Lace Makers

by Sandra Byrd

India has always been a place of tremendous creative expression, whether that be articulated through color, cuisine, music, poetry, or fine arts - even though the delicate and intricate patterns of henna (mehndi) application.  English lace making was a new art, introduced by missionary Martha Mault in 1821.  Her goal in teaching that art was to provide a stream of income to young, lower-caste women who had no other means by which to help lift themselves and their families out of poverty. According to Indian author Joy Gnanadason in her book, A Forgotten History, Mault also taught this craft to the slave girls to give them a means to buy back their freedom.

Martha Mault was from Honiton, an area in East Devon.  The Allhallows Museum of Lace in Devon recounts that lace making, which had probably spread from Italy throughout Europe, has been recorded in the area from the 17th century, perhaps earlier.  Wives of men who were paid low wages, men who fished or labored for a living, often made the lace as a way to supplement their family's income.  The museum explains that it can take up to five hours to make one square centimeter of lace, perhaps thousands of hours was required for a lace handkerchief or collar.

Queen Victoria

Honiton lace became very popular indeed when Queen Victoria selected it to adorn her wedding gown; although she was not the first royal to be married in white, she was the most popular and was married in the age of photography.  The tradition of white wedding gowns, adorned with lace, persists to this day.

Missionaries

Missionaries

Victorian era missionary to India Samuel Mateer recorded that, "Lace-making, introduced by Mrs. Mault in her boarding school at Nagercoil... has succeeded to perfection. Admirable specimens of fine pillow lace, in cotton and gold and silver thread, manufactured at the Mission school, were shown at Madras, and in the great London and Paris Exhibitions, in all of which they gained prize medals... A suggestion has recently been made that it might be more profitable, instead of merely copying and repeating, as has hitherto been done, the old standard English patterns and styles, to get up real Indian designs in accordance with the purest national taste and styles of art, so as to establish the Nagercoil lace as a purely indigenous production."

Self-Expression

Martha Mault, with permission from
http://britishempire.co.uk/

Profitable, as he used it in the era, did not simply mean that it would make more money.  It meant beneficial. It was a nod to her progressive nature that Mault encouraged the girls to adapt English methods to their native designs and tastes; they were not to be transformed into English lace-makers but taught to make lace in a manner which could express their own heritage and culture.  The Maults and other missionaries networked through the British communities to ensure there was a healthy market for the lace goods.

Gnanadason concludes, "There are thousands of women in their homes doing lace and embroidery as a cottage industry in all the villages of Kanyakumari District and other areas of the old L.M.S. in Nagercoil, Neyyoor, Marthandam, Parasalai, Trivandrum, Attingul, and Quilon. There are established Mission Centers which give out the work, receive them, and pay the women. The proceeds of these have gone into the building of Churches, Schools, Hospitals and Colleges besides supported work among women. The work offers a means to thousands of women who cannot be otherwise employed to subsidize their family income."

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To learn more about Sandra Byrd's new Victorian Gothic Romance series, Daughters of Hampshire, including Book 1, Mist of Midnight, please visit: http://www.sandrabyrd.com/

Death Becomes Her

by Sandra Byrd

Queen Victoria's Daughters, mourning

The Victorians cared very much about how outward appearances reflected inward sentiments and morality. One way they expressed themselves was through mourning clothes and jewelry. Queen Victoria famously wore black from the time of Prince Albert's death  in 1861 till her own death some 40 years later.  Mourning regulations were handy social signals to others. Deaths were announced via mourning stationary and sealed with black wax. Sally Mitchell, in Daily Life in Victorian England reminds us that, "Mourning clothes made other people aware of a loss and prevented intrusive personal remarks."

