Rural Women's Wear

[Anna Allen]

Lately I've become more interested in working women's attire and I'm in search for pictures of women wearing their every day work clothing or books on women of the lower class. I'm posting this to see if anyone has any recommendations or places on the web with pictures or info they might be willing to share. I'm not really studying a particular area so much as just lower middle class clothing in general. So any suggestions are welcome!

Here's a picture I have of two girls that have some interesting bonnets in their hands. I haven't seen images like this too often, but they look like the style of bonnet from the 1840s-'50s. Really in love with these! Notice the long curtains. (Sorry the scan isn't very good. I'm not exactly sure who owns this image! I wish I could get a better look at it, though!)


This picture I found looks a lot like the bonnets in the picture above. I don't know too much about Shaker bonnets, but from what I can tell, it looks like it might be one.



Also found this cool image of a few Lowell Mill girls.

[MissMaggie]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Anna,
The book is English but I'm in love with "Victorian Working women" by Michael Hiley. Again, also English and covering a very wide time range but "Life below stairs" and "Not in Front of the Servants" are also very good and have some very nice images. The problem with working class women is that they rarely had their picture taken in their everyday dress. Another fun source is Robert Cruikshank's "The Greatest Plague in Life", I own an original copy of the book with all the plates still in and they are a hoot to look at. Not images, but fun drawings of nothing but English servants. You are going to want to look for "candid" photos of the period like these:

http://www.treasurenet.com/images/civilwar/CIVIL074.JPG

and

http://www.treasurenet.com/images/civilwar/CIVIL073.JPG

"Servant Women" is a great source for American women working as servants in the US though it doesn't have any images.

[albrandon]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Anna,

Unfortunately, because of their societal positions, the poor were possibly the least photographed group of the general population during the Civil War. There are a couple of photographic images in existence of women in camp which I feel adequately represent the lower to lower-working class. These can be found at the Library of Congress' website.

"Mrs. Fairfax" is one of my favourite representations of this. Although she is African-American, she represents the overall image of the lower-working class, primarilly demonstrating the type of clothing was most practical and affordable for any race of workers. She is labeled as a cook and laundress in camp and provides us with an excellent source.

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c20000/3c22000/3c22100/3c22103v.jpg

Undoubtedly the most well-known image of a woman in camp, the woman shown in the picture of the 31st Pennsylvania Infantry near Washington D. C. is a clear and self-explanatory primary source.

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g07000/3g07900/3g07983v.jpg

Some of my favourite places to get primary information and images are not photographs, but are political cartoons and contemporary artists' renderings. A few of these types of images, which I found while doing a quick search of the LoC archives are:

"Candidates for the Exempt Brigade" -- 1862

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?fsaall,app,brum,detr,swann,look,gottscho,pan,horyd,genthe,var,cai,cd,hh,yan,bbcards,lomax,ils,prok,brhc,nclc,matpc,iucpub,tgmi,lamb:4:./temp/~pp_Njhd::displayType=1:m856sd=cph:m856sf=3a10993:@@@mdb=fsaall,app,brum,detr,swann,look,gottscho,pan,horyd,genthe,var,cai,cd,hh,yan,bbcards,lomax,ils,prok,brhc,nclc,matpc,iucpub,tgmi,lamb

"Virginians going to the Commissary for Rations" -- 1864 sketch http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cp...0/3a26243r.jpg

"Incident in War for the Union" by Alonzo Chappel -- 1862

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c10000/3c10000/3c10900/3c10974v.jpg

and, my favourite of all. . .

"Your men bin stealing my hogs" by Alfred R. Waud -- 1863

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g06000/3g06700/3g06729r.jpg

I will dig around this week and look at some of my primary source materials and see what written sources I can recommend to you. I would also strongly recommend going to your local library or historical society and seeing what types of microfilmed / fiched period newspapers and periodicals they have access to. (What can I say? . . . I'm an archivist.)

It is exciting to see someone else anxious to represent the most underrepresented class in the hobby!

Amber L. Brandon

[Silvana Siddali]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Some wonderful images, thanks, Amber and Anna.

I found this recently in Godey's -- it's from August 1865 (p. 101), and is entitled "The Fair Haymaker." I can't for the life of me figure out what she is wearing, though. The bodice appears to have some sort of a frill down the center front, and her sleeves are loose and sheer. There's a straw bonnet lying on the ground next to the baby. I like the way she has her skirt kilted up.

