A GRUESOME FASHION.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8414, 13 January 1899, Page 4

A GRUESOME FASHION.

Tim women of San Francisco society are responsible for one of the most morbidly gruesome of fashionable lads. The American papers actually state that they have taken to wearing the human skin done up in fancy forms. — now as waist belts, now as purses, card cases, and other trifles ■which the fashionable woman daily and hourly handles and wears. The great ambition of a 'Frisco girl is stated to be a dressing case like one which a swell young bride carried in her hand when she started for her wedding trip. All the fittings, even to the flaps and the little straps, were niado of human leather mounted in gold, lledical students are said to supply their particular lady friends with this refuse of the dissecting room cut from amputated legs or tho backs of corpses. The favored ladies themselves get the skin tanned and prepared. After the process it is stiff, board like, and thick— as unlike the living human skin as possible. It makes into strong belts and is said to wear well in the form of a purse. As a rule, the soft down which covers the skin disappears, but when the skin is intended for a gentleman's card ease the hair is preserved in si manner which is reported to give the article a more revolting appearance than ever.