The Business of Mourning

According to Kristine Hughes (The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England),  early in the nineteenth century ladies' magazines "regularly featured fashion plates depicting proper funeral attire, along with articles detailing proper etiquette for the occasion." She goes on to tell us that linen drapers shops offered mourning departments. Why? It was big, big business.  Who didn't know someone who had died? Women were limited to the colors black and then grey, but might creatively use different fabrics, textures, and styling to indicate status, wealth, and personal taste. Hughes claims that, "one of the first categories of clothing to be mass-produced was mourning clothes." Believably so!

What to Wear

Contrary to the Queen's lengthy example, a widow was expected to mourn her husband for only two years - most people didn't live as long as Victoria, and there was little time to waste. Mitchell reminds us that the widow, "could moderate her funereal clothing a bit after a while to 'half-mourning,' which consisted of pinstripe black." Later this also included grays, especially for the younger generation.

Mitchell continues, "During the first year of mourning, widows were to conduct themselves as veritable social outcasts, forced to refuse all invitations, the only visits permitted being to close relatives or church services, including weddings and christenings." The parent or a child of the deceased was expected to mourn for a shorter period of time: Twelve months in whole, which eventually moved in color from black, to grey before the full color spectrum was allowed along with full engagement in social activities. Siblings mourned for six months.

Funerals

Unless the death was a suicide, funerals usually took place in the morning.  Mitchell says, "Among the gentry and prosperous middle classes, the coach was draped in black velvet and the horses wore black plumes," and, "Male friends or hired mourners called mutes walked alongside. Sometimes they carried the heavy black pall that was draped over the coffin. Everyone attending the funeral wore black garments made of wool and crepe. Men wore black gloves; flowing bands of black cloth known as weepers were tied around their hats. Even among the poorest, it was important for immediate relatives to wear black clothing."

No family? Few friends? No problem.  Mourners would be hired.  In fact, the British newspaper The Daily Express newspaper tells us that mutes, "looked tragic during the service and doubled as waiters for the wake. Dickens despised them and in the funeral in Martin Chuzzlewit he describes: 'Two mutes… looking as mournful as could reasonably be expected of men with such a thriving job in hand.'"

Black Baubles, Hair Rings and Pulled Teeth

One of the most fascinating, and perhaps creepy, aspect of Victorian mourning was the jewelry it inspired.

Items made of jet grew popular after the Queen wore it upon the death of Prince Albert, a custom she did not abandon clear to her own death in 1901. According to Hughes, "Jet jewelry has been associated with mourning for some time, though it was not mass-produced before the early 19th century. Jet is made from the fossilized driftwood of the monkey puzzle tree and is also found in the form of slate."  Mitchell adds," Very close relatives might wear a brooch or watch-fob woven from the dead person’s hair."

Yes, hair.

Hughes tells us that, "Jewelry made from the hair of the deceased was popular from 1790 to 1840, and this, too, was incorporated into mourning jewelry, being given settings of black or white enamel, jet with gold, and often embellished with the words 'In Memoriam.'" Sometimes they would take a tooth from a deceased and mount it in a ring or a necklace.  They didn't eat much sugar then so contrary to current opinion, their teeth were pretty good.  Just, perhaps, not pretty in the finger.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori is Latin for, Remember... you have to die.  During the early days of photography, the Victorians would take pictures of the recently deceased in their homes, gardens, or even beds, posed doing something they would have done while alive.  Perhaps it was a macabre way to remind the survivors to think of the fleetingness of life, and to number their days.  The oddest, most morbid photos included babies who had passed away settled neatly into their prams.

What's Old Is New Again

It's true that there is nothing new under the sun, and mourning is big business again. Black still predominates, and while pictures of those passed are not popular, The Daily Express reports that, "Rent A Mourner, an Essex-based company providing sad people for funerals when (as its website delicately puts it) 'here may be a low turnout expected'. Bookings are also on the up because people want something more dramatic than a mousey British send-off. They want sobbing, hair tearing and breast beating, in the way of excitable foreigners."

