My appreciation to A. Krishnan, I. vanden Driesen, P. Statham, and especially R. T. Ap- pleyard and R. N. Ghosh for helpful comments on the final draft. This acknowledgment in no way implicates them in the conclusions of the essay. For the illustration shown in Figure 3, grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint from the book: The Unfashionable Human Body by Bernard Rudofsky. Copyright c 1971 by Bernard Rudofsky. Published by Doubleday and Co., Inc.

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²⁸ There is a substantial literature on fashion history and the following list represents only a selection of those used in this study: Cunnington, C. Willett and Cunnington, Phyllis, The History of Underclothes (London: Michael Joseph, 1951)Google Scholar; Waugh, Norah, Corsets and Crinolines (1954; 2d impr. London: Batsford, 1970)Google Scholar; Ewing, Elizabeth, Fashion in Underwear (London: Batsford, 1971)Google Scholar; Bell, Quentin, On Human Finery (London: Hogarth Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Fischel, Oskar and Boehn, Max VonModes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century as Represented in the Pictures and Engravings of the Time, 3 vols. (London: J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton, 1909)Google Scholar; Berman, Elizaveta Maksimovna, Russkii Kostium 1750–1917, 5 vols. (Moscow, 1960–1972)Google Scholar; Wills, Gordon and Midgley, David, eds., Fashion Marketing:An Anthology of Viewpoints and Perspectives (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973)Google Scholar; Evans, Mary M., Costume Throughout the Ages (Philadelphia, London, Chicago: J. B. Lippincott, 1930)Google Scholar; Cunnington, C. Willett, English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (London: Faber & Faber, 1937)Google Scholar; Leighton, John [Luke Limner], Madre Natura Versus the Moloch of Fashion, 4th ed. (London: Chato & Windus, 1874)Google Scholar; Yarwood, Doreen, English Costume from the Second Century B.C. to 1952 (London: Batsford, 1952)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Marian, Female Costume in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Roach, Mary Ellen and Eicher, Joanne Bubolz, Dress, Adornment and the Social Order (New York and London: J. Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar; Gibbs-Smith, Charles H., The Fashionable Lady in the 19th Century (London: H.M.S.O., 1960)Google Scholar; Halls, Zillah, Women's Costume 1750–1800 (London: London Museum, 1973)Google Scholar; Rudofsky, Bernard, The Unfashionable Human Body (London: Rupert Hart-Davies, 1972)Google Scholar; Bradfield, N., Historical Costumes in England from the Eleventh to the Twentieth Century (London: George S. Harrop, 1938)Google Scholar; Hall, Carrie A., From Hoopskirts to Nudity: A Review of the Follies and Foibles of Fashion, 1866–1936 (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1946).Google Scholar

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³⁰ Cunnington, and Cunnington, , History of Underclothing, 179.Google Scholar

³¹ There is general agreement that the waistlines attained varied between sixteen and twenty- one inches, with reduction of seven to eight inches in the natural waist being not uncommon. See Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, 68 (1863/1864), 527–29Google Scholar; Knowledge, no.8 (16 October 1885), 334Google Scholar; Cunnington, , English Women's Clothing, 179Google Scholar; Waugh, , Corsets and Crinolines, 141, 144–46Google Scholar, who records reductions from twenty-three to thirteen inches; Treves, Frederick, “The Influence of Dress on Health,” in The Book of Health, Morris, Malcolm, ed. (London: Cassell, 1883), 501Google Scholar; Ballin, Ada, The Science of Dress in Theory and Practice (London: Sampson Low, 1885), p. 149.Google ScholarEwing, , Fashion in Underwear, 53, refers to a recent examination of 1,000 waisted costumes from the Victorian period which showed that none was larger than 20.5 inches in circumference.Google Scholar

³² Richardson, Jane and Kroeber, A. L., “Three Centuries of Women's Dress Fashions,” in Fashion Marketing, Wills, and Midgley, , eds., 61, table 5.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., 54–56, Table 3 (year-by-year means 1787–1936), and 57–58, Table 4 (similar information for years 1605–1786).

