but the steel of her hoops had been clutched by the wheels, and all his efforts were powerless. The engine dragged her out of her lover's arms, and whirled, her round and round before his eyes ; all her linibs were shivered into fragments, and her body was lacerated and mangled almost out of human semblance. It is too much to ask the women of England ro ponder over these two tragedies, and to trace each calmly to its source. There cau be no question that both these poor victims would have been alive now if they had not worn garments so expanded as to be wholly beyond their control. They could govern their own movements, but not those of their widespreading skirts ; and in each instance, death was the fruit of this incapacity. We say not a word with regard to the gracefulness of the prevailing fashion; if "want of symmetry were its only fault we should readily admit that this is a point upon which women have a right to form their own judgment. But we cannot concede their right to place their own lives in peril. Apart from the personal sinfulness of courting self-destruction, there is this consideration to be borne in mind—that each one of our couutrywomeil is the centre of a little circle of happiness, in wliicil all would be gloom without her sunshine. Father, husband, brother, or lover cherishes her as the source of his innocent joys, and the risks which slie voluntarily runs are to each a source of constant aiid terrible anxiety. Is it not worth a little sacrifice oh her part to set their minds at rest and quell the dread which haunts them perpetually now?