Gill Hoffs discovers how nineteenth-century women’s fashions could prove lethal at sea t’s generally accepted now that corsetry and the pursuit of a wasp-waisted hourglass silhouette had serious impacts on the internal organs and general health of many Victorian women, and the vast bell-shaped crinolines were acknowledged as a hazard near open fires, cigars, and machinery even then. What I hadn’t realized was how lethal this fashion proved at sea. When researching the history of a forgotten shipwreck for my book, The Sinking of RMS Tayleur: the Lost Story of the Victorian Titanic, I learned about British fashion in the mid-1850s and how the trend for tiny waists proved fatal for more than a hundred women in one shipwreck alone. Mid-Victorian women wore up to 16 layers of clothing, including bloomers, stockings, garters, chemise
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(undershirt), corset, corset cover (like a fitted shirt), the hooped frame for a crinoline skirt, petticoats (several would be worn to keep warm in cooler weather) and a near floor-length skirt, a blouse, highnecked under a long-sleeved bodice with a long row of tiny buttons to do up (buttonhooks were commonly used) or hooks and eyes, jacket, and a shawl or mantle (a cape-like garment worn over the shoulders). Women and girls from the lower classes usually wore petticoats stiffened with quilting, or sewed a tube stiffened with horsehair near the hem of their skirt in place of an expensive hooped frame. The natural shape of a woman’s body was distorted by the whale-boned rigours of their undergarments and the voluminous bell-shaped crinoline skirts popular at the time.
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This would have been a heavy outfit when dry, let alone soaking wet.
On the move Nowadays, comfort is the key for travel, and the safety of garments is taken for granted. This was not always the case, and the rise in the number of women who travelled by sea during the mid-1800s, and the subsequent fatalities, makes this clear. The potato famine in the Hungry Forties, combined with the push to colonize far-flung lands with British subjects and the Gold Rushes in California and Australia, led to an increase in sea travel by men and women of all ages. Whole families sailed from crowded living conditions, poverty and disease to fresh starts and fresh air, wide open spaces and the possibility of a decent wage. Although many travelled w w w. d i s c o v e r y o u r h i s t o r y. n e t
Social History Deadly Dresses! safely to their destinations, contemporary papers were filled with news of ships lost and bodies washing ashore sometimes up to a year later. Leaky vessels, bad weather and dodgy sailors resulted in the loss of 893 ships and 1,549 people in the waters around Great Britain and Ireland in 1854 alone.
Odds against them What struck me most about the Tayleur in a time when shipwrecks were common but adequate provision of lifeboats was not, was the demographic of the people who died. Out of an estimated 650 people on board, only 290 survived, despite the ship wrecking within a few metres of an inhabited island in Dublin Bay. Of the 70 children and more than 100 women travelling on the ship, only three of each survived, compared to 284 men. This works out at around 59 per cent of the men making it to land compared to 4 per cent of the children, and less than 3 per cent of the women. Some of this can be attributed to female passengers being principal
caregivers for the children on board, soothing them in their berths as they suffered the intense misery of seasickness, or falling prey to the symptoms of nausea, dizziness and vertigo themselves. When the ship wrecked against a cliff it was the middle of the day, but many of the passengers and crew were below decks, feeling too ill to move. Dozens of women tried to escape with their families and friends down the ropes and wooden spars that offered a precarious lifeline to the rocks at the base of the cliff looming over the wreck. The waves washed some of the travellers from the deck, others from the ropes and rocks ‘black as death’ as they screamed for help, which never came. A cabin passenger from London later told the Leeds Times, ‘I saw one fine girl, who, after falling from the rope, managed to get hold of another one, which was hanging from the side of the ship, and which she held on to for more than a quarter of an hour, the sea every moment dashing her against the side of the ship, but it was impossible for us to lend her any
AN 1851 PARISIAN fashion plate showing flounced bodices and sleeves.
A YOUNG girl with a doll and her mother, all displaying contemporary fashion, 1857.
assistance. Someone got a spar out, by which several got onshore; but it soon broke, and now might be seen hundreds hanging to the bulwarks [sides] of the ship, each struggling to get onshore. I saw one young woman hanging on the middle of the rope for some time by her two hands, but those pushing to get onshore soon sent her to her doom.’ Men, women and girls edged their way to the middle of the ropes, their weight pulling the rough hemp down so it sagged dangerously, the spray soaking the females’ skirts and winter stockings. There they hung until those behind pushed them out of the way or their arms weakened and they fell into water thick with wreckage and bodies. The incoming tide and stormy weather made it all but impossible for those in the water to swim the short distance to safety, even if their clothing let them.