³⁴ Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 110–11.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ewing, , Fashion in Underwear, 140.Google Scholar

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³⁷ “The Use of the Corset,” Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 6 (1846), 102Google Scholar; the same sentiment was expressed by Hastings, Caroline E., M.D., in Dress-Reform: A Series of Lectures Delivered in Boston on Dress as It Affects Health of Women, Woolson, Abba Goold, ed. (1874, Boston; rpt. New York: Arao Press, 1974), 203–4Google Scholar; Stockham, , Tokology, 104, stated that even a “snug” fit caused distortion.Google Scholar

³⁸ As many nineteenth-century commentators pointed out, there was no less reason to suffer torture through corseting than to suffer bound feet, or bones pushed through the nose, or bandaging to elongate heads, or other distorting practices witnessed in other societies. See, for example, comments by Flower, William Henry, “Fashion in Deformity,” The Popular Science Monthly (October 1880), 721–42.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ballin, , Science of Dress, v, 161.Google Scholar

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⁴¹ Ibid., 184; Limner, , Madre Natura, 26–28,37–40, 84, also refers to the “natural” form of the European peasantry, and compares this with the “multitudious” generation of middle-class women who were compressed with tightlacing.Google Scholar

⁴² See, for example, Duffin, Loma, “The Conspicuous Consumptive:Woman as an Invalid,” in The Nineteenth-Century Woman, Her Cultural and Physical World, Delamont, Sara and Duffin, Lorna, eds. (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 26–56Google Scholar; Roberts, Helene E., “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman,” Signs, 2:3 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deidre, Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, Glass Mountain Pamphlet no. 2 (New York: Feminist Press, 1973), 15–44Google Scholar; Rees, Barbara, The Victorian Lady (London and New York: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1977)Google Scholar, ch. 8; Banks, and Banks, , Feminism and Family Planning, 12, 66.Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ Ibid., 565.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 564.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Kunzle, David, “Dress Reform as Antifeminism: A Response to Helene E. Roberts's ”The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman,'“ Signs, 2:3 (1977), 573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., 574–75.

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⁵⁰ Ehrenreich, and English, , Complaints and Disorders, 23–26Google Scholar, also view the strategy as a means adopted by male doctors to improve their financial positions; the dominant male role is also strongly suggested in Wood, , ”Fashionable Diseases,“ 25–52Google Scholar; see also Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977), 675Google Scholar; for a more moderate interpretation of the male physician's role, see Morantz, Regina, ”The Lady and the Physician,“ in Hartman, and Banner, , Clio's Consciousness, 38–53Google Scholar. Degler, Carl N., ”What Ought To Be and What Was: Women's Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century,“ The American Historical Review, 79:5 (December 1974), 1467–90, shows there was a sharp difference of medical opinion, rather than a consensus, on the nature of women's sexual needs and feelings—he refers to the ”Counter-Acton Outlook.“CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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⁵⁴ Quoted in Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 182Google Scholar, from ”Symposium on Women's Dress,“ Arena (New York), 6 (October 1892), 632.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Quoted in Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 108Google Scholar; see also Pearsall, , Worm in the Bud, 120Google Scholar; for similar beliefs in the United States see Haller, John S. Jr., and Haller, Robin M., The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 153–58Google Scholar; Kellog, J. H., Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease, Girlhood, Maidenhood, Wifehood, Motherhood (London: International Tract Society, 1895), 257–61.Google Scholar

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⁷⁹ Ibid., 175, 377, 384, 399, 434; this is also mentioned as directly linked with tightlacing in The Lancet, 1 (6 06 1868), 729–30Google Scholar. see also Haynes, Arvilla B., M.D., in Dress Reform, Woolson, , ed., 110–11Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 308Google Scholar; Stockham, , Tokology, 273Google Scholar; Wertz, and Wertz, , Lying-In, 110Google Scholar; Kellog, , Ladies' Guide, 539.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ This follows the main model outlined in Davis, Kingsley and Blake, Judith, “Social Structure and Fertility; An Analytical Framework,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 4 (04 1956), 211–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁸³ Quoted, in Cunnington and Cunnington, History of Underclothes, 88.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Ibid., 69–70; Banks and Banks, Feminism and Family Planning, 11–12.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Smith, Daniel Scott, “Family Limitations. Sexual Control and Domestic Feminism in Victorian America,” Feminist Studies, 1 (1973), 40, 44Google Scholar; The idea also receives support from McLaren, , Birth Control, 100–101Google Scholar, when he talks of the new and assertive “domestic feminism.” Branca, , Silent Sisterhood, 117 also sees woman's role as crucial in the decision to limit the family, attributing the reasons to economic factors.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Marcus, Steven, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (London: Weidefeld & Nicolson, 1964), stresses throughout his work the liaison of middle-class males with prostitutes, domestic servants, and other workingclass women whom the middle classes were able to exploit; see esp. pp. 29, 109, 284–85Google Scholar. For other references to prostitution and the middle-class male, see Smith, , “Family Limitations,” 51Google Scholar; Sigsworth, E. M. and Wyke, T. J., “A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease,” in Suffer and Be Still, Vicinus, , ed., esp. 86–87Google Scholar; Rover, , Love, Morals, 63Google Scholar; Nield, Keith, Prostitution in the Victorian Age. Debates on the Issue from 19th Century Critical Journals (Farnborough: Gregg International, 1973)Google Scholar, introduction; Delamont, Sara, “The Contradiction in Ladies Education,” in Nineteenth-Century Woman, Delamont, and Duffin, , eds., 142Google Scholar; Pearsall, , Worm in the Bud, esp. introduction, and 263, 288Google Scholar; Hallerand Haller, Physician and Sexuality, 165–66, 237, report one female physician as claiming that tightlacing made females so irritable that husbands sought sexual solace “outside the home dominated by the vile temper of a tightlaced wife.”Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Pearsall, , Worm in the Bud, 225–30.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Stage, , Female Complaints, 82.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 46Google Scholar; tightlacing and problems associated with menstrual flow are mentioned in The Lancet, 1 (5 01 1861), 5.Google Scholar

