The History of Underclothes

by C. Willett

  ‘Pair of troues Dr. /6. Pair of Dr. of Drill 1/6. Two pairs of Dr. & buttons 1/3. Pair of Dr. & buttons /9.’ (‘Troues’ = ‘trouser’; ‘Dr.’ = ‘drawers.’)

  From various sources we have collected references to men’s drawers in this period made of the following materials:

  Calico; cotton; worsted (thick and ‘extra-thick’), and ‘thick China drawers’ (i.e. of China silk). Some short drawers were made of white drill, but we have been unable to find a specimen and we do not know their construction.

  3. CORSETS

  That the man of fashion wore corsets is sufficiently apparent from portraits, such as that of Count D’Orsay by Maclise. The ‘pinched-in waist’ is described in Pelham by Bulwer-Lytton (1828) who was himself labelled by Tennyson as ‘the padded man who wears the stays.’ According to Fraser, Disraeli’s stays were visible through the back of his coat. It was, in fact, the correct mode of the beau whom, by this date, it was no longer correct to call a ‘dandy.’6

  Each lordly man his taper waist displays,

  Combs his sweet locks and laces on his stays,

  Ties on his starch’d cravat with nicest care,

  And then steps forth to petrify the fair.7

  4. NIGHTCLOTHES

  The nightshirt had a plain turned-down collar, buttoned at the neck, the centre opening extending a considerable way down the front. The garment appears to have been otherwise plain. A nightcap with coloured tassel was usual. We have Mr. Pickwick’s authority for stating that the night-cap was tied beneath the chin with strings.

  WOMEN

  I. THE CHEMISE

  Usually of homespun linen, this was an unshaped garment with a low square neck edged with a narrow cambric frill. A specimen dated 1825 (Gallery of English Costume, Platt Hall, Manchester) is a yard wide, with short sleeves gathered over the shoulders and set in with large gussets under the arms (figure 55).

  2. PETTICOAT

  This was often made with an attached bodice, in the form of a stomacher-front. Others were buttoned behind and had low necks edged with lace or insertion, the neck line being pulled in by a draw-string. The border of the evening petticoat would be ornamented, a specimen at Platt Hall having a deep edging of scalloped and embroidered cambric above which are sixteen rows of heavy piping to the knee (figure 55).

  The short petticoat (i.e. without a bodice) hung from the waist.

  Materials: cotton for day and cambric or muslin for evening.

  With the steadily expanding skirts we may safely assume that towards the end of this period the petticoats had increased in number, and that, in winter at least, they were often of thicker materials than formerly.

  FIG. 55. (left to right) CHEMISE, DATED 1825: PRINCESS PETTICOAT, c. 1820: NIGHTDRESS, DATED 1825

  In 1827, in Paris, ‘petticoats are stuck out with whalebone,’ a mode which did not affect this country till twenty years later.

  3. DRAWERS

  The use of this garment was steadily spreading, so that by the end of the 1830’s it had become generally accepted by women of any social pretensions. It had, in fact, become a garment of class distinction, not, of course, to be worn by the lower orders. ‘Many ladies when riding wear silk drawers similar to what is worn when bathing’ (1828). For riding on horseback the French fashion for wearing pantaloons under the habit was appearing in this country by the 1830s.

  Pantalettes were sometimes worn (figure 57). A French journal of 1824 remarked that ‘Drawers of percale are extremely fashionable at present, for children, young girls, and even ladies. In the country they are absolutely essential.’ In England, however, the ankle-length garments, though usual with children, were seldom worn by adults in society, though they are not uncommon in pseudo-Victorian stage ‘revivals’ to-day.

  4. CORSETS

  Tight-lacing became progressively more severe, partly to accentuate the much-admired ‘small waist,’8 and partly as a moral restraint correcting the looser habits of the Regency. Some lamented the change. ‘The general character of youth should be meek dignity, chastened by sportiveness and gentle seriousness. Ladies are implored to maintain something of the ease and grace attached to the once dominant Grecian costume, against all the newly-sprung up Goths and Vandals in the shape of stay-makers who have just armed themselves with whalebone, steel and buckram to the utter destruction of all native-born fine forms’ (1824). ‘At Paris they recommend the corsets of Delacroix, fitted with paddings to fill up any deficiency. Young ladies may be seen with their breasts displaced by being pushed up too high and frightful wrinkles established between the bosom and the shoulders . . . a ridiculous fashion by means of which the body resembles an ant with a slender tube uniting the bust to the haunches which are stuffed out beyond all proportion’ (1826).

