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Corsets and Conception: Fashion and Demographic Trends in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Mel Davies
Mel Davies
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
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Extract

It is generally accepted that declining birth rates in most Western countries after the late 1870s2 were preceded by declining marital fertility among the middle classes. Though some scholars have suggested that the general decline was due partly to the working classes' later emulation of the middleclass family size “ideal,” no hypothesis has been presented to explain satisfactorily the downward trend in middle-class fertility. The most widely accepted explanation is that the “great depression” of 1873–96 lowered the middle-class standard of living, which in turn led to a concomitant decline in the birth rate as middle-class couples tried to retain or improve levels of consumption and status. However, recent research indicates that the great depression may not have been anywhere near as severe as earlier scholars have implied. But even if the middle classes believed that they were experiencing a declining standard of living, surely many years of supposed deprivation would have been necessary to jolt their class psyche to the realization that the future was to remain forever gloomy. And when some authorities who promoted the great depression hypothesis also claim that the middle-class fertility decline commenced in the early 1870s, before the onset of the great depression, then the argument becomes even more suspect. If the work of other authorities, who have received less coverage in demographic literature, is considered, then it is not the great depression but the 1850s and 1860s—the period of mid-Victorian prosperity—that should be supported as heralding the decline in fertility.

Type
Women in Society
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 611 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1982

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References

My appreciation to A. Krishnan, I. vanden Driesen, P. Statham, and especially R. T. Ap- pleyard and R. N. Ghosh for helpful comments on the final draft. This acknowledgment in no way implicates them in the conclusions of the essay. For the illustration shown in Figure 3, grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint from the book: The Unfashionable Human Body by Bernard Rudofsky. Copyright c 1971 by Bernard Rudofsky. Published by Doubleday and Co., Inc.

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11 See note 7 above.

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17 Peel, , “Manufacturing and Retailing,” 115Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Woman'sBody, Woman's Right (New York: Grossman, 1976), 24, refers to Victorian prudery, which interfered with the communication of traditional means of birth control from one generation to another, and also of psychological fears associated with the required handling of the genitals necessary for the more effective forms of birth control.Google Scholar

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21 Stopes, , Contraception, ch. 12.Google Scholar

22 Habakkuk, , Population Growth, 56Google Scholar, referring to Lewis-Faning, E., “Report on an Enquiry into Family Limitation and Its Influence on Human Fertility during the Past Fifty Years,” Papers of the Royal Commission on Population (1949), (London: H.M.S.O.), I, 6–8.Google Scholar

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24 The same kind of arguments could also be presented for the American scene—the oppressive Comstock laws appear to have retarded dissemination of birth control materials from the early 1870s, and the Bradlaugh-Besant case appears to have had little impact in the United States. Fryer, , Birth Controllers, 228, notes that Margaret Sanger, the American birth control campaigner, did not hear about the Bradlaugh-Besant case until she came to Britain during World War I.Google Scholar

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27 Habakkuk, , Population Growth, 61 (emphasis added)Google Scholar; Coale, , “Decline of Fertility,” 17–18, lists various explanations for the general birth decline but emphasises that the recent Princeton studies on European demography provide little evidence of a common explanation for the fertility decline.Google Scholar

28 There is a substantial literature on fashion history and the following list represents only a selection of those used in this study: Cunnington, C. Willett and Cunnington, Phyllis, The History of Underclothes (London: Michael Joseph, 1951)Google Scholar; Waugh, Norah, Corsets and Crinolines (1954; 2d impr. London: Batsford, 1970)Google Scholar; Ewing, Elizabeth, Fashion in Underwear (London: Batsford, 1971)Google Scholar; Bell, Quentin, On Human Finery (London: Hogarth Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Fischel, Oskar and Boehn, Max VonModes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century as Represented in the Pictures and Engravings of the Time, 3 vols. (London: J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton, 1909)Google Scholar; Berman, Elizaveta Maksimovna, Russkii Kostium 1750–1917, 5 vols. (Moscow, 1960–1972)Google Scholar; Wills, Gordon and Midgley, David, eds., Fashion Marketing:An Anthology of Viewpoints and Perspectives (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973)Google Scholar; Evans, Mary M., Costume Throughout the Ages (Philadelphia, London, Chicago: J. B. Lippincott, 1930)Google Scholar; Cunnington, C. Willett, English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (London: Faber & Faber, 1937)Google Scholar; Leighton, John [Luke Limner], Madre Natura Versus the Moloch of Fashion, 4th ed. (London: Chato & Windus, 1874)Google Scholar; Yarwood, Doreen, English Costume from the Second Century B.C. to 1952 (London: Batsford, 1952)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Marian, Female Costume in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Roach, Mary Ellen and Eicher, Joanne Bubolz, Dress, Adornment and the Social Order (New York and London: J. Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar; Gibbs-Smith, Charles H., The Fashionable Lady in the 19th Century (London: H.M.S.O., 1960)Google Scholar; Halls, Zillah, Women's Costume 1750–1800 (London: London Museum, 1973)Google Scholar; Rudofsky, Bernard, The Unfashionable Human Body (London: Rupert Hart-Davies, 1972)Google Scholar; Bradfield, N., Historical Costumes in England from the Eleventh to the Twentieth Century (London: George S. Harrop, 1938)Google Scholar; Hall, Carrie A., From Hoopskirts to Nudity: A Review of the Follies and Foibles of Fashion, 1866–1936 (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1946).Google Scholar

