Bloomers.
Broadside Ballads
[Domestic]. (Bloomers, Amelia). The Bloomer Costume for Ladies. London: C. Paul, n.d. [ca. 1851].
One leaf, 9 ½” x 14”; printed on recto; chip to lower right corner with some loss to publisher’s address; paper worn but not weakened; occasional text faded; edges lightly chipped.
Rare broadside ballads lampooning Mrs. Amelia Bloomer and the costume which was her namesake: “Uncle Ned’s Description of the Bloomers” and “Ladies Who Wear the Breeches.” Also prints a portrait engraving of Bloomer and her husband, along with a brief biographical note and description of her costume.
Amelia Bloomer, American women’s rights activist and publisher of one of the first magazines devoted to women’s political issues (The Lily), caused a sensation in 1851 when she adopted a style of dress consisting of pantaloons under a parlor dress. Though it was first worn by her friend Elizabeth Smith Miller, Bloomer’s name became forever associated with the style after she promoted it in The Lily.
The new style was no mere fashion statement. Dress reform was an important issue in the 19th-century women’s movement. Dress for middle and upper-class women at the time was physically restrictive and dangerous to women’s health. Constriction caused by corsets and petticoats frequently damaged internal organs, leading to the development of many types of illnesses and disorders, including consumption and prolapsed uteri. Loose fitting Bloomers offered women a comfortable, practical, and healthy fashion alternative. The style was adopted by high profile feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and caught on quickly with many American women.
While the practical implications of the “Bloomer Costume” included greater physical mobility for women, the perceived threat of social mobility resulted in considerable public backlash. Social anxiety over the trend was expressed in a variety of forms of street literature, among them the broadside ballad. These were single sheets of newsprint featuring one or more narrative poems or songs dealing with topical subjects such as scandals, crimes, disasters, fads and fashions, usually in a satirical or editorial manner.
The pair of ballads featured on this broadside is no exception. Published in London they provide an English take on the arrival of the dubious American fashion. “Ladies Who Wear the Breeches” cheekily pictures Bloomer-clad women upsetting the balance of power in the domestic sphere:
Their husbands they will wop and squander all their riches
Make them nurse the kids and wash their shirts and breeches
as well as the social sphere:
The world is turn’d upside down, the ladies will be tailors,
And serve Old England’s Queen, and be soldiers and sailors.
“Uncle Ned’s Description of the Bloomers” imagines these same role reversals occurring at the upper limit of the social order:
The Queen rose in a fright as she lay in bed at night
And threw away her bustle, gown and shift
Then she danc’d in high glee sure a bloomer I will be
And she slipp’d on Prince Albert’s hat and shirt.
Such lampooning, along with the jeers and open hostility faced by many women in the streets, eventually persuaded Bloomer, Anthony, Stanton, and many other feminists to abandon the fashion, for they felt it turned attention away from other issues at the forefront of the women’s movement: suffrage, workers’ rights, and legal equality.
Though Bloomer is described in the biographical note as being “about twenty-eight,” she didn’t begin wearing the pantaloons until 1851, when she was already 33.
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