  FIG. 56. WOMAN’S HABIT-SHIRT, PLEATED AND TUCKED, c. 183O-4O

  FIG. 57. PANTALETTES, DATED 1834

  That the habit was spreading to the middle class may be gathered from a letter from a tradesman (1828): ‘My daughters are living instances of the baleful consequences of the dreadful fashion of squeezing the waist until the body resembles that of an ant. Their stays are bound with iron in the holes through which the laces are drawn so as to bear the tremendous tugging which is intended to reduce so important a part of the human frame to a third of its natural proportion. They are unable to stand, sit or walk, as women used to do. To expect one of them to stoop would be absurd. My daughter, Margaret, made the experiment the other day; her stays gave way with a tremendous explosion and down she fell upon the ground, and I thought she had snapped in two.’ He adds, ‘my daughters are always complaining of pains in the stomach.’

  A book of the toilet (1837) informs us: ‘Women who wear very tight stays complain that they cannot sit upright without them, nay are compelled to wear night stays when in bed. . . . When the young lady spends a quarter of an hour in lacing her stays as tight as possible, and is sometimes seen by her female friends pulling hard for some minutes, next pausing to breathe, then resuming the task with might and main, till after perhaps a third effort she at last succeeds and sits down covered with perspiration, then it is that the effect of stays is not only injurious to the shape but is calculated to produce the most serious consequences.’ (Female Beauty, 1837.)

  Demi-corsets, some eight or ten inches high, with light whalebones, were worn when performing domestic work by day; when arrayed in her best pair she bent at her peril.

  It should be noted that the eyelet-holes began to be strengthened with metal rings in 1828; and that in 1830 ‘an elastic stiffening of a vegetable substance has been invented, instead of that spiral brass wire now used for shoulder straps, glove tops, corsets, etc. . . . it is said to be made of India rubber.’ ‘Patent caoutchouc instantaneous closing corsets; this novel application of India-rubber is by far the most extraordinary improvement that has ever been effected’ were advertised in 1836.

  5. THE BUSTLE

  This was becoming larger, either as a crescentic pad stuffed with down, often double or treble, and tied round the waist (figure 58); or made of gathered rows of stiffened material, or of whalebone.9 A down-stuffed bustle, dated 1833, is in the Cunnington collection, Platt Hall, Manchester.

  ‘The diameter of the fashionable ladies at present is about three yards; their bustles (false bottoms) are the size of an ordinary sheep’s fleece. The very servant girls wear bustles! Eliza Miles told me a maid of theirs went out one Sunday with three kitchen dusters pinned on as a substitute.’10 Another writer declares, ‘nothing can be in worse taste than the monstrous and ill-shaped bustles we commonly see sometimes placed altogether on one side; and sometimes so irregular that they look as if some domestic utensil were fastened under the dress.’11 We are also informed that the bustle ‘has the drawback of being liable to slip out of place, being situated in a region on which the fair wearer is unable to keep an observant eye.’ That this was not uncommon may be gathered from the loud comment of the schoolgirls on their form-mistress: ‘Miss Trimmer’s
bustle’s on crooked !’12

  FIG. 58. BUSTLES: (top pair) EARLY 19TH CENTURY; (below) DATED 1833

  FIG. 59. WOMAN’S-NIGHT-CAP, c. 1819–33

  6. NIGHTCLOTHES

  So far as is known these do not show any material change. A linen nightdress, dated 1825, in the Gallery of English Costume at Platt Hall (figure 55), is plain and unshaped, and has a falling collar with a frill which is continued down the front opening as a border. The sleeves are gathered into a cuff, which is fastened by a hand-made button.

  FIG. 60

  * * *

  1 Inventory of a gentleman’s linen. August 1829:

  Day-shirts, 23.

  Nightshirts, 5.

  Night-caps, 9.

  Flannel drawers, 2 pairs.

