Susan Higginbotham's Blog: History Refreshed by Susan HIgginbotham
February 4, 2025
Susan B. Anthony at the Queen’s Court
In July 1899, Susan B. Anthony, who was nearly eighty, was in London for the International Council of Women. She wrangled a visit to Windsor Castle for the group:
WikipediaOne day I said to Lady Aberdeen, “Now if this great Council were in Washington, I should certainly get an invitation for you to call on the President and his wife. Isn’t it possible for us to secure some recognition from the Queen?”� She said she didn’t know, but she would try, so she sent a letter to the Queen and soon received a reply from her secretary that Her Majesty would be very happy to see us. The Queen gave directions to provide tea for the ladies. “Ah, but,”� said the secretary, “you must remember that you will have to provide for hundreds.”� “Well,”� was the Queen’s answer, “if there be thousands, provide for thousands. I cannot allow the ladies to call upon me without giving them a cup of tea.”� The tables were placed in St. George’s hall, the banquet-room of the palace, where all kinds of refreshments, with the luxuries of the season, hot-house grapes, strawberries, etc., were served on the royal china by the Queen’s own retainers in scarlet livery.
Victoria did not personally greet Anthony or the other delegates but allowed them to witness her setting out for an afternoon drive. As Ida Husted Harper, Anthony’s official biographer, recalled,
Our party passed through the old Norman gateway, the most ancient portion of the castle, and then we paused under the shadow of the great round tower. . . . The omnipresent red-coated, fur-topped soldiers stand guard at the entrance, a solitary policeman paces back and forth and tries to evade the volley of questions from the crowd of women who are afraid to approach the soldiers but who have policemen at home. Far across the court in an open doorway stand three individuals in long coats, white “spats”� and silk hats. They are the gentlemen-in-waiting. We have a fellow feeling for them, we have been ladies-in-waiting for more than an hour.
At last a wave of excitement goes scurrying over the dry gravel. We are all arranged in a semi-circle along the driveway. A broad, low carriage dashes up to the main door in the southeast corner, drawn by two beautiful dappled bay horses with black points, attended by two outriders, mounted on prancing steeds, a perfect match to the others. The coachman is an exact counterpart of the typical John Bull Various functionaries appear; one stands at the horses’� heads, another blocks the wheels so they may not move. White-aproned maids are seen in the hall—and now comes the Queen! Carried in a chair by a stalwart Scotchman in plaid and kilts and bare legs, and a tall, black East Indian in white skirt and turban, she is gently placed in the carriage. The Princess Beatrice takes a seat beside her, and the chief lady-in-waiting sits opposite, but we have eyes only for Victoria.
New York Public Library Digital CollectionsAs slowly as the horses can step she approaches the line. All around us the English women whisper, “Don’t forget to courtesy [sic]!”� We Americans have not been taught to crook the knee but we make our very best bow. The carriage stops before Lady Aberdeen, who stands at the head of the line. She courtesies to the ground and kisses the extended fingers. A Canadian woman, who is presented on account of some special service, does the same. Then, horror of horrors, up steps a woman from the United States and shakes the Queen’s hand! She supposed, of course, Her Majesty was going to greet all of us in that democratic fashion. Slowly the carriage passes on, pausing for another moment in front of the delegates from India in their picturesque garments. The English women begin to sing “God Save the Queen.”� We Americans do not know the words, but, led by Emma Thursby, we sing “America”� to the same tune, and it answers just as well. Her Majesty smiles and looks pleased. She is a lovely old lady, with fair hair and blue eyes, a complexion as pink and white as a girl’s, and does not appear a day over sixty. On goes the carriage, under the high arch beneath which only royalty can pass—and the great event is over. The Queen has sanctioned the Woman’s Congress!
Anthony told the London Daily Chronicle: “I shall always remember the delightful sensation of sitting there on a sofa in the Queen’s own home, drinking her tea, and, as it were, breaking bread with her. It was not a mere matter of curiosity with us; we felt that the Queen is a grand woman, who has set a good example to the nations of the world, that her influence has always been for peace, and that she has been a good wife and a good mother; moreover in her reign woman has made enormous advance.�
In an interview with an American syndicate after her return to the United States, Anthony said, “I thought Her Majesty was a very human looking woman—a good, motherly woman. That is usually one’s first impression in meeting royalty or nobility—that they are much like other people—that is, refined and cultured people. . . . The Queen is a most conspicuous example to refute the oft repeated assertion that public life destroys the feminine instincts and unfits women for home duties. As the mother of nine children and head of the largest household in the world, she always has been distinguished for her wifely and maternal devotion and for her thrift and ability in managing her domestic affairs.�
Anthony’s interactions with the great during her visit to England were not without their hiccups. As Harper recalled:
Two little stories are told about that staunchest exponent of democratic and republican institutions, Susan B. Anthony. On one occasion she actually undertook to introduce one of the greatest lords of the kingdom to two poor little girl employees on a London paper, and, as if this were not sufficiently heinous, she told him frankly that she had forgotten his name. He did not tell it to her and if Gibson could have caught the expression of his lordship’s face he might have produced his masterpiece.
At another time she was invited to a luncheon to meet the Princess Christian, the Queen’s daughter. After shaking hands with her and talking a few minutes. Miss Anthony sat down. Presently some one came and told her she must not sit while royalty was standing. Some of her friends say that her eighty years and the fatigue from the strain of the past weeks justified her in sitting. Others say that she could have stood up two hours if she had had a suffrage speech to make, but that the awful breach of etiquette was due to ‘that spirit of her Quaker ancestors which made them face death rather than take off their hats to a king. Miss Anthony herself only laughs and “refuses to be interviewed.�
From Ida Husted Harper, Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3.
July 12, 2024
Rachel Goes to Washington: A Civil War Diary
I love diaries, especially women’s diaries from the Civil War era, so when I saw a mention of the diary of Rachel Rosalie Phillips and found out where a transcript was held, I had to get a copy of it. It’s an account of a young woman’s stay in Washington, D.C., in 1864, when a sojourn in a war capital could be a grand adventure.
Eighteen-year-old Rachel Rosalie Phillips, the oldest daughter of Jonas L. Phillips and Esther Peixotto, was from a prominent Sephardic Jewish family. Jonas, listed first as a ship chandler and then as a surveyor in directories and censuses, was active in New York City affairs, particularly the fire department.
