their own hands; and the crinoline must be left outside the walls. But there is no such general rule in kitchens, servants’ halls and schoolhouses; and dozens of young women of the working class perish yearly, because of the circumference of the ladies’ dresses.
As for me, I took my part at once in my own house. In the kitchen no hoop or crinoline is permitted; and this is easy to enforce, because in the parlour nobody desires to wear either. The servants must do as they choose out of doors; and if they annoy fellow-worshippers at church, I cannot help it: but I will not have my family fires made and my family dinners cooked by women so dressed as to invite destruction by burning. What I want to know is whether the responsible women of this country ever think of this class of their sisters; whether they are unaware that the same feelings which make them imitate empresses and princesses in style make our servant-maids imitate ladies? I want to know whether the slavery is more degrading and absurd in one rank than in another; and whether the sense which should despise it ought to be expected among maid-servants while ladies are incapable of it? I want to know whether any lady in England really expects the cottager’s wife to go buying patent starches, used in royal laundries, in order to render safe her child’s cotton frock for school, or Molly’s calico petticoats, when she goes to be scullion at the Squire’s? If ladies are still burnt by the dozen in muslins and gauzes, are housemaids and cooks to be scolded for being burnt in calico and print?
Enough! A few illustrations, and I have done.
Servant-maids have not the benefit of the now necessary training in sailing about, with skill and grace, in houses not built with a view to the present mode of dress. They preserve a greater simplicity of manners; but they are in more danger of accidents. I like to have to guard neither my flower-pots and china from my guests, nor my guests from my fire-bars: and I certainly prefer the carriage and manners of a waiting-maid who can move swiftly and deftly about my drawing-room to those of any lady in a barrel whoever enters it. Further, I prefer the cheerfulness of a handmaiden who never needs to think of danger within my walls to the levity of damsels who, when I catch their skirt in its sweep of the bars, thank me carelessly with the observation, “I have no wish to be a victim to crinoline.” From some comments which reach me from without, I am satisfied that other people,—well-bred persons of both sexes,—are under the same impression. If it exists, wherever there is opportunity to note such a contrast, and where we all mentally pronounce vulgar the death of a poor scullion or chambermaid who perishes by crinoline, what ought those ladies to feel who have tempted their humbler sisters to their death, and who then despise them for it?
On a Sunday morning, M. A. E, a nurse, was busy at the kitchen fire, when her hoop turned upon a fire-bar. (She was certainly no pupil of Florence Nightingale.) She was instantly wrapped in flame.—A nursemaid,—a young creature of sixteen,—E. L, was stooping down to look at a picture in a new book which one of the children wanted to show her, when her skirt went into the fire behind, and she was on fire all over. She rushed into the garden, where two men put out the flames. Whether she died we know not; but there was no expectation of her recovery.—That a woman who had been forty years cook in one family should die such a death seems strange; but there are certainly ladies in the peerage as old as M. F who wear crinolines. This woman was kneading her dough very vigorously, with her back to the fire, when the action drove her petticoats against the grate; and, after a day and night of agony, she died.—M. A. W was preparing dinner for her master, a London physician, one evening between five and six, when her crinoline caught fire. She rushed into the street, where there were plenty of hands to tear off the burning fragments, wrap her in rugs, put her into a cab, and take her to the Westminster Hospital. She was burned all over; and it was at the inquest on her body that the jury expressed their “disgust and horror” at the wearing of crinoline by domestic servants.—S. B was a nursemaid, in the service of Mrs. P, who was in the nursery when the poor girl thrust her hooped petticoat into the fire in reaching for a pin from the mantel-piece. Her mistress was much burned in trying to help without doing much good; but two men rushed in from the road, and put out the flames—too late.—One Sunday, a servant girl of nineteen from Pimlico was allowed to spend the day with her friends; and she went dressed in muslin. On her return she struck a light with a lucifer, which she threw down, forgetting that her muslin skirt interposed between it and the hearth. Her master took her to St. George’s Hospital as soon as her burning clothes were torn off; and there she lingered for some days, and died.
Some of these domestics were “much regretted.” I trust there may be more to regret them now that their cases have been thus grouped, and the responsibility for their fate brought home. It is said that the ladies of Austria have begun the opposition to crinoline, in the name of their sex, very smartly. They will countenance no theatre where it is worn. Of course we may conclude that they do not wear it themselves. There are Englishwomen who never have worn or countenanced it. There must be more capable of the requisite courage, if once convinced of the reality of the call for it. A few hundreds of such sensible and resolute women in any country would presently reduce the leaders of fashion to change their mode. How many more of my countrywomen will be burnt alive, crushed, disembowelled, or drowned before this is done?
FROZEN IN.
NARRATIVE OF A SHETLAND SEAMAN, FROM HIS OWN RECITAL.