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⁹³ Stein, Zena and Susser, Mervyn, “Fertility, Fecundity, Famine: Food Rations in the Dutch Famine 1944/5 Have a Causal Relation to Fertility, and Probably to Fecundity,” Human Biology, 47:2 (05 1975), 133. (Unfortunately, the source cited for this study was misquoted.)Google ScholarPubMed

⁹⁴ Ibid., 131–53; see also Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, The Territory of the Historian (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979), 255–77Google Scholar; Keys, Ancel et al. , The Biology of Human Starvation, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1950), I, 93, 749–63.Google Scholar

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⁹⁶ The Lancet, 1 (11 02 1893), 311; 1 (18 February 1871), 256Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 307Google Scholar. Kunzle, , “Dress Reform,” 575, on the other hand, appears to see positive benefits, in that corseting might have been a “decisive deterrent against overeating which was widely recognized as a scourge of the Victorian Middle Class.”Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁰ Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 375, 411–12Google Scholar; see also Abt, Isaac A., ed., Pediatrics (Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders, 1923), 1134–35, 1137, who links tightlacing with malformation of the uterus and expulsion of the foetus before term.Google Scholar

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¹⁰² See text at notes 79 and 100.

¹⁰³ Thomas, , Practical Treatise, 154–58Google Scholar. Falling of the womb and derangement of menstrual discharge, plus pelvic effects caused by tightlacing, are also recorded in Lyman, Henry M., Jones, H. Webster, Fenger, Christian, Belfield, W. T., The Practical Home Physician and Encylopedia of Medicine …. Australian, ed. (London: World Publishing Co., n.d., but circa 1880), 885–87Google Scholar; Gregor-Robertson, J. M., The Household Physician: A Family Guide to the Preservation of Health and to the Domestic Treatment of Ailments and Disease, with Chapters on Food and Drugs, and First Aid in Accidents and Injuries, 4 vols. (London: Blackie, 1891), II, 473–76Google Scholar; Haller and Haller, Physician and Sexuality, 171–72.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Taliaferro, , “The Corset,” 685.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Ibid.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 691.

¹⁰⁷ Witkowski, , Tetonia, 308, quoting physicians Doreste and Cruveilhier.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ These observations are made on the basis of the research and advice kindly provided by Bruce, Neville, Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, University of Western Australia.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ For an interesting modern parallel, see Keshishian, John M., “Anatomy of a Burmese Beauty Secret,” National Geographic, 155:6 (06 1979), 798–801, where it is shown that neck coils lead to atrophied neck muscles as well as to displacement of the rib-cage.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Bousfield, , Sex and Civilization, 167–69.Google Scholar

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¹¹² This problem is highlighted in Kellog, , Ladies' Guide, 111–12.Google Scholar