In late 1863, Rachel left her home in Manhattan to visit her uncle, Adolphus Solomons, who along with an Englishman named Franklin Philp owned a well-known stationery business and bookstore/publishing house in Washington. Solomons, whose business had a contract to supply the government, was prominent in both the Jewish community and in Washington civic affairs. Philp and Solomons� operations included a photographic gallery, under the supervision of Alexander Gardner, and one of Abraham Lincoln’s last photographs was taken there. Among his many accomplishments, Solomons would later assist Clara Barton in founding the American Red Cross. The 1864 city directory lists his residence as 507 E Street North; the business was located on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Adolphus S. Solomons, late in life (Wikipedia)Rachel began writing her diary on January 1, 1864, when she noted that she had spent Christmas visiting military hospitals with journalist Benjmain Perley Poore, Senator Charles Sumner, and Miss Philp from England. (Elizabeth Philp, Franklin Philp’s sister, was a singer and songwriter who made her home in London.) There, Rachel observed “several Rebels,� who received the same dinner as the Union soldiers. On New Year’s Day, the Solomons children received presents from Santa Claus. As it was Friday, Solomons, an observant Jew, led the family in Sabbath prayers that evening, and the family went to synagogue the next morning. (Solomons often gave Rachel Hebrew lessons as well.) On Saturday evening, Rachel went to Ford’s Theatre, where she tried out the opera glasses, “the prettiest pair I have ever seen,� that she had received as a New Year’s present. (Rachel records several visits to Ford’s in her diary.)
Having sewn the morning of January 5, Rachel amused herself that evening by dressing herself in her uncle’s clothes and presenting herself in the parlor, where Miss Philp “thought I made a capital man.�
Rachel visited the White House on January 9, where she was “introduced to the President, and Mrs. Lincoln and shook hands with both of them. Mrs. Lincoln was handsomely attired in a Black Velvet dress gored with white satin; she wore white and black velvet flowers in her hair. The jewelry she wore was Onyx set around with pearls she looked remarkably well. Mr. Lincoln appears to be a very good natured man, and was very sociable with all his guests. He always leaves a good impression. Everybody is pleased with him.� Three days later, Rachel saw Mrs. Lincoln again at a reception. The First Lady “wore a very handsome White Satin with black lace flowers.�
Abraham Lincoln, taken by Alexander Gardner for Philp & Solomons (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)Late on January 13, Rachel went to a “hop� at Willard’s hotel, to which she wore a green silk dress. She arranged her hair in a fashionable “waterfall� with “puffs.� On January 21, she went to another “hop,� this time at the National Hotel, where she quaffed five glasses of champagne, spent half of the evening dancing with a Mr. Briggs, and stayed until 3:00 a.m. Rachel wore a white tarlatan dress and ornamented her hair with pink flowers. “I do not think I ever looked better,� she told her diary. “I think I am enjoying myself a great deal more than if I was in New York.� The Washington Chronicle also reported on the “hop�: “Diamonds flashed and silks rustled the live long evening! The cheeks of many a fair one were all aglow with the roseate hues of health, while those of others rivalled the purity of Parian marble!�
Waterfall hairstyles from Frank Leslie’s Lady’s Magazine, July 1865Not all of Rachel’s Washington stay, however, was taken up with frivolities. Rachel went to the House of Representatives on January 16 to hear a lecture by Anna Dickinson, a young abolitionist who was enjoying great success as a public speaker at the time. The Lincolns were there, along with Vice President Hamlin and the Speaker of the House. Rachel also heard Raphael De Cordova, a Jamaican-born Sephardic Jew who was a popular speaker of the day, give a humorous talk on “Love and Courtship.� She sniffed, “I did not like it being the most miserable lecture I ever heard him give.�
Anna Dickinson (from my collection)Having spent Saturday, January 23, walking and reading The Scarlet Letter, Rachel received an invitation to travel to Virginia, where the Third Corps of the Army of the Potomac was preparing to put on a ball. On January 25, with her white dress packed in a small trunk, Rachel, in company that included her uncle and the British writer George Augustus Sala, boarded a train of the Orange and Alexandria Rail Road and traveled to Brandy Station, from which the company was transported by wagon to the army headquarters.
George Augustus Sala. National Portrait Gallery, London (Creative Commons License)Unlike the teenage Rachel, who not surprisingly focused on the ball, Sala, who was sending dispatches to London’s Daily Telegraph, described the journey to headquarters in some detail. Although he enjoyed the provisions Solomons had laid on for the travelers, including anchovy and beef sandwiches, a plum cake, Stilton cheese, crackers, and cold milk punch, Sala wrote that this was the first time he had been “in the absolute and visible presence of war.� He noted the “entire nakedness and desolation� of his surroundings, and was particularly affected by the dead horses left to decay. Ironically, the party was greeted at Brandy Station by Philp’s wife and sister on horseback; the English ladies, who had gotten a head start over the Solomons party, had taken their sidesaddles and riding habits with them. The ball was held at a canvassed-in garden at General Carr’s headquarters, an ordinary farmhouse.
General Carr’s Headquarters (Library of Congress)As for Rachel, she had a “splendid time� at the ball, and no wonder: Sala estimated that only about sixty women were present, as contrasted to about three hundred officers. Indeed, an illustration from Harper’s Weekly shows that those men without a lady partner for supper indulged in a “gander dance� with each other instead. Sala also recorded that the ladies were provided with cologne, bouquets, and black servants to waitupon them. A Virginian and two of his daughters were present; Sala noted that one of the girls abruptly stopped dancing when the band began to play “Yankee Doodle.�
Sketch of the Third Army Corps Ball, Harper’s Weekly, February 20, 1864Having danced until four in the morning, Rachel, along with the Philp women, retired to General Rufus Ingalls� tent. The next morning, she chatted with some officers and reluctantly told them that she had to leave with her uncle that same day. During the train ride back to Washington, the party stopped at Manassas and spent an hour walking around. Rachel may have been more affected by her surroundings than she let on in her diary, because on February 1, when she heard that there was to be another ball given by the Third Corps, she wrote, “I do not think I shall go as it is too dangerous.�
In March, a “Captain Fassit� took Rachel by surprise by proposing to her, even offering to change his religion. Rachel informed him that “he was very impertinent to ask such a question.� (If this was Captain John Barclay Fassitt, he was awarded a Medal of Honor in 1894 for his heroism at the Battle of Gettysburg.)
Having met the President and First Lady, visited an army camp, worn out her dancing shoes, and received a proposal of marriage, Rachel returned later in March to her parents� home in New York, where over the next few weeks she went to a number of plays, saw the family’s future new home at 36 West Twelfth Street, and attended a Purim ball, dressed patriotically as the Child of the Regiment. (She also received some photographs of herself that had been taken during her last day in Washington, but although Rachel mentions having her photograph taken on several occasions in her diary, I have not found one of her.) On April 11, she wrote, “What an Idiot I was to write a Diary.� After a few more entries for 1864, recording a visit to a Sanitary Fair and the family’s move to the new house, her diary trails off until 1866, when she mentioned going to the library and being waited on by a male friend.