[MissMaggie]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

It looks like she is pairing an older, perhaps hand-me-down, bodice with her skirt.

[ElizabethClark]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Or, it's an 1850s/1860s "Pastoral" image... those are not always based in fashion reality, but they look awfully romantic and lovely--an idealized portrait of the rural farm life, which, to many city-dwellers mid-century, was held up as more pure, more healthful, more moral, more romantic than the dirty, down-trodding urban world. The ideal of the "pure country life" is threaded all through mid-century fiction and other writing.

[calico_outlaw]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Fabric of Society is an English book but has a great chapter on working class, mainly women. There are great pictures and sketches most that relate to our time period.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

I tend to go along with Liz, that it's in the tradition of pastoral haymaking art, and may be trying to look a little "old timey" as well.

This page http://www.hayinart.com/000414.html is a quick overview of haymaking in paintings, and several show the separate bodice arrangement that was popular in the 1850s, and I wonder if it's supposed to be something like that? For example:

George Elgar Hicks. Haymaker raking, 1863


Also http://www.hayinart.com/images/419.jpg

and

Hugh Cameron. Going to the hay, 1858 http://www.hayinart.com/images/1185.jpg

The whole page is pretty interesting, putting in context the long tradition of depicting haymaking in general and women haymaking in particular, which The Fair Haymaker is clearly a part of.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[ElizabethClark]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Haymaking and dairy work, in particular, seem to be very "romantic" images in literature, as well as art. My current thought is that due to the ever-increasing industrialization of both Britian and the US, seeing the "pastoral" life as more innocent, pure, and good is a sort of coping mechanism to those leading increasingly busy and toil-filled lives. (Not that haying season or dairy work are particularly RELAXING for the workers...)

[Miss Elodie]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Regarding the "relaxing" portrayal of haymaking and other rural activities, sometimes they were actually treated as such; in mid-century London, the poor and working classes would frequently go on "working holidays" in the country to make a little extra money picking hops or strawberries and cutting hay. The atmosphere was celebratory and some participants, particularly young women, would dress up in their nicer clothes so as to be more attractive to the young men--rather like husking bees in this country. Granted, the reality even of these "fun" haymaking sessions was probably not nearly as idyllic as portrayed in paintings, the idea certainly attracted the attention of many mid-century artists!

[Anna Allen]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Wow! Great info! Those images that you sent, Maggie are fabulous. Thanks for the links! I must have missed that site!! Only wish I could get a little closer view on some of them... And of course the LOC is a great resource as well. I'll scour their images to see if I can spot anyone on the streets.

One of the main reasons for doing this "study" was after finding that image of the two girls holding their rather "old fashioned" looking bonnets. How many reenactors do you see walking around with those types of bonnets? Not many, if at all. You'll see A LOT of slat bonnets and corded bonnets, though. Now maybe slat bonnets and corded bonnets are more typical piece of headwear to be worn for work. I really don't know much about these shaker style bonnets with the long curtains. I was hoping I could find more images of them, but I'm finding it's really hard to find any images of the working class.

Basically the points I'm looking for:

-What materials were commonly used for work clothing?

-Common skirt lengths.

-Hoops, corded petticoats or no hoops at all?

-Under petticoats to wear over your white petticoat so you could pin your skirts up? Was this common or is it a reenactorism?

-Headwear

-Were slat bonnets and corded bonnets the only types of headwear to wear for work, or are there any other types of bonnets (such as the shaker bonnet) that were commonly worn?

-Were there other types of clothing to be worn for particular jobs? Such as the mill workers or the hay makers.

-Sleeves rolled up or left down while on the job? Would it make a difference if you were outside or inside? (I assume if you wanted to keep your skin white, you would leave them down. But then again, would it matter to the average working girl?)


Those are just a few thoughts on the top of my head. I'm not necessarily looking for people on here to answer those questions, but I'm just trying to lay out a few questions of my own so that when I am reading documents or looking at pictures, I have an idea of what I'm looking for. Some of these questions are hard to answer, because we only have a handful of documents that are available to us. But I figure I might as well dive in and start looking for clues, even if it takes me awhile. So if any of you know of even some diaries or journals where there's talk of lower class living, that would be helpful!

Sorry this is all a bit scattered. I'm just writing as I'm thinking about it. My hope is that I'll get a better grasp on the lower class and that I'll be able to understand them more than I have. :)

[Hank Trent]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Regarding the "relaxing" portrayal of haymaking and other rural activities, sometimes they were actually treated as such...