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¹¹⁶ Abt, , Pediatrics, I, 1134–35.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Reliable statistics on stillbirths would have made some of the propositions in this article less conjectural, but for Britain such statistics were not recorded until 1926. The only stillbirth statistics seen by the writer relate to Prussia, 1816–1900, in Knodel, John E., The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871–1931 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 26Google Scholar. Knodel acknowledges that figures for years before 1850 are likely to be inaccurate, thus nulifying their usefulness for this study where there is need to compare pre-1850 with post-1850 statistics. In addition, the figures relate to the population as a whole and do not isolate class differentials; only two estimates have been seen for Britain, and they appear to be of doubtful value. Greaves, George, “Observations on Some Causes of Infanticide” (Paper read 14 01 1863), Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society (1862–1863), 11, says that in 1854 Dr. Fair calculated that stillbirths represented 3 percent of all births, while in 1858 Lord Shaftesbury claimed the figure to be 60,000, or about 10 percent of births.Google Scholar

One interesting speculation suggests that if the stillbirth rate increased in the second half of the nineteenth century, then the true fertility level among the middle classes might not have been greatly affected. This argument has been proposed in relation to a decline in the birth rate in working-class Stockport where it has been shown that, though family size declined from the 1850s, the fertility rate did not decline significantly until the 1880s: “It is uncertain whether a decrease in the number of small children reported in the census really resulted from a limitation of births or … from a rising death rate of children who died before they could be counted.” See Litchfield, R. Burr, “The Family and the Mill: Cotton Mill Work, Family Patterns and Fertility in Mid-Victorian Stockport,” in The Victorian Family: Structure and Stresses, Wohl, Anthony S., ed. (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 193.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Zola, Émile, Fécondité (1899)Google Scholar, quoted in Kunzle, , “Dress Reform,” 571–72Google Scholar. Kunzle also quotes Ellis, John, The Great Evil of the Age. (189?)Google Scholar; see also Rudofsky, , Unfashionable Human Body, 105Google Scholar; the situation is alluded to in the magazine, The Queen (1880)Google Scholar, quoted in Waugh, , Corsets and Crinolines, 144–46Google Scholar; Ballin, , Science of Dress, 158.Google Scholar

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¹²³ Ibid., 50. See also pp. 76–83, where contemporary estimates varied from one in three to one in ten. Note similar estimates in England in Greaves, “Observations,” who quotes “Dr. Whitehead” and “Dr. Granville” as reporting one miscarriage in seven conceptions, and one in three, respectively.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Whitehead, , On Causes and Treatment, 253Google Scholar; Witkowski, , Tetonia, 308, who recorded abortions from tightlacing as “une éventualité bien connue.”Google Scholar

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¹²⁶ Ibid., 53, 276, n. 15.

¹²⁷ Ibid., 72.

¹²⁸ Smith, , “Family Limitations,” 43–44, noted that in the United States spontaneous abortion was not an infrequent occurrence.Google Scholar

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¹³³ That the large family came to be seen as undesirable is recorded in contemporary comment; Boyd Carpanter, Bishop of Ripon, and Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, exclaimed disapprovingly that small families were the result of “fashionable marriages,” and Bernard Vaughan lamented in The Sins of Society (1906), that “present up-to-date parents ridicule the notion of having big families, so that instead of being proud, society is becoming ashamed of owning to a nursery full of children” (quoted in McLaren, , Birth Control, 207–8).Google Scholar

¹³⁴ The shame and “embarrassment” of many members of the German working class with large families is documented in Von Ungern-Stemberg, R., The Causes of the Decline in the Birth-Rate within the European Sphere of Civilization, Eugenics Research Association Monograph IV (Cold Spring Harbor: Eugenics Research Association, 1931), 43–44, 98Google Scholar; and in Neuman, , “Working Class Birth Control,” 428.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Neuman, , “Working Class Birth Control,” 426–27Google Scholar, relevantly states that “left to themselves, workers tended to imitate the middle class in its individual, privatistic attempts to better their own position. This is not to say that by practicing birth control, all workers were becoming bourgeois in their sexual behaviour and attitudes. Rather, in periods of economic stagnation and decline in real wages, many workers practiced birth control out of the sheer necessity of preventing further deterioration of their condition.” This observation contrasts with that of McLaren, Angus, “Women's Work and Regulation of Family Size: The Question of Abortion in the Nineteenth Century,” History Workshop, 4 (Autumn 1977), 78–79, where he maintains that middle-class women accepted contraception while working-class women used abortion, which was their basic means of family planning. “It did not signify the adoption of middle-class individualistic strategy.”CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

¹³⁶ Banks and Banks, Feminism and Family Planning, 10, 122Google Scholar; Gordon, , Woman's Body, 110–11, confirms this for the United States, where the middle-class-dominated “voluntary motherhood” organization opposed artificial contraception on grounds of morality.Google Scholar

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