Sadly, Rachel’s story does not have a happy ending. On December 24, 1870, at age twenty-four, she died of sub-acute meningitis and was buried in . The Jewish Messenger eulogized her thus: “Strong in principle, devout in sentiment, and benevolent in heart, she was active in charity and service to all who needed help or sympathy. So qualified in mind and person to take the greatest step in life, she was betrothed, and would have been married in a few weeks, but for the malady which proved as fatal as it was mysterious.�
Photograph by RPark from Find-A-Grave (used with permission)As Rachel did have a sense of humor, however, it seems unfair to leave on a gloomy note. At the beginning of the diary, Rachel writes, “If you wish to know all my secrets, turn to page Thursday Feb 18 1864.� The reader who obeys will be told, “You are a bigger fool than I thought you was.�
Sources:
Rachel Rosalie Phillips diary transcript in David M. Klein Collection, MS-695, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Find-A-Grave, .
Harper’s Weekly, “A Military Ball,� February 20, 1864.
Jewish Messenger, December 30, 1870.
George Augustus Sala, “America in the Midst of War,� Daily Telegraph, March 15, March 17, and April 6, 1864.
George William Sheldon, The Story of the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York.
�,� in Jamaicans Abroad.
Washington Chronicle, January 28, 1864.
Gary Phillip Zola, We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, A Documentary History.
May 10, 2024
The Marriage Protest: The Wedding of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell
In May 1855, American newspapers were abuzz with talk of a wedding. The bride and groom were not society folkor European royalty: they were Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, abolitionists and women’s rights activists. Although in many ways their wedding ceremony was typical of the time—the bride wore a lovely dress, a clergyman performed the ceremony, and a wedding breakfast followed—it was no ordinary wedding, for it began with a protest.
Lucy Stone was born in a farmhouse on Coy’s Hill near West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on August 13, 1818. As she matured, she became interested in two causes—the abolition of slavery and the expansion of women’s rights—that were to shape her life. When Oberlin College in Ohio began admitting women, Lucy determined to attend, even though it took several years of saving her earnings as a schoolteacher to meet the tuition. At Oberlin, inspired by the women who had taken to the lecture circuit to advocate for the abolitionist cause, she decided to pursue a public speaking career herself.
Lucy Stone (Library of Congress)Nineteenth-century Americans loved a good speech, and Lucy became quite successful at her chosen career. It was not, however, an easy life. Lucy’s lectures took her to small towns and rustic areas, where she often had to stay in whatever primitivelodgings were available. Lucy also had to brave hostile audiences. At one meeting, someone threw a prayerbook at her; at another, she was squirted with a firehose.
It was in 1850, while Lucy was traveling through Cincinnati, that she first met Henry Browne Blackwell, an abolitionist who also supported women’s rights. He had sterling examples of strong women in his own family: In 1849, his sister Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to obtain a medical degree, and his sister Emily would get her own medical degree in 1854. Henry himself, however, had some difficulty in settling to a profession, and finally began running a hardware store in Cincinnati with his brother Samuel. When Lucy went into the store to cash a check, Henry was intrigued by Lucy, whom he thought might make a suitable bride for Samuel. Accordingly, he delayed payment of the check so that Samuel could deliver the funds to Lucy in person. But Samuel took no interest in Lucy—she was probably not looking her best, having just recovered from typhoid fever—and it would be another three years before Lucy and Henry had their next encounter. (Samuel would go on to marry Antoinette Brown, Lucy’s close friend from Oberlin.)
Henry B. Blackwell (Wikipedia)Meanwhile, Lucy had adopted the so-called Bloomer costume (named for Amelia Bloomer, one of its proponents), which was essentially a knee-length dress worn over pantaloons. The Bloomer garment was hardly immodest, but those women who dared to wear it were continually heckled and harassed. But Lucy, who found it both practical and flattering, was undeterred.
Henry next saw Lucy at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in 1853. This time, he was smitten—even though he confided to his brother that he did not care for the Bloomer dress she wore. He sought out abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who gave him a letter of introduction but warned him that Lucy was not interested in marriage. Undaunted, Henry turned up at the Stone family house in Coy’s Hill, where Lucy was standing on a table and whitewashing the ceiling. The pair went for a walk. Lucy consented to correspond with Henry, and he promptly sent her a long letter and a translation of Plato. He also told her that he had “learned to like� the Bloomer costume.
Lucy in the Bloomer costume (Wikipedia)Over the next few months, Henry relentlessly courted Lucy, in person and by mail. But Lucy was reluctant to wed Henry, even as she admitted that she was growing fond of him. She feared that marriage would deprive her of her cherished freedom.
Finally, in September 1854, Henry made a grand gesture: while traveling on a train bound for Tennessee, he encountered a enslaved girl traveling with her owners. Having asked the girl if she wanted to be free, and received an affirmative answer, he put her off the train in Salem, Ohio, with the help of an accomplice who fled with her. Years later, he said, “I was told later that this act of mine was what gained me my wife. If that was so, I received the most heavenly reward that ever came to earthly man for any deed.� By December 1854, the couple were engaged, despite Lucy’s lingering doubts. “You are your own mistress & always will remain so,� Henry assured her. He suggested that the two make a protest against the laws governing marriage, which heavily favored the man. Several other reforming couples had done the same in years past.
The wedding took place at Lucy’s family home on May 1, 1855. Lucy, who had finally given into public pressure and had nearly abandoned Bloomers for public wear, wore a silk dress, colored in the shade known as “ashes of roses�; Henry wore a mulberry coat and white waistcoat. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a fellow activist who was then a Unitarian minister, officiated. First, however, the couple read the “Protest� which they had drawn up. It reads:
While we acknowledge our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband:
1. The custody of the wife’s person.
2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children.
3. The sole ownership of her personal, and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees, as in the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots [intellectually disabled persons].
4. The absolute right to the product of her industry.
5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent interest in the property of his deceased wife, than they give to the widow in that of the deceased husband.
6. Finally, against the whole system by which “the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage,� so that in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inherit property.
We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power.
We believe that where domestic difficulties arise, no appeal should be made to legal tribunals under existing laws, but that all difficulties should be submitted to the equitable adjustment of arbitrators mutually chosen.
Thus reverencing law, we enter our protest against rules and customs which are unworthy of the name, since they violate justice, the essence of law.
In reciting her vows, Lucy omitted the promise to “obey� her husband, but agreed to “love and honor� him.