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32 Richardson, Jane and Kroeber, A. L., “Three Centuries of Women's Dress Fashions,” in Fashion Marketing, Wills, and Midgley, , eds., 61, table 5.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 54–56, Table 3 (year-by-year means 1787–1936), and 57–58, Table 4 (similar information for years 1605–1786).

34 Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 110–11.Google Scholar

35 Ewing, , Fashion in Underwear, 140.Google Scholar

36 “An Article on Corsets,” Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, 68 (1863/1864), 527.Google Scholar

37 “The Use of the Corset,” Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 6 (1846), 102Google Scholar; the same sentiment was expressed by Hastings, Caroline E., M.D., in Dress-Reform: A Series of Lectures Delivered in Boston on Dress as It Affects Health of Women, Woolson, Abba Goold, ed. (1874, Boston; rpt. New York: Arao Press, 1974), 203–4Google Scholar; Stockham, , Tokology, 104, stated that even a “snug” fit caused distortion.Google Scholar

38 As many nineteenth-century commentators pointed out, there was no less reason to suffer torture through corseting than to suffer bound feet, or bones pushed through the nose, or bandaging to elongate heads, or other distorting practices witnessed in other societies. See, for example, comments by Flower, William Henry, “Fashion in Deformity,” The Popular Science Monthly (October 1880), 721–42.Google Scholar

39 Ballin, , Science of Dress, v, 161.Google Scholar

40 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1929; 2d impr. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949), 172.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., 184; Limner, , Madre Natura, 26–28,37–40, 84, also refers to the “natural” form of the European peasantry, and compares this with the “multitudious” generation of middle-class women who were compressed with tightlacing.Google Scholar

42 See, for example, Duffin, Loma, “The Conspicuous Consumptive:Woman as an Invalid,” in The Nineteenth-Century Woman, Her Cultural and Physical World, Delamont, Sara and Duffin, Lorna, eds. (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 26–56Google Scholar; Roberts, Helene E., “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman,” Signs, 2:3 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deidre, Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, Glass Mountain Pamphlet no. 2 (New York: Feminist Press, 1973), 15–44Google Scholar; Rees, Barbara, The Victorian Lady (London and New York: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1977)Google Scholar, ch. 8; Banks, and Banks, , Feminism and Family Planning, 12, 66.Google Scholar

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44 Ibid., 565.

45 Ibid., 564.

46 Ibid.

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48 Ibid., 574–75.

49 Branca, , Silent Sisterhood, 67.Google Scholar

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54 Quoted in Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 182Google Scholar, from ”Symposium on Women's Dress,“ Arena (New York), 6 (October 1892), 632.Google Scholar

55 Quoted in Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 108Google Scholar; see also Pearsall, , Worm in the Bud, 120Google Scholar; for similar beliefs in the United States see Haller, John S. Jr., and Haller, Robin M., The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 153–58Google Scholar; Kellog, J. H., Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease, Girlhood, Maidenhood, Wifehood, Motherhood (London: International Tract Society, 1895), 257–61.Google Scholar

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61 For example. Limner, , Madre Natura, 70–73Google Scholar, lists ninety-eight diseases, and names the physicians who attributed such diseases to tightlacing; Witkowski, Gustave Joseph, Tetonia: anecdotes historiques et religieuses sur les seins et I'allaitement comprenant t'histoire du décolletage et du corset recueilliespar le Docteur G. J. Witkowski (Paris: Maloine, 1898), 302–9Google Scholar, also provides a substantial list.