Laces and layers I asked Jennifer Garside, of Wyte Phantom Corsetry and Clothing, how easy it would have been to strip off all or some of the layers in a panicked crowd while the ship lurched towards the cliffs then sank in approximately 20 minutes. ‘The issues I see immediately would be the sheer weight of the garments once they got wet, long skirts tangling round ankles, small fiddly fastenings and trying to undo them with cold hands. The corset, although it would be less of an issue than dragging yards of long wet skirt, would still restrict both movement w w w. d i s c o v e r y o u r h i s t o r y. n e t
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Arabella Maria: ‘Only to think, Julia dear, that our mothers wore such ridiculous fashions as these!’ Both: ‘Ha! ha! ha! ha!’ A FEW SHORT years after the sinking of the Tayleur, this cartoon from the 11 July 1857 issue of Harper’s Weekly (New York) shows two young women, wearing full crinolines, viewing a painting of a woman in early nineteenth-century new-Grecian attire – actually more of their grandmothers’ era than their mothers’.
and breathing to some extent.’ Some of the women had their cash sewn into their undergarments, including one lady who, unbeknownst to her fellow passengers, had £3,000 secreted in her corsets and stays. This would not have been obvious to anyone else, except the maid lacing her into her underwear. A few extra layers of paper and gold would make little difference to the bulky formal curve visible to their fellow travellers, but the extra weight only added to the lethality of the emigrant’s outfits. The problem of petticoats and corsets hindering women’s escape from sinking ships was not a new one. Another emigrant vessel, the Isabella Watson, sailed with 33 passengers and crew and sank near the coast of Melbourne, Australia, in 1852, two years before the Tayleur set out for Australia. The press reported one woman having her flannel petticoats cut off by her husband. Other women copied her and all but seven, who drowned with three men when the lifeboat overturned, survived.
Fortune in disaster Occasionally, women’s clothing saved their lives at sea. The Amazon caught fire and wrecked off the coast of 20
France a couple of months after the Isabella Watson slipped beneath the waves. One brave passenger, Miss Smith, grabbed her petticoat as she escaped her cabin, putting it on over her nightdress before tying one end of a rope to the side of the ship and the other to her arm, and jumping overboard. She dangled high in the air from the side of the Amazon as the fire raged towards her, then jumped into a lifeboat as it passed below. Despite severe bruising to her chest from her rough landing on a bench in the little boat, Smith took her turn alongside the men in rowing the lifeboat and tied her petticoat to an oar hoisted aloft as a makeshift distress signal until a Dutch ship rescued them 48 hours later. Another example of women’s clothing proving helpful in a disaster is in the wrecking – again, by fire – of the Golden Gate in 1862, 15 miles off the coast of Spain. Many of those aboard escaped the flames only to perish in the sea, but one woman made it to a lifeboat only to find it leaked. She cut up her dress and stuffed wads of it in the gaps, along with a man’s handkerchief, and it was enough to keep them afloat until they were saved.
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The Tayleur wrecked too close to land and in too rough a sea for her lifeboats to remain whole in the water; the passengers let one down anyway and watched it smash to pieces, adding to the chaos around them. Of the three women who survived, at least two were in their nightgowns, allowing them a greater range of movement than those constricted by a corset and tightly-tailored shoulders, and meaning they carried less waterweight, too. They lost almost everything but survived, and for that they were truly grateful. Even in a time when shipwrecks were a daily occurrence, the fatalities on RMS Tayleur had set the world abuzz, with the tragedy making headlines around the world. Sadly, it would be several more decades before fashions changed and women were free to wear more practical outfits. I
The Sinking of RMS Tayleur: The Lost Story of the Victorian Titanic, by Gill Hoffs, is published on 30 January. Discover Your History readers can order it for £15.99 (20% off RRP), with FREE UK postage and packing. • Call 01226 734222 and quote code 281730 or visit www.pen-and-sword.co.uk and enter the code.
Discover more • For a pictorial guide and information on how women in the late Victorian era got dressed, visit www.knowlesville.com/vintage/ getting-dressed.html • To see contemporary images of Victorian dresses online, view the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection at http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ landingpage/collection/p15324coll12 • For information about Wyte Phantom Corsetry and Clothing, visit www.rosenkavalier.co.uk/ wytephantom/wytephantom4.htm, call 0774 686 4354, or email wyte_phantom@hotmail.com • The Fashion Museum in Bath has a vast collection of historic and fashionable dress. Visit www.museumofcostume.co.uk
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