An example, not exactly of that but with the same tone, is in Mary Russell Mitford's The Village, first published about 1830. It's been reprinted in book form illustrated with lots of period paintings, which is where I first when to look for images of women haymaking, but better examples were on the hayinart site.

Here's how her chapter "The Haymakers" begins:

Amongst the country employments of England, none is so delightful to see or to think of as hay-making. It comes in the pleasantest season, amidst a green, and flowery, and sunshiny world; it has for scene the prettiest places--park, or lawn or meadow, or upland pasture; and withal it has more of innocent merriment, more of the festivity of an out-of-door sport, and less of the drudgery and weariness of actual labour, than any other of the occupations of husbandry. I have been used all my life to take a lively interest, and even so much participation as may belong to a mere spectator, in this pleasant labour; for I cannot say that I ever actually handled the fork or the rake.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[MissMaggie]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

Anna,
Judging from my own research I'll try and answer your questions. I love working clothing, its really only from some very kind nagging from my boyfriend that I even have anything to wear that falls under the leisure class category.


"-What materials were commonly used for work clothing?"

-I've seen photographic evidence for just about anything. A ladies maid is a working women after all. Wool and cotton would be most common.

-"Common skirt lengths."

All the full length images I've seen show anywhere from the top of the book to the ankle. That one image you posted of the Lowell Mill girls is the shortest I've ever seen evidence for. I have seen what amounts to quite a bit of photographic evidence of female mine workers in England and wales wearing pants with a really short apron/skirtlike thing that comes to about mid-thigh. It looks as though they kilted up a straight, flat fronted skirt of some kind.

-Hoops, corded petticoats or no hoops at all?

-Depends on the position. Mostly just petticoats I'd guess. The corded petticoat thing is all up to your own personal view on how widely used they were in the 1860's. A ladies maid or a maid who is much more visible would wear a small hoop. Though, taking cares to not look too fashionable.

-"Under petticoats to wear over your white petticoat so you could pin your skirts up? Was this common or is it a reenactorism?"

-I have only seen one painting of a women with her skirt kilted up. It is called "Shake Hands" by Lillian Martin Spencer. The women in the painting is wearing a colored quilted petticoat under her dress.

-"Headwear"

-"Were slat bonnets and corded bonnets the only types of headwear to wear for work, or are there any other types of bonnets (such as the shaker bonnet) that were commonly worn?"

-Most of my research tends towards servants and most of those I see was fashion bonnets from the 1850's. Maids that worked in front of their employers probably wore some sort of small white cap as a mark of service. Those women mine workers almost all seem to be wearing a kerchief tied at the nape of the neck.

-Were there other types of clothing to be worn for particular jobs? Such as the mill workers or the hay makers.

-Those female mine workers in their pants (if only There is a place I could portray it, would be kind of fun to make the "outfit")

-Sleeves rolled up or left down while on the job? Would it make a difference if you were outside or inside? (I assume if you wanted to keep your skin white, you would leave them down. But then again, would it matter to the average working girl?)

-Some of the mine workers are wearing short sleeves, some with long sleeves. The "Shake Hands" painting has rolled up sleeves. I think it really does all depend on the work. A parlor maid or ladies maid would always cover her arms. A maid of all work would roll them up. Oddly enough (or perhaps not odd), I have seen a number of portraits of maids of all work that are wearing open sleeves with no undersleeves. I have seen images of three paper mill workers and all of them are wearing darted to fit bodices with pagoda sleeves and no undersleeves (these dresses really look like they've been made from the Past Patterns darted bodice pattern sans trim).


Have fun with the research!

[MrsArmstrong]

Re: Rural Women's Wear

So if any of you know of even some diaries or journals where there's talk of lower class living, that would be helpful!

Sorry this is all a bit scattered. I'm just writing as I'm thinking about it. My hope is that I'll get a better grasp on the lower class and that I'll be able to understand them more than I have. :)

Anna,
I have occasionally found descriptions in diaries of people who are "traveling" through an area. I believe in Sarah Morgan's book she describes the clothing every so often.
People who travel leisurely tend to give better descriptions, so earlier diaries may be good sources, especially in specific areas of the country. People traveling through areas unknown to them may write better descriptions. One interesting thought is today we use photo albums, they wrote it down.
Susan Armstrong