Clothing, Society and Culture in Nineteenth-Century England, Volume 2

Clare Rose,Vivienne Richmond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000558791
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In recent times clothing has come to be seen as a topic worthy of study, yet there has been little source material available. This three-volume edition presents previously unpublished documents which illuminate key developments and issues in clothing in nineteenth-century England.

NOTES

[Tonna], The Wrongs of Woman

1. not a few … excellent rules: the reference to fair-minded employers may be intended to deflect attacks from the fashion trades as Tonna does not give any way of identifying them.
2. The changeableness of fashion: the attack on fashion is consistent with Tonna’s Evangelical principles. The Christian Lady’s Magazine, vol. 5 (1836) had previously carried correspondence denouncing excessive attention to dress as ill befitting Christian women; ‘Correspondence on Female Attire’, pp. 59–60 and ‘On Female Attire’, pp. 222–7.
3. mourning … short a time as possible: both the haste of mourning orders and working with dark mourning materials were identified as particular problems by the 1843 Second Report; Alexander, Women, Work and Representation, p. 42. For commercial responses to mourning, see Volume 1, Introduction and p. 17.
4. general mourning: mourning following the death of a member of the Royal family. See Walkley, Ghost in the Looking Glass, p. 22, and pp. 377–85 in this volume.
5. authorised Commissioners: Tonna quotes from the 1843 Second Report.
6. pride, pomp and frivolity: Tonna attributes the abuses of the fashion industry to the sin of pride in middle-class consumers, as well as the covetousness of employers, and links them to anti-Slavery campaigns.
7. It is not uncommon … morning: this and the whole section up to the asterisk is taken directly from the 1843 Second Report.
8. The name of Ann King: the older sister in Tonna’s fiction, who dies of consumption.
9. Frances King … goal: this is a summary of the fate of the second sister in Tonna’s fiction.
10. female devotion and fidelity … of the lowlier classes: Tonna conflates middle-class women and working-class adults in her attempt to emphasize their status as devout Christians.
11. May God in His rich mercy deliver: Tonna subverts the readers’ expectations by showing that it is they, not the sexually fallen seamstresses, who are in need of deliverance.