The “Protest� was soon reprinted in William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, as well as in pamphlet form. The wedding itself was widely publicized, not the least by those editors who thought it amusing that Lucy should have behaved so conventionally as to marry.
Library of CongressBut Lucy was not done with taking a stand. Shehad decided to keep her maiden name. Although she seems to have vacillated somewhat about the matter, she signed letters to Susan B. Anthony after her marriage as “Lucy Stone,� and by the fall of 1856 she was upset when she was mistakenly listed in a convention advertisement as “Lucy Blackwell.� While this decision generated little press, it was a highly unusual step for a married woman in the United States; even today, most married women in the country assume their husband’s name. Lucy would be known as “Lucy Stone� for the rest of her life, and history remembers her still by that name.
In August 1855, Lucy confided to Susan B. Anthony that she had not accepted an invitation to lecture because she did not want to lose the “opportunity of securing the blessings of motherhood.� On September 14, 1857, she gave birth to Alice Stone Blackwell.
Lucy and Alice (Library of Congress)Lucy Stone died at her home in Boston on October 18, 1893, survived by Henry and Alice, both of whom would continue Lucy’s campaign for women’s rights into the twentieth century. Her last words were “Make the world better.�
Sources:
Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman’s Rights
Andrea Moore Kerr, Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality
The Liberator, May 4, 1855
Sally G. McMillin, Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life
Joelle Million, Woman’s Voice, Woman’s Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman’s Rights Movement
Leslie Wheeler, ed., Loving Warriors: Selected Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853-1893
April 24, 2024
Victorian Boys in Dresses
As you may know, I collect nineteenth-century photographs. I belong to a few Facebook groups on the subject, and quite often someone posts a photograph of a small boy in a dress, usually resulting in cries of “That’s a girl!� or, too often, “That’s horrible! He must have been humiliated!� In fact, dressing small boys and small girls in similar clothing predated the Victorians by centuries and lasted until early in the twentieth century, although especially in the later part of the nineteenth century, there were subtle differences between boys� and girls� dresses. Small boys weren’t “humiliated� by the practice, as their friends would be dressed similarly.
Jim Stone’s Boy (my collection)Although the similarity in clothing means that for us, at least, small boys in photographs can be difficult to distinguish from small girls, boys usually wore side parts or little top knots in their hair, although girls, especially older ones, can be found with side parts as well.
As for the reason behind the practice of dressing small boys and small girls similarly, uncomplicated frocks like the one above no doubt simplified toileting and laundering, but as Jo B. Paoletti points out, the continuation of boys in dresses long after they had achieved mastery of the toilet suggests that parents may have associated the practice with childhood innocence. Some may have simply not wanted their youngsters to grow up too fast.
Two lads from my collection (alas, one squirmed a little)Eventually, however, a boy would be “breeched”–put into pants, usually between the ages of two and seven. Charles Dickens, who was traveling, wrote to his sister-in-law on September 26, 1858, concerning his six-year-old son Edward (“Plorn�): “My best love to the noble Plornish. If he is quite reconciled to the postponement of his trousers, I should like to behold his first appearance in them. But, if not, as he is such a good fellow, I think it would be a pity to disappoint and try him.�
Charles W. Robins of Baltimore in his first pants (my collection)As the nineteenth century wore on, boys began to transition to trousers at earlier ages. In reply to a lady known as “Harry’s Mother,� a New York Times columnist wrote in the July 9, 1893, issue, “Little boys jump nowadays almost from baby clothes into trousers, the age of four or even of three and a half years not being considered too early for such advancement. The size and figure of the child should guide the parent, however, as some of the tiny, slim-legged youngers present an absurd apperance in their scraps of trousers. A safe rule is five years, and as the mother loses her baby when he puts on the trousers this is not too long to possess him.� Three years earlier, in its December 1890 issue, Godey’s Magazine pronounced, “As for little boys, they are all sailors; and contrary to what has been the fashion for many years past, it is now considered extra chic to put them early in trousers. Not long since, boys wore knickerbockers until twelve or thirteen; now they are hardly out of short frocks when they are dressed as middies, with funnel-shaped trousers and jackets. It is quite amusing.�
From my collectionSmall boys often had luxurious, flowing locks, which sometimes were left in place for a while even after a boy was breeched. Julia Grant, wife of Ulysses S Grant, recalled in her memoirs, “I insisted upon our second son, Ulysses, wearing his beautiful curls, which reached quite to his waist, until he was eight years old, when, being no longer able to resist his importunings (all his many instincts rising in rebellion against this girlish adornment), I consented to the shearing of my lamb. He announced this to his schoolmates, who appeared in force Saturday morning petitioning for some of ‘Deliciousness”� curls, which, of course, they got.�
Nebraska lad from my collection, showing off his curlsSources:
Jo B. Paoletti, “Clothing and Gender in America: Children’s Fashions, 1890-1920,� Signs, Autumn 1987.
John Y. Simon, ed., The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S Grant).
Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson, eds., The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume 8, 1856-1858.
March 24, 2024
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
For Women’s History Month, here’s a short piece I posted on Facebook about dress reformer, army surgeon, author, and eccentric Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919). (She doesn’t appear in The Queen of the Platform, as I have no evidence that she and Ernestine Rose ever met, but it would have been fun to overhear a conversation between these two women if their paths ever did cross.)
Born into a freethinking, abolitionist family that supported her ambitions, Mary graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855. Having married a fellow medical student, and entered into practice with him, she left her husband after he proved unfaithful. It would take her years to obtain a divorce.
An early advocate of women’s dress reform, who wore what became known as the “Bloomer costume,� Mary was one of the few who never returned to conventional women’s clothing; instead, she moved in the other direction and in her later years wore natty tailored suits and top hats. (On several occasions, she would be arrested for wearing “male attire.�)
Library of CongressDuring the Civil War, Mary served as an army surgeon–and a spy, which eventually led to her imprisonment in Richmond’s Castle Thunder in 1864. After a few months, she was released as part of a prisoner exchange, after which she took up posts at Louisville’s Female Military Prison and at the Refugee House in Clarksville, Tennessee. She attended the trial of those accused of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln; her Bloomer outfit caused considerable amusement on the part of some of the male defendants. President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Medal of Honor in November 1865.
Mary supported the women’s suffrage movement, but had an uneasy relationship with fellow activists, in part because she believed that the Constitution permitted women to vote without the need for further amendment, in part due to personality conflicts. In a book called Hit, she wrote on such subjects as dress reform, temperance, and divorce. She advocated for the right of married women to keep their maiden name and against child marriage. In a second book, Unmasked, or the Subject of Immorality, published anonymously, she touched upon the fraught subject of female sexuality, suggesting that husbands allow their wives to initiate sex. One of her successes was to persuade Congress to grant pensions to women who had served as hospital nurses during the Civil War.