62 For example, see illustrations of advertisements in Ewing, , Fashion in Underwear, 141–42.Google Scholar

63 Exposure of the framework through worn cover materials could cause serious irritation, and the breaking of steel ribs could cause dire injuries to the wearer. For comments on the adverse effects of buying ready-made stays, see Ballin, , Science of Dress, 167Google Scholar; and Pears' Cyclopedia, 4th ed. (1931), 899.Google Scholar

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72 Quoted, in Waugh, , Corsets and Crinolines, 136.Google Scholar

73 The Lancet, 1 (23 05 1868), 675; 1 (18 February 1871), 256; 1 (25 June 1887), 1296; 2 (17 December 1887), 1236; 1 (22 March 1890),662, 1316; 1 (19January 1895), 168Google Scholar; see also Roberts, , “Exquisite Slave,” 561–62.Google Scholar

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75 There are a great number of references in respect of such complaints. See, for example, Wood, , “Fashionable Diseases,” 28–29Google Scholar; Roberts, , “Exquisite Slave”; Ballin, Science of Dress, 149–67Google Scholar; Richardson, Benjamin Ward, “Dress in Relation to Health” (Lecture delivered at the London Institution on 1 03 1880), Gentlemen's Magazine (1880), esp. 473–74Google Scholar; Jenny, J. J., “Clothing and Hygiene,” Ciba Symposia, 6:9 (12 1944), esp. 1908–9, 1970–75Google Scholar; The Penny Magazine (28 February 1833), 77–80Google Scholar; Treves, , “Influence of Dress,” 502–4Google Scholar; Flower, William Henry, Fashion in Deformity: As Illustrated in the Customs of Barbarous and Civilized Races (London: MacMillan, 1881)Google Scholar; Stockham, , Tokology, esp. 264–65Google Scholar; Treves, , Dress of the Period, 15–23Google Scholar; Van Dearborn, George, “The Psychology of Clothing,” Psychological Monographs, 26:112 (1918), 17–18Google Scholar; Newton, Stella Mary, Health, Art and Reason: Dress Reformers of the 19th Century (London: John Murray, 1974)Google Scholar; Wilberforce-Smith, , “Corset Wearing,” 731–36Google Scholar; DrReveille-Paris, , “The Use of the Corset,” Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 6 (1846), 102–4Google Scholar; The Lancet, 1 (5 01 1861), 5; 1 (6 June 1868), 729–30; 2 (11 July 1874), 60; 1 (17 March 1888), 518; 2 (22 September 1888), 580Google Scholar; Stevenson, Sarah Hackett, The Physiology of Woman Embracing Girlhood, Maternity and Mature Age, 2d ed. (Chicago: Cushing Thomas, 1881), esp. 86Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 302–9Google Scholar; Limner, , Madre Natura, 70–73Google Scholar; Atkinson, Paul, “Fitness, Feminism and Schooling,” in Nineteenth Century Woman Delamont, and Duffin, , eds., 117Google Scholar; Kellog, , Ladies' Guide, 243–64, 487–90.Google Scholar

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77 For the important contributions made to gynecology by Thomas, Theodore Gaillard (1831–1903)Google Scholar, see Ricci, James V., One Hundred Years of Gynaecology, 1800–1900 (Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1945).Google Scholar

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79 Ibid., 175, 377, 384, 399, 434; this is also mentioned as directly linked with tightlacing in The Lancet, 1 (6 06 1868), 729–30Google Scholar. see also Haynes, Arvilla B., M.D., in Dress Reform, Woolson, , ed., 110–11Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 308Google Scholar; Stockham, , Tokology, 273Google Scholar; Wertz, and Wertz, , Lying-In, 110Google Scholar; Kellog, , Ladies' Guide, 539.Google Scholar

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81 Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 436, 467.Google Scholar

82 See text at note 71.

83 Quoted, in Cunnington and Cunnington, History of Underclothes, 88.Google Scholar

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85 Ibid., 69–70; Banks and Banks, Feminism and Family Planning, 11–12.Google Scholar

86 Smith, Daniel Scott, “Family Limitations. Sexual Control and Domestic Feminism in Victorian America,” Feminist Studies, 1 (1973), 40, 44Google Scholar; The idea also receives support from McLaren, , Birth Control, 100–101Google Scholar, when he talks of the new and assertive “domestic feminism.” Branca, , Silent Sisterhood, 117 also sees woman's role as crucial in the decision to limit the family, attributing the reasons to economic factors.Google Scholar

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88 Pearsall, , Worm in the Bud, 225–30.Google Scholar

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90 Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 46Google Scholar; tightlacing and problems associated with menstrual flow are mentioned in The Lancet, 1 (5 01 1861), 5.Google Scholar

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96 The Lancet, 1 (11 02 1893), 311; 1 (18 February 1871), 256Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 307Google Scholar. Kunzle, , “Dress Reform,” 575, on the other hand, appears to see positive benefits, in that corseting might have been a “decisive deterrent against overeating which was widely recognized as a scourge of the Victorian Middle Class.”Google Scholar