Perhaps this is an answer to temporary job needs. As Assistant Editor Jennifer Selway puts it, "Yes, a career in professional mourning could be the answer. Short hours, free booze and all the ham sandwiches you can eat."

No hairy brooches required.

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To learn more about Sandra's new Victorian Gothic Romance series, Daughters of Hampshire, including the first book, Mist of Midnight, please visit: http://www.sandrabyrd.com/

Corsets and Crinolines

by Sandra Byrd

Victorian Secrets

Most everyone has a picture in mind from the movies, a book, or a blog, of a Victorian woman grasping her dressing table while a servant or ladies' maid tugs the cords to her corset, hoping for that famously narrow waist.  Although corsets are often associated with the highborn, in reality they were worn by young ladies across the economic spectrum, and on both sides of the pond.  Good mothers ensured their daughters started young.  Sarah Chrisman, author of Victorian Secrets says, "Victorian girls had training corsets in much the way modern girls have training bras: simpler than their mother's garments, different in form, but kindred in spirit."

Fainting Couches

Were the mothers' garments always tightly laced? No. Sally Mitchell, author of Daily Life in Victorian England reminds us that, "Although Victorian corsets were usually boned and sometimes padded to create a fashionable silhouette, they were not necessarily tightly laced. Both physicians and feminist dress-reformers harped on the dangers of tight lacing."  Those dangers ranged from minor troubles, such as indigestion and skin irritation, to more substantial dangers including injuries to the breasts and ribs, as well as displacement of or damage to internal organs. Author Liza Picard, in her book, Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840-1870, says that, "This unnatural constriction surely helps to explain the habits of Victorian ladies, of fainting, and preferring to lie on the sofa, to taking exercise."

Just after the corset came the crinoline. Victoriana Magazine instructs, "The word crinoline originally referred to a stiff fabric with a weft of horse hair and a warp of cotton or linen thread (the Latin crinis meaning hair and linum meaning flax). This fabric made its first appearance in fashion in the 1830s when it was used in women’s petticoats to support and shape the growing length and diameter of the early Victorian dress. Often a petticoat of this stiffened fabric was worn with up to six starched petticoats in an attempt to achieve the big skirt effect; these tangling petticoats were heavy, bulky and generally uncomfortable."

Indelicate, Expensive, Dangerous and Hideous

Liza Picard writes, "The most famous under-garment worn by Victorian women was the crinoline. It attracted so much publicity that the casual reader of fashion magazines might think everyone wore one. Queen Victoria never did. She even went into print on them, in a letter addressed to the Ladies of England; they were ‘indelicate, expensive, dangerous and hideous.’"

Little House in a Harness

Laura Ingalls Wilder

In America, restrictive, lady-like undergarments were not universally beloved, either. Beatrice Gormley, in her biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder tells us the iconic All-American Victorian Girl didn't take kindly to corsets, which she referred to as horse harnesses. "Another thing Laura felt stubborn about was corsets, the undergarments ladies wore to pinch in their waists.  Before Mary had left for college, Ma insisted that Mary and Laura both start wearing corsets.  'You are young ladies now,' she said in her gentle but final tone.  Mary wore her corset meekly, even at night... but Laura rebelled...She never wore her corset as much as her mother thought she should, or laced as tight as other girls did."

Why did young women wear those tightly laced corsets night and day? "Before I was married," Ma warned, "Your father could span my waist with his two hands." Just like Chinese women with their bound feet, American and British women were bound, too, to attract a man. 

Fire Hazards

Crinolines posed one further danger beyond that done by contorting the body. One could conceivably bump into one of a dozen gas or candle-lit lamps about the home, catch fire, and be unable to undress quickly enough to save your life. 

Crinoline Cutaway, 1856

Sadly, this was the fate of many women. Fashion to die for, indeed.

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For more information about Sandra Byrd's new Victorian Gothic Romance series, Daughters of  Hampshire, including the first book, Mist of Midnight, please visit her website: http://www.sandrabyrd.com/