Walker ran for the U.S. Senate in 1881, but attracted no support. (She had supported Victoria Woodhull’s unsuccessful candidacy for President.)
Due to a policy change about the criteria for earning a Medal of Honor, Mary’s medal (along with those of hundreds of male recipients) was revoked in 1917. She refused to return it. (It was restored by President Carter in 1977.)
Mary died on February 22, 1919. Had she lived 18 months longer, she would have seen the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Library of CongressThere are several good biographies of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, including Sharon M. Harris’s Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919, Theresa Kaminski’s Dr. Mary Walker’s Civil War, and Sara Latta’s book for young adult readers, I Could Not Do Otherwise: The Remarkable Life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.
March 1, 2024
March Happenings!
At long last, I’m pleased to say that The Queen of the Platform will be available on March 12, just in time for Women’s History Month! It can be found in paperback and e-book form at your or ordered in paperback through your local bookseller. Can’t wait to get my latest book before readers� eyes at last!
Speaking of Women’s History Month, my fellow author Janis Robinson Daly created of biographical historical novels featuring women. It’s a great mix of authors, publishers, subjects, and eras, and it includes my latest, so check it out!
If you’re on Facebook, stop by the page on March 18, where I’ll be doing an author takeover all day long. (That means I’ll be lording it over the group all day long, posting about my new novel and doing a giveaway.) The group is open to anyone who’s interested in historical fiction, so join before March 18 and stop in any time that day!
Finally, for those in the Winchester, Virginia, area, I’ll be signing The Queen of the Platform at the Winchester Book Gallery in downtown Winchester from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 24. Hope to see some of you there!
February 10, 2024
From the Underground Railroad to the Water-Cure: David Ruggles
(This post originally appeared as a guest post on Linda Bennett Pennell’s blog, .)
In researching my historical novels set in nineteenth-century America, I have come across a number of people, now obscure, who deserve to be remembered for their heroism. One is David Ruggles, a black abolitionist.
Born in Lyme, Connecticut, on March 15, 1810, Ruggles, the son of a blacksmith, took to the sea at age fifteen and ended up in New York City, where he became active in the abolitionist movement and ran a grocery store for a period of time. In 1834, he moved to Lispenard Street in lower Manhattan and opened a bookstore and circulating library specializing in abolitionist literature. Soon he began publishing his own pamphlets—a bold move in a city that was not particularly friendly to the anti-slavery movement. His store was set on fire in 1835. Unintimidated, Ruggles helped form the New York Committee of Vigilance, which helped escaped slaves and fought against the kidnapping of both free blacks and escapees. His house would soon become a stop on the Underground Railroad.
In 1838, Frederick Bailey, a fugitive from slavery, was directed to Ruggles� house and spent at least a week there. While there, Bailey summoned his fiancée from Baltimore to New York, and the couple married in Ruggles� house. (Ruggles himself was a lifelong bachelor.) On Ruggles� advice, Bailey changed his surname to Johnson, but soon would change it again, becoming known as Frederick Douglass. Douglass was one of hundreds whom Bailey helped to freedom.
Unfortunately, Ruggles� eyesight began to deteriorate when he was still a young man, making it untenable for him to continue his publishing activities, which included a journal, theMirror of Liberty. Friends invited him to stay at the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a cooperative community just outside of Northampton, Massachusetts. He arrived there in 1842, but his general health was failing as well. Ruggles finally tried hydrotherapy, known as the “water cure,� under the supervision of Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft, who operated a popular water-cure in Brattleboro, Vermont, but advised Ruggles by letter. As Ruggles� biographer, Graham Russell Gao Hodges, points out, Dr. Wesselhoeft was apparently unwilling to risk the social outrage that would result from having Ruggles bathing side by side with white clients.
From Joel Shew’s The Hydropathic Family PhysicianDespite the treatments, Ruggles� health and eyesight improved only marginally, but he was pleased enough with the results to begin treating patients himself. Among his patients was a reluctant Sojourner Truth, who grumbled, “I shall die if I continue in it, and I may as well die out of the water as in it.� After ten weeks, however, she admitted that she “had never enjoyed better health in her life.�
Ruggles soon opened his own water-cure establishment in the Northampton area. Another of his patients was abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who stayed there during the summer of 1848. Writing to Maria W. Chapman on July 19, 1848, Garrison stated: “The experience of the first day runs thus: � a half bath (which I should consider a whole one and a quarter) at 5 o� clock, A.M.; rubbed down with a wet sheet thrown over the body at 11 o’clock; a sitz bath at 4, P.M.; a foot-bath at half past 8, P.M.; and at 5 this morning, a shallow bath which is to be followed at 11 by a spray baptism.� In a letter to his wife on July 23, 1848, Garrison bragged that he had withstood the rigors of being “packed in a wet sheet, or drenched from head to foot, or immersed all over� and had not “uttered a groan, or heaved a sigh, or shed a tear, or faltered for a moment.� He noted that there were 19 patients, mostly men, and added, “There does not seem to be any pro-slavery among the patients; if there really is, it has not been manifested by any word or sign, and I hope it will be washed out of them.� Upon his discharge, Garrison proclaimed, “My aversion to cold water has been fairly conquered. I am now its earnest advocate.� Other patients of Ruggles included Mary Brown, whose husband John would later be hanged for leading the raid on Harpers Ferry. Mary, who had had a number of children and had been ailing for some time, told her son-in-law that she believed that the water cure would be “her only salvation.� Later, she would use the water-cure to treat her own family’s ailments.
Unfortunately, Ruggles could not cure himself. Although he ran his water cure almost until the end, he died on December 16, 1849. He was not yet forty. Ruggles was buried in his family plot in Norwich, Connecticut. Many would pay tribute to this man who had led a short, but full and heroic life. Frederick Douglass later recalled him as that “whole-souled man, fully imbued with a love of his afflicted and hunted people.�
Sources:
Frederick Douglass,(1855).
Graham Russell Gao Hodges,David Ruggles:A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
The Liberator, July 27, 1849 (advertisement)
Walter M. Merrill, ed.,No Union With Slave-Holders: The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1841-1849(Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973).
Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz,The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and The Legacy of Radical Abolitionism(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013).
Joel Shew,The Hydropathic Family Physician(New York: Fowler and Wells, 1854).
Margaret Washington,Sojourner Truth’s America(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009).
December 4, 2023
Ernestine Rose’s English Lodgings
I recently visited England (my first visit in way too many years), partly to track down some residences associated with Ernestine Rose, the heroine of my forthcoming novel, The Queen of the Platform. Although Ernestine spent many years in New York City, none of her homes there have survived modern development, so it was a treat to be able to look at her English residences.