  Calico drawers, 4 pairs.

  Inventory of the same in 1837:

  Day-shirts

  19

  Nightshirts

  3

  Double night-caps

  3

  Single ditto

  2

  Thin drawers

  2 pairs

  Thick drawers

  2 pairs

  Both inventories show a disproportionate number of day-shirts (which probably included evening shirts). The amount of laundry work entailed by ruffled shirts would have been immense; an exclusive luxury of the well-to-do. Incidentally the inventories include a vast wardrobe of suits and outer garments, indicating a gentleman of wealth. (The total absence of (detached) collars and of under-vests is to be noted.)

  2 The Gentleman’s Magazine of Fashion, 1830.

  3 The Art of Tying the Cravat, 1828.

  Cf. ‘Having tied on a clean shirt collar’—Theodore Hook: Sayings and Doings, 1828.

  4 Jack Hopkins, the medical student in The Pickwick Papers (1836–7), wore a ‘blue striped shirt and false collar.’

  5 Essex County Records.

  6 ‘Dandy has been voted vulgar, and Beau is now the word.’—Disraeli: The Young Duke, 1829.

  7 The English Spy, 1825.

  8 ‘French corsets producing a graceful and sylph-like toumure’ were advertised at 25/– in 1834.

  9 Advertisement: ‘Worked hair sleeves and bustles, black and white, prepared whalebone covered’ (1838).

  10 Mrs. Carlyle : Letters, 1834.

  11 Mrs. Walker: Female Beauty, 1837.

  12 Surtees : Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities, 1839.

  VII

  1841—1856

  THE art of costume seldom develops at a uniform rate of progress; it exhibits phases of activity interspersed with periods of apparent quiescence. Such quiet interludes are, of course, illusory, for changes, especially below the surface, may be going on preparatory to an upheaval of the visible landscape. Of this nature was the period of the 1840’s and early 1850’s.

  Outwardly fashions seemed to pause, as though content to have established on a solid foundation a style of costume indicative of middle-class prosperous gentility. In this it appeared to be more important to express class distinction than sex attraction; or rather the evidence of social rank and wealth was in itself a sufficient form of attraction.

  The gentleman’s interest in his shirt as a garment of display steadily declined, indicated partly by its stabilized form, and even more by the diminishing exposure of its surface. In estimating this we must not be misled by fashion plates emanating from French sources, even though having English captions, and appearing in English magazines as illustrations of ‘the latest London fashions.’ If, however, we compare them with actual photographs and portraits of Englishmen (photographs becoming available in the 1850’s), we find that there was a considerable difference in taste, and that the English gentleman usually avoided the lavish display of picturesque shirt-front by day, such as decorated the subjects of Louis Phillippe and Napoleon III. This country was then too busy with commerce for its prosperous menfolk to cultivate romantic attitudes in dress. ‘The age of ruins is past; look at Manchester’ was Disraeli’s comment. An Englishman’s income made a stronger impression than his shirt-front.

  Moreover in the early 1850’s an innovation, presaging profound social changes, appeared gradually in the gentleman’s garb; thanks, in part at least, to the development of railway travelling it was becoming necessary to have for informal occasions a less exacting type of costume, namely, the ‘Tweedside,’ or forerunner of the ‘lounge suit,’ and with it a shirt and collar designed for ease and movement.1

  Modern progress of this sort scarcely as yet affected the other sex. The lady remained a static creature, more concerned, for the time being, in demonstrating her social importance than her physical charms. That she was not entirely unconcerned with the art of sex attraction in its more primitive forms may be gathered from contemporary advertisements2 recommending artificial ‘bust improvers’ and ‘lemon bosoms’; so too the wedding dress of the period was specially padded over the ‘figure’ for that important moment in a young lady’s career.

  But progress was mainly marked in the skirt, whose substructure was steadily expanding. A complex system of fortifications in depth, and immense circumvallations of petticoats kept the wearer at arm’s length from contact with the outer world. It was as though she had become petrified into a monument which, however impossible it might seem, continued to expand. By 1851 the lady was indeed a Great Exhibition. Well might she have supposed that further progress was impossible; the gigantic structure had reached a size which seemed to defy the skill of the dress-architect to increase; mere petticoats could no longer support the burden of Atlas. But necessity is the mother of invention, and by the end of this period nothing could have prevented the introduction of some kind of mechanical support—to wit, the artificial ‘cage crinoline.’