97 Frisch, , “Population,” 23Google Scholar; Duffin, , “Conspicuous Consumptive,” 39Google Scholar; Renbourn, E. T. and Rees, W. H., Materials and Clothing in Health and Disease: History, Physiology and Hygiene: Medical and Psychological Aspects: with the Biophysics of Clothing Materials (London: H. K. Lewis, 1972), 11.Google Scholar

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100 Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 375, 411–12Google Scholar; see also Abt, Isaac A., ed., Pediatrics (Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders, 1923), 1134–35, 1137, who links tightlacing with malformation of the uterus and expulsion of the foetus before term.Google Scholar

101 Banks, , “Historical Sociology,” 63.Google Scholar

102 See text at notes 79 and 100.

103 Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 154–58Google Scholar. Falling of the womb and derangement of menstrual discharge, plus pelvic effects caused by tightlacing, are also recorded in Lyman, Henry M., Jones, H. Webster, Fenger, Christian, Belfield, W. T., The Practical Home Physician and Encylopedia of Medicine …. Australian, ed. (London: World Publishing Co., n.d., but circa 1880), 885–87Google Scholar; Gregor-Robertson, J. M., The Household Physician: A Family Guide to the Preservation of Health and to the Domestic Treatment of Ailments and Disease, with Chapters on Food and Drugs, and First Aid in Accidents and Injuries, 4 vols. (London: Blackie, 1891), II, 473–76Google Scholar; Haller and Haller, Physician and Sexuality, 171–72.Google Scholar

104 Taliaferro, , “The Corset,” 685.Google Scholar

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid., 691.

107 Witkowski, , Tetonia, 308, quoting physicians Doreste and Cruveilhier.Google Scholar

108 These observations are made on the basis of the research and advice kindly provided by Bruce, Neville, Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, University of Western Australia.Google Scholar

109 For an interesting modern parallel, see Keshishian, John M., “Anatomy of a Burmese Beauty Secret,” National Geographic, 155:6 (06 1979), 798–801, where it is shown that neck coils lead to atrophied neck muscles as well as to displacement of the rib-cage.Google Scholar

110 Bousfield, , Sex and Civilization, 167–69.Google Scholar

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112 This problem is highlighted in Kellog, , Ladies' Guide, 111–12.Google Scholar

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One interesting speculation suggests that if the stillbirth rate increased in the second half of the nineteenth century, then the true fertility level among the middle classes might not have been greatly affected. This argument has been proposed in relation to a decline in the birth rate in working-class Stockport where it has been shown that, though family size declined from the 1850s, the fertility rate did not decline significantly until the 1880s: “It is uncertain whether a decrease in the number of small children reported in the census really resulted from a limitation of births or … from a rising death rate of children who died before they could be counted.” See Litchfield, R. Burr, “The Family and the Mill: Cotton Mill Work, Family Patterns and Fertility in Mid-Victorian Stockport,” in The Victorian Family: Structure and Stresses, Wohl, Anthony S., ed. (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 193.Google Scholar

118 Zola, Émile, Fécondité (1899)Google Scholar, quoted in Kunzle, , “Dress Reform,” 571–72Google Scholar. Kunzle also quotes Ellis, John, The Great Evil of the Age. (189?)Google Scholar; see also Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 105Google Scholar; the situation is alluded to in the magazine, The Queen (1880)Google Scholar, quoted in Waugh, , Corsets and Crinolines, 144–46Google Scholar; Ballin, , Science of Dress, 158.Google Scholar

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123 Ibid., 50. See also pp. 76–83, where contemporary estimates varied from one in three to one in ten. Note similar estimates in England in Greaves, “Observations,” who quotes “Dr. Whitehead” and “Dr. Granville” as reporting one miscarriage in seven conceptions, and one in three, respectively.Google Scholar

124 Whitehead, , On Causes and Treatment, 253Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 308, who recorded abortions from tightlacing as “une éventualité bien connue.”Google Scholar

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126 Ibid., 53, 276, n. 15.

127 Ibid., 72.

128 Smith, , “Family Limitations,” 43–44, noted that in the United States spontaneous abortion was not an infrequent occurrence.Google Scholar

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133 That the large family came to be seen as undesirable is recorded in contemporary comment; Boyd Carpanter, Bishop of Ripon, and Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, exclaimed disapprovingly that small families were the result of “fashionable marriages,” and Bernard Vaughan lamented in The Sins of Society (1906), that “present up-to-date parents ridicule the notion of having big families, so that instead of being proud, society is becoming ashamed of owning to a nursery full of children” (quoted in McLaren, , Birth Control, 207–8).Google Scholar

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