Our first stop is in Bath, where Ernestine and her husband, William Ella Rose, lodged in 1870 and 1871. The Roses lived at 24 Paragon, one of many crescent-shaped streets in that city. As with all of their homes, the couple did not occupy the entire building, but lived in rented lodgings. Ernestine wrote to her friends at the freethinking Boston Investigator on December 27, 1870, “We have two large rooms, well furnished, one story high, in one of the principal streets, in a private house owned by the people who live in it. For the rooms, with fire and gas, and all kinds of service, we pay £1 5s. per week, and for that we have our rooms taken care of, and our food cooked and served in our room, and all we have to do is provide whatever we wish to have, order how to have it cooked, and when served. Thus we have all the real comfort of housekeeping without the trouble of it, or servants.�
During her stay in Bath, Ernestine helped elect two women to the local school board by giving a speech on their behalf.
Incidentally, the Paragon has associations with two other well-known figures: actress Sarah Siddons, who stayed at 33 Paragon for a while, and Jane Austen, whose wealthy uncle and aunt, James and Jane Leigh Perrot, lived at 1 Paragon. Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra from 1 Paragon on May 6, 1801, “I have the pleasure of writing from my own room up two pair of stairs, with everything very comfortable around me.�
Next is St. Petersburgh Place in the Bayswater neighborhood of London, not far from Paddington Station. Ernestine, who was widowed in 1882, spent her last years living on this street, although she traveled to Brighton for her health during the summers. Ernestine dated her will from 18 St. Petersburgh Place (the house with the blue door) on January 6, 1890, and the 1891 census has her living next door at 16 St. Petersburgh Place (the house with the yellow door). (At the time of William’s death in 1882, the Roses were living at 32 St. Petersburgh Place.) A caller saw Ernestine at 16 Petersburgh Place on January 13, 1891, Ernestine’s birthday, and wrote, “Mrs. Rose spent her birthday in her drawing-room, sitting in her arm chair looking very cheerful, her black eyes at times sparkling with interest or fun. She has still a very fresh complexion.�
Finally, Ernestine died on August 4, 1892, at 39 Marine Parade in Brighton, having suffered a stroke three days before. Her house is the one without scaffolding. Located close to the present-day Brighton Palace Pier, it has an excellent view of the sea. An atheist, Ernestine had fretted that some religious person might take advantage of her weakened condition in her last illness to secure a deathbed conversion, but “her last hours passed away peacefully and were quite untroubled by any thoughts of religion.�
November 2, 2023
An Unlikely Escort: The Dentist Who (Maybe) Helped Mary Lincoln Out of Frankfurt
In 1870, the widowed Mary Lincoln and her son Tad, who had already been in one war zone in Washington, D.C., found themselves in another as France and Prussia faced off.
Mary Lincoln in mourning after the death of her son Willie (my collection)After her husband’s assassination, Mary refused to return to Springfield, Illinois. Although the Lincolns owned a home at Eighth and Jackson Streets there, and three of her married sisters lived nearby, Mary was on chilly terms with many of her former neighbors. She decided instead to make her home in Chicago. Accompanied by her sons Robert and Tad, she moved to that city in May 1865. There, with Robert working for a law firm and Tad enrolled in school, she had little to do but to brood and await the division of the estate of her husband, who had died intestate. Having bought heavily on credit during her years as First Lady, she owed thousands of dollars to merchants.
To clear her debts, Mary hit on the idea of selling her wardrobe, no longer needed now that Mary was perpetually in mourning garb. Enlisting the help of Elizabeth Keckly (also spelled “Keckley�), a former slave turned dressmaker who had created many fashionable garments for Mary in Washington, Mary traveled to New York in September 1867 under the name of “Mrs. Clarke.� What followed was an unmitigated disaster. Mary’s identity was quickly discovered. Aside from the sale being regarded as in poor taste, prospective buyers were unimpressed by the clothing, which of course was no longer in the height of style and not in the freshest condition. Those who could afford the asking prices did not need to buy secondhand garments anyway. The press, never well disposed to Mary, were merciless, and Robert Lincoln was humiliated and worried. Referring to money, he confided to his fiancée, Mary Harlan, “The simple truth, which I cannot tell anyone not personally interested, is that my mother is on one subject not mentally responsible.�
Soon afterward, journalist James Redpath persuaded Elizabeth Keckly, who had been a frequent companion and confidante of Mary in Washington, to publish an account, Behind the Scenes, or; Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Keckly meant well, but this time it was she who took a drubbing at the hands of the press, which was appalled by the notion of a black woman presuming to write about a person who in some respects had been her former employer. Mary herself was furious with Keckly, who had included some letters from Mary in the appendix. (Keckly blamed Redpath, claiming he had not had her permission to do so.) In a letter to a friend, Mary referred to Keckly sneeringly as the “colored historian.� Their friendship was over, at least as far as Mary was concerned. (Keckly retained a photograph of Mary into her old age.)
Frontispiece from Behind the Scenes (Library of Congress)In all this there was one bright spot: the Lincoln estate was at last settled, leaving Mary reasonably secure, and her debts were paid. Mary decided to travel to Europe, which she and Lincoln had planned to visit after his second term as President ended. Her physicians had recommended travel abroad—a common prescription for those who could afford it—and she was eager to escape the American press. Having remained in America long enough to attend Robert’s wedding to Mary Harlan in Washington, D.C., Mary and Tad set sail for Europe in October 1868. After arriving in Bremen, they moved to Frankfurt, where Tad was enrolled in school. Although Mary and Tad traveled elsewhere, Frankfurt would remain their base for some time.
Meanwhile, a young dentist with the splendid name of Isidor Mordaunt Sigismund (he sometimes gave his first name as “James�) had also settled in Frankfurt. A younger son of a rabbi, Isidor had been born around 1840 in the Polish town of Praszka, near the Prussian border. His half-sister Ernestine Louise Rose, over thirty years his senior, had arrived in the United States with her English husband in 1836. An abolitionist and outspoken atheist, she became prominent in the women’s rights movement, and in her day was nearly as well known as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Isidor first appears in American records in 1857, when he completed a form in Boston declaring his intent to become an American citizen. He was not, however, a man who liked to stay in one place. Soon he was in England, where he and an older brother patented a dental apparatus, but he returned to the United States in time for the Civil War. He served briefly in the Union Army before returning to Europe, after which he enlisted once more and quickly deserted. In 1867 in London, he married Caroline Gregory, the daughter of an English gentleman. (The marriage seems to have been a miserable one, and ended in divorce in 1877.) By 1869 Isidor was in Frankfurt, where he brought a defamation suit against a merchant who claimed that he had drilled into a healthy tooth. From 1869 to 1871 he regularly advertised himself as an “American Dentist� based in that city.
