Yes - the unfortunate woman's crinoline became detached -
how embarrassing! But how funny that
some little scamps captured it, and attached it to a steamboat to be towed away
goodness knows where!
The fashion for crinolines reached its height (or should I
say width) by the mid 1860s. While they were
fashionable, they attracted a lot of criticism - mainly from male commentators. One imaginative writer in 1858 wrote an amusing, and decidedly tongue in cheek, article entitled "Crinoline for Criminals" in which he condemns
crinolines for encouraging their wearers to theft, explaining that items could
be easily concealed under the skirts!
One paragraph in particular caught my attention:-
"Concealed beneath the
skirts of a fashionable dressed female were, the other day, discovered by a vigilant detective the
following choice proofs of her propensity to plunder;"
A vigilant detective, eh??!!
I suppose the only people to gain from this particular fashion, aside from the satirists, were
the fabric manufacturers - yards and yards of the stuff must have been used for
each dress to cover such wide hoops!
The Greenockian
I can't imagine wearing one!
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