  Although the 1840’s were not conspicuous for striking fashion changes, they nevertheless introduced a number of ingenious items employed in underclothing. For example, the domestic pin, which previously had its head attached round the end of the shank by a separate process, was made with head and shank all in one, from 1840 onwards. The ‘three-fold’ linen button, introduced in 1841, had the advantage over the pearl button of being able to withstand the mangle. The hand-made Dorset thread button, in which cotton thread was sewn across a wire ring, radiating from its centre, had disappeared by 1830.

  The 1840’s also saw the introduction of a new undergarment for both sexes, namely the woollen vest, or ‘under-vest,’ worn next the skin, and for women, the camisole. It appears, however, that young ladies strongly disliked the maternal recommendation of wearing ‘wool next the skin.’ Their existence was notably sedentary; they took little outdoor exercise, and in the home gentility forbade active domestic work. Leading the life of a caged canary they were generally in delicate health, necessitating much ‘wrapping up’; additional undergarments seemed the obvious remedy, and the making of them (in private) a very suitable occupation. The sewing machine had not yet been invented, so they had to become experts at the needle.

  A less formal generation might suppose that to carry on her person about a stone’s weight of clothing, mostly undergarments, would have been sufficient protection for the most fragile of her sex, yet, curiously enough, there were frequent complaints, in the 1840’s, that young ladies were insufficiently clad, both for propriety in evening dress and for health in the day. The Handbook of the Toilet (1841) ascribed the English habit of ‘catching colds’ to draughts and imperfect closure of windows, especially in the bedroom. It was sufficient if, in warm weather, the ventilator of the grate was left open. ‘Our fair countrywomen fear water; this, with insufficient clothing (a practice arising from the silly vanity of appearing small-waisted) are the true causes.’ The undergarments worn ‘at least over her vital organs, are totally inadequate, and bare shoulders in evening dress is largely instrumental in starting consumptions. The chest should be carefully guarded but the garments should be porous, and for that reason leather waistcoats and rabbit skins should be avoided. Flannel should be worn next the skin a
ll the year over the whole body and arms and as low as the middle of the thighs, but alas! very few young ladies will do so. Ladies should not be sparing of flannel petticoats, and drawers are of incalculable advantage to women, preventing many of the disorders and indispositions to which British females are subject.’

  These admonitions were coupled with stern condemnation of the practice of tight-lacing, especially with stays lacing downwards, ‘producing injurious pressure upon those forms which Nature has given women as fountains of nourishment for their offspring; the downward pressure may even produce protrusion of the intestine, which has spoiled the prospects and fortune of many a girl who has brought it upon herself.’ While the medical profession declared ‘tight lacing and sedentary languishing are the greatest enemies to female health,’ the Church was even more explicit. ‘Tight lacing, from a moral point of view, is opposed to all the laws of religion.’ A more powerful reason, however, for abandoning the habit came presently from fashion itself; by the early 1850’s the skirt had become so vast in dimensions that by comparison any waist looked small, and many fashionable young women no longer bothered to wear stays at all. That particular feature of attraction seemed unimportant in contrast to the imperative need for expanding yet further the social symbol of the huge skirt.

  MEN

  I. THE SHIRT

  The stereotyped pattern for day use gradually developed into one with fine lines of vertical tucks on each side of a narrow central panel. The amount of shirt-front exposed depended chiefly on the design of waistcoat, which was sometimes cut to expose a considerable depth, revealing two or three shirt-buttons (figure 61); studs often replaced buttons by the end of this period, and might be linked together by a slender gold chain (known as ‘tethered studs’). In other cases the front was plain; often the waistcoat was cut high, and where a large cravat was worn practically the whole of the shirt-front was hidden. The morning dress of the Marquis in Hillingdon Hall3 is thus described :—‘An immense pearl pin fastened the folding ends of a lilac satin scarf with white flowers, almost concealing the elaborate workmanship of his shirt front.’ For informal occasions he wears ‘a pink-striped shirt.’