As Isidor plied his trade in Frankfurt, Mary alternated between gloom and some measure of content. She had a new obsession: trying to get Congress to grant her a pension, a reasonable enough desire under the circumstances, but Congress was dragging its feet. Mary could do nothing but urge her loyal friends, like Senator Charles Sumner, to keep the issue alive. In the summer of 1869, however, she got a respite in the form of a tour of Scotland, and more good news came in October when Robert Todd Lincoln and his wife provided Mary with her first grandchild. Finally, on July 14, 1870, Congress awarded Mary a pension of $3,000 per year. Mary was with Tad in Innsbruck, Austria, when her friend James Orme sent a telegram carrying the happy tidings.
Mary mailed a letter of thanks to Orme from Innsbruck on July 16, 1870, but she was not in a position to bask in the good news for long. As Mary told Orme in the letter, war between France and Prussia was imminent, and she had been warned by someone in Frankfurt “that the French were on the Rhine, and if we wished to secure our baggage . . . we must return & see after our effects—also, to entirely arrange our affairs in Germany.� She added, “You can well believe that when my funds will be placed before me, and we have quiet times again (for the agitation in Europe is very great[)], the obligation will be remembered.�
Three days later, France declared war on Prussia. Despite all the agitation, Mary stayed put in Frankfurt for several more weeks. On August 17, she wrote to Sally Orme, James’s wife and Mary’s friend, that she planned to leave for London in four or five days. She added that Tad had gone to see General Philip Sheridan, who had come to observe the Prussian field armies, and that she was not using her accustomed mourning stationery because it was packed up. On September 7, she wrote to Senator Sumner from York, England. After thanking him for his efforts on her behalf, she concluded, “My heart has been made sick the past summer, by being almost in the middle of the fearful war, which has convulsed the Continent.� That would be Mary’s last known comment on the Franco-Prussian War.
Tad Lincoln in Frankfurt (Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection)Mary did not detail how she and Tad got out of Frankfurt safely, but recently, while researching the family of Ernestine Rose, I stumbled onto a document that may shed some light on the matter. It comes from Isidor Mordaunt Sigismund, the dentist mentioned above.
In 1903, just before preparing to leave New York for Europe again, Isidor, a naturalized citizen of the United States, found that he had lost his papers. Applying for a passport, he attached a letter to the Secretary of State, dropping name after name. After claiming to have been a friend of the late President Hayes, he added:
It was I who was requested to take charge of the late Mrs. Lincoln & her son, “Tad� (wife of President Lincoln) soon after the outbreak of the Franco-German war from the South of Germany to Antwerp, where she was—if I mistake not—she was taken to the States in an American man-of-war.
Was Isidor telling the truth? He is not entirely trustworthy, for his behavior in his later years had become increasingly erratic. In 1901, he had been tried at London’s Old Bailey for libel after sending a series of unpleasant letters to his half-niece, whom he believed had connived to have him excluded from Ernestine Rose’s will. He had a gambling problem, and perhaps a drinking problem as well. He quarreled with his landlady, with fellow steamship passengers, and (rather self-defeatingly) with the owners of the gambling dens he frequented. A relative believed that he had kidnapped his son by his second marriage.
On the other hand, his story is plausible. Isidor was living in Frankfurt at the same time Mary and Tad were and directed his dental services toward Americans. He was well-traveled. Having grown up near the Prussian border and practiced in Frankfurt, he probably spoke fluent German, and his years in England and the United States make it likely that his English was good as well. As a dentist who also studied medicine, he would have probably been reassuring company for Mary, who suffered from a number of ailments. All this would have made him a suitable escort for Mary and her son.
On balance, I am inclined to give Isidor credence. While Mary and Tad were no longer alive to contradict his story, Isidor did not have much to gain from its telling, as he had traveled abroad for so long and so often that it was unlikely he was in any real danger of having his passport denied. It appears that he never told his story for financial gain and did not exaggerate his importance, although he had plenty of opportunities to do so, given that he frequently wrote articles for Jewish newspapers and lectured in the early twentieth century. Few people in 1903 would have remembered that Mary Lincoln had been abroad in 1870. The fact that he got a detail wrong—Mary did not go to the United States from Frankfurt, but to England—suggests a faulty memory after thirty-three years rather than a fabrication. And poor Mary’s name probably did not carry much weight in 1903. All in all, while his account has not been corroborated, there is no reason to dismiss it out of hand.
Mary and Tad finally returned to the United States in 1871, where yet another tragedy awaited—the death of eighteen-year-old Tad, who had matured from the rambunctious boy of the White House years into a thoughtful, considerate young man. The rest of Mary’s story—her commitment to an insane asylum at the instigation of her only surviving son, Robert, her successful campaign to be released and declared “restored to reason,� a second flight to Europe, and her death at her sister Elizabeth Edwards� house in Springfield in 1882—is well known. Isidor, meanwhile, helped treat wounded troops during the war (at least, he recalled that he did), and then went back to his restless life. Just weeks after making his final voyage from England to New York, he died in his Manhattan lodgings on September 24, 1913. Although it was said he had once been wealthy, he was given a pauper’s burial. If his story about escorting the former First Lady is true, one can only wonder what these two highly-strung people made of each other.
My summary of Mary’s postwar life is based on Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life (New York: Harper, 2009) and Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Fromm International Publishing Company, 1987).
Jason Emerson, Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case: A Documentary History (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2012), p. 4.
Turner and Turner, Life and Letters, p. 476.
Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave (New York: Broadway Books), p. 324.
For a good overview of Ernestine Rose’s life, see Carol A. Kolmerten, The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose (Syracuse University Press, 1999). I have documented the ties between Ernestine and Isidor in Susan Higginbotham, “The Early Life and Family of Feminist Ernestine Rose: New Findings and an Old Secret,� Journal of Genealogy and Family History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 2023). For a passport application in which Isidor specifically mentions Ernestine as his sister, see note 15.
Ancestry.com: Massachusetts, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798-1950 (Isidor Sigesmond), declaration of intention dated February 2, 1857. All Ancestry records were last accessed on March 2, 2023.
Specification of Isidor Sigismund: manufacture of artificial teeth. Patent No. 815, April 1, 1859 (Wellcome Collection), , accessed on February 12, 2023.
The Index, September 22, 1864, p. 599; Patrick A. Schroeder, We Came to Fight: The History of the 5th New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry, Duryee’s Zouaves (1863-1865) (Brookneal, Va.: Patrick A. Schroeder, 1998), p. 491.
