About Crinolines

In the late 1850s and into the 1860s the fashion for very wide skirts led to the invention of the crinoline, which was a hooped cage contraption that allowed skirts to be made very full without the extra weight of many petticoats. At their extreme extent the hems of skirts measured as much as ten yards, according to a contemporary. Most men found this female fashion ridiculous, and many joked about its absurdity, at least until they got used to it.

    The crinoline caused quite a few unexpected problems. Where only a few years before a hostess could seat two or three women on a parlor sofa, now there would be barely enough room for the skirts of one. And many a careless woman would find her skirt sweeping Victorian bric-a-brac residing on a table onto the floor. Many a fellow passenger on an omnibus, too, scowled when a full-skirted women tried to board and shove herself into a single available seat, drowning her fellow passengers in folds of material from her dress.

    There were more dangerous problems, too. The dresses could catch strong winds, and literally lift and blow their wearers off their feet, which was extremely dangerous when strolling near cliffs or high walls. Sometimes the hooped petticoats of pedestrians would get entangled in the wheels of passing coaches or carriages, causing messy or injurious accidents. Women who fell into water were often dragged down by the weight of the yardage in their skirts, drowning before they could be rescued.

    Fire, too, was a big hazard, especially in an age of oil lamps, candles, and wood stoves. Many skirts were made of highly flammable materials and would swiftly catch fire should a skirt get caught too near an open flame while the wearer tried to lean in to cook or stoke a fire in the fireplace. A terrible disaster occurred on December 8, 1863, when 2000 women were burnt to death in a cathedral in Santiago, Chile, because the vast quantities of materials in their skirts added to feed the flames.

    "Take what precautions we may against fire, so long as the hoop is worn, life is never safe. All are living under a sentence of death which may occur unexpectedly in the most appalling form," wrote a commentator in London's The Illustrated News of the World in 1863.