WOMEN IN UNIFORM

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXI, Issue 8833, 14 October 1942, Page 1

WOMEN IN UNIFORM

HISTORY OF THE ATTIRE NUN’S HABIT WAS FIRST ADOPTED IN THE DARK AGES With women under the impulse of war, rushing into uniform all over the Commonwealth of Britain it might be assumed the woman’s uniform was a new, war-born thing. Women’s uniform is however one of the oldest of garbs, pre-dating the glamorous male’s finery by centuries. Woman’s first uniform represented, above all things, peace. It was the nun’s habit.

When women put aside worldly ambitions and pleasures 'to enter convents they also abandoned their interest in fashionable and attractive frocking to accept modes of clothing which proclaimed them as part o£ a community rather than individual persons living independent lives; but there was another and very practical reason for adopting uniform. In the unsettled conditions of the Dark Ages and even in the succeeding Middle Ages it was dangerous for women to go abroad without escort. Any woman travelling alone might well have her motives suspected and be molested. Thus the nuns, whose mission made it imperative for them to go out among the people, wore a uniform habit which came to be recognised so that they were able to venture beyond thenconvent walls without causing scandal and risking interference. The laywoman of those days—the gentlewomen at least —had too many interests at home to permit of much liberty even were it possible, for the homes of the nobles were the forerunners of present-day boardingschools. To the nobleman’s home were sent the daughters of the minor gentry in the neighbourhood to be trained in housecraft and needlework by his lady. Though on? word spinster is probably the only one which has remained feminine (and even that is divorced from its original meaning), all words ending with the Anglo-Saxon feminine affix ster denoted occupations followed by woman; note maltster, huckster, etc. The lady of the castle taught all such crafts to her pupils, who, when they married and assumed management of homes, in turn instructed their waiting woilien and servants, becoming themselves mistresses of more humble domestic schools. The actual servants and peasant women attached to such establishments would he required to go outside the walls of their mistresses’ gardens, and, like the nuns, they were provided with uniforms for their protection. Those uniforms were the originals of Mrs Suburbia’s maid’s frilled apron and cap band which, paradoxically, she discards before stepping out for her afternoon off- ’ Readers of Chaucer who have raised

their eyebrows at the presence of the Abbess in the tavern’s merry gathering could not be more surprised at the circumstance than the pilgrims of Chaucer’s time would have been had they met in so public a place a lady not in nun’s garb.

It was so usual and necessary for nuns to have such liberty that records tell of the abbess of a conventual order punishing her irresponsible young postulants for outstanding their lave in much the same way as the matron of a modern hospital will reprimand her probationers if she find them returning to the nurses’ quarters after their late leave has expired.

In Florence Nightingale’s day women were still so little accustomed to freedom outside their homes that the group of nurses which Miss Nightingale organised would be aware of the criticism and misunderstanding they might provoke were their mission not proclaimed by some badge or uniform.

Miss Nightingale received her first nursing experience from nursing Sisters in France, and her prim modification of the flowing mode of the day shows a distinct conventional influence rather than a desire to follow the rules of hygiene which dictate the styles worn by her modern successors in nursing institutions. To-day the nurse, like the maidservant, changes her uniform for a smart frock when she plans to go out among people now used to the sight of women travelling unescorted and unchaperoned. The habits of nuns belonging to old-established orders are reminiscent of medieval women’s costumes, but since 1914 72 different religious orders for women have been founded in which the Sisters do not wear the conventional nun’s habit, though many

of them,have a uniform type of costume conforming to the style of the present day.