Reynolds, The Seamstress

1. It was a bed-chamber: at this stage in the narrative Virginia Mordaunt is renting an attic room in the same building as Mrs Jackson. Another room in the building is occupied by Miss Barnet, a former needlewoman who has chosen prostitution as offering a better standard of living.
2. gloss: the dress is made of silk velvet, an expensive fabric that needed careful handing during stitching.
3. what to charge: the lack of a generally accepted scale of payments for dressmakers was both a symptom and a cause of their lack of bargaining power. By contrast, skilled male tailors had negotiated a ‘log’ regulating payments, although this was often flouted by mass manufacturers.
4. take the dress somewhere: middlemen were known for creating delays in fetching and returning work that cut into outworkers’ time.
5. fashionable milliner … dress: the dress has been cut out to the measurements of the client by a bespoke dressmaker who, instead of having it made up in her own workrooms, has sent it out to a subcontractor. Virginia Mordaunt has spent about thirty hours over two days hand-sewing the dress.
6. half a sovereign: ten shillings and sixpence.
7. Young person … task: asking an outworker to carry out duties that should have been done by a paid employee is a form of exploitation.
8. omnibus fare … sixpence: this interchange establishes the heroine’s scrupulous honesty and self-reliance.
9. Portland Place: this is about a mile from Great Russell Street; sixpence is a high price for this distance.
10. neatest ankles … prettiest feet: in the 1840s fashionable ladies’ dresses hung over the feet, but working women wore their dresses shorter. This exposure carries a frisson of indecency, and also marks the ambiguous class status of the heroine.
11. behoof: benefit.
12. Royal Arms … Royal Highness: the display of the royal arms and the motto ‘By Appointment to Her Royal Highness … ’ was (and is) strictly controlled as it acted as a powerful form of advertising. This is included by Reynolds to implicate the social elite in the exploitation of outworkers.
13. French name … Frenchwoman: this practice oftenappears in fictional accounts of the fashion trade as an index of the snobbery of both clients and businesswomen; see pp. 31–8 and pp. 81–91.
14. no husband … lover: the extra-marital relationship indicates the moral laxity of the establishment.
15. bonnets … flowers: these activities indicate the range of the milliner’s business, selling ready-made caps and evening head-dresses (turbans); making dresses to clients’ measures; providing mail-order services and fashion advice for provincial clients; and selling trimmings to smarten up existing bonnets or garments.
16. Janus-face: the two-faced Roman god of doorways and of beginnings, indicating Miss Dulcimer’s hypocrisy and her role as the interface between the businesses’ clients and workers. As a ‘forewoman’ or workroom manager, she would have worked her way up from being a seamstress.
17. owes … pressed for: elite clients might be expected to settle debts on ‘quarter days’ (every three months), when they received income from investments and rents. The sum of £600 is equivalent to several years’ wages for the forewoman; middle-class male clerks might earn £100 a year. Taking legal proceedings to recover debts would damage the firm’s reputation, and might be unsuccessful if a husband denied responsibility for his wife’s purchases. See Rappaport, Shopping For Pleasure, pp. 48–70.
18. Grosvenor Square: about a mile from Portland Place.
19. Queer: in the sense of odd; to ‘be in Queer Street’ was to be in financial difficulties.
20. Marquess of Arden: a key figure in the melodramatic plot, the current lover of Miss Barnet and future wooer of Virginia Mordaunt, who reforms him from his licentious ways.
21. abigail: a colloquial term for a lady’s maid, supposedly from the name of a character in The Scornful Lady by Beaumont and Fletcher, 1610.
22. Hall or waiting room: the room in the house where tradespeople waited to be seen; Virginia has already wasted an hour waiting while other tradespeople were seen before her.
23. 1l 1s: at 21 shillings, each yard of this fabric cost the equivalent of a working man’s weekly income.
24. silk … trimmings: the lace ‘bertha’ around the neckline, and trimmings on the sleeves and skirt, would have been hand-made at this date. The silk at 4s. per yard would be for lining the velvet dress; this indicates the extravagance of the Duchess, as cotton or linen linings were more usual.
25. Something strange: the Duchess implies that Virginia is falsely claiming to be an employee of Madame Duplessy in order to defraud her of the £42.
26. Shock: the Duchess recognizes the name as that of the illegitimate daughter she had given up for adoption before her marriage. The attempt to conceal this secret from her husband leads her into blackmail and ultimately death.
27. damask resting-place: cheeks, by analogy with damask roses.
28. Would … alive: the characterization of seamstresses as unmarried orphans is a typical feature of the literature, even though Mayhew’s enquiries showed that many of them were living in family units (see pp. 43–7).
29. Minories: a poor area north of the Tower of London, a centre for clothin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Abuses in the Clothing Trade
• The Dressmaker as a Social Problem in Mid-Century
• Emigration to Australia as a Solution to Abuses in the Clothing Trade
• Abuses in the Clothing Trade after 1900
• The Daily News Sweated Industries Exhibition 1906
• Reforming Practice: Amateurs take over from Professional Dressmakers
• Reforming Dress for Women
• Attitudes to the Bloomer in the 1850s
• Aesthetic Reforms
• Reforms in the 1880s
• Oscar Wilde and Dress Reform
• Public Reactions to Rational Dress
• Reviews of Rational Dress Society Bazaar, ‘The Coming Dress’, 1891
• The Viscountess and the Pub Landlady: Testing Tolerance of ‘Rational Dress’
• Dress Reform for Men
• Co-Operative Women and Ethical Consumption
• Mourning Dress
• Liberty and ‘Artistic’ Consumers
• Clothing the New Woman
• Notes