General Register Office for England and Wales, Marriage of Isidor Mordaunt Sigismund to Caroline Elizabeth Gregory, January 5, 1873; Daily News (London), May 17, 1877, p. 2.
Juristische Gesellschaft in Frankfurt am Main, Dritter Jahrgang 1869, pp. 363-67,
Kölnische Zeitung, November 3, 1869, p. 8; July 20, 1870, p. 4; July 1, 1871, p. 3 (among other issues).
Turner and Turner, Life and Letters, pp. 574-75.
Thomas F. Schwartz and Anne V. Shaughnessy, “Unpublished Mary Lincoln Letters,� Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (1990), , accessed March 2, 2023.
Turner and Turner, Life and Letters, pp. 576-77.
Ancestry: U.S., Passport Applications, 1795-1925 (I. Mordaunt Sigismund), April 2, 1903.
The Times, November 7, 1900. p. 14; The Morning Post, November 1, 1900, p. 7; The Proceedings of the Old Bailey (ref. no. t19010107-110), January 7, 1901, , accessed February 12, 2023.
The Weekly Dispatch, August 13, 1865, p. 4; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 17, 1904, p. 1; Westminster Gazette, August 25, 1908, p. 8; Evening World, November 10, 1908, p. 16.
Westminster Gazette, August 25, 1908, p. 8; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 17, 1904, p. 1; The World, May 3, 1904, p. 7.
Notes in Yuri Suhl papers, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. Yuri Suhl was Ernestine Rose’s first modern biographer.
He and his brother are mentioned as 1872 graduates of the Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia in Harold J. Abrahams, Extinct Medical Schools of Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1966), p. 322.
The Hebrew Standard, October 23, 1903, p. 1.
New York Times, September 26, 1913, p. 11; The Sentinel (Chicago), October 10, 1913, p. 23; American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, October 10, 1913, p. 662; death certificate, James Mordaunt Sigismund, Department of Health of the City of New York, N.Y., No. 28301.
October 10, 2023
The Bloomer Movement
In 1851, a new word entered the fashion lexicon: the “Bloomer.� It referred not to undergarments but to what had been known previously by such names as the “reform dress� and the “Turkish dress�: essentially, a short dress paired with pantaloons, in place of the constricting women’s garments of the day. It would become associated with women’s rights activists, especially with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and the woman who accidentally bestowed her name upon the garment, Amelia Bloomer.
Unidentified woman from my collectionAlthough the dress reform movement first attracted widespread public attention in 1851, it was not a new phenomenon. As early as 1826, Robert Owen had attempted to introduce the “New Harmony� costume to his utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana. Resident Sarah Pears, who was decidedly underwhelmed, wrote to her aunt on April 8, 1826, “The female dress is a pair of under-trowsers tied round the ankles over which is an exceedingly full slip reaching to the knees, though some have been so extravagant as to make them rather longer, and also to have the sleeves long. I do not know whether I can describe the men’s apparel but I will try. The pantaloons are extremely full, also tied round the ankle; the top garment also very full, bound round the waist with a very broad belt, which gives it the appearance of being all in one.�
Pears grumbled, “A fat person dressed in this elegant costume I have heard very appropriately compared to a feather bed tied in the middle.� One person who did carry off the New Harmony costume well was the tall, slender Frances “Fanny� Wright, a Scottish-born reformer who was involved with the community for a while.
Lithograph by Charles Joseph Hullmandel after Auguste Hervieu; Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe New Harmony community soon broke up. The Oneida community, however, adopted a version of reform dress in 1848, and advocates of the water-cure movement began to promote the cause of dress reform as well. In 1849, actress Fanny Kemble was criticized by the press when she supposedly appeared in Lenox, Massachusetts, in what were called “man’s clothes.� Not so, said Amelia Bloomer in her periodical The Lily: Kemble was wearing “a loose flowing dress falling a little below the knees, and loose pantalettes of drawers confined to the ankle by a band or cord. This shows how very sensitive gentlemen are in regard to any infringement on what they are pleased to consider their ‘rights.� They need have no fears however on the subject, for we very much doubt whether even Mrs. Kemble could be willing to don their ugly dress. We wish they could be content with the right of dressing as they please, and not dictate to us what we shall or shall not wear.�
It was in Seneca Falls, however, that the dress reform movement really took off. In 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller, the daughter of wealthy abolitionist Gerrit Smith, visited her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton at her home in Seneca Falls—the same small city where Stanton had famously held a convention to discuss women’s rights three years before. Stanton recalled: “Mrs. Miller came to visit me in Seneca Falls, dressed somewhat in the Turkish style–short skirt, full trousers of fine black broadcloth; a Spanish cloak, of the same material, reaching to the knee; beaver hat and feathers and dark furs; altogether a most becoming costume and exceedingly convenient for walking in all kinds of weather. To see my cousin, with a lamp in one hand and a baby in the other, walk upstairs with ease and grace, while, with flowing robes, I pulled myself up with difficulty, lamp and baby out of the question, readily convinced me that there was sore need of reform in woman’s dress, and I promptly donned a similar attire. What incredible freedom I enjoyed for two years! Like a captive set free from his ball and chain, I was always ready for a brisk walk through sleet and snow and rain, to climb a mountain, jump over a fence, work in the garden, and, in fact, for any necessary locomotion.�
Amelia Bloomer, a neighbor of Stanton, promptly adopted the new dress and began to advocate for it in the pages of The Lily, and soon the press was calling the garment the “Bloomer.� The Water-Cure Journal printed a sketch of Amelia in her eponymous garment in October 1851.
The Water-Cure JournalMeanwhile, Stanton found that her family did not share her enthusiasm for her new clothing. On April 11, 1851, she worried in a letter to her husband that she might not be welcome at her father’s home, “for Cousin Gerrit says that papa is so distressed about my dress.� Young Daniel Stanton begged his mother not to visit him at school “in a short dress,� to which Stanton responded on October 14, “You want me to be like other people. You do not like to have me laughed at. You must learn not to care for what foolish people say.� Most likely the lad was not comforted by this sage advice.
All through 1851, the press kept an eye out for ladies in Bloomer attire, recording sightings in city streets and town squares. The Syracuse Standard praised the costume as “feminine, graceful, convenient, tidy, and in harmony with the laws of health,� and the Wisconsin Telegraph proclaimed, “The fashion on the whole is appropriate, and has some show of common sense to back it.� The Brooklyn Evening Star reported that some factory girls in Lowell, Massachusetts had adopted it. By contrast, the reactionary New York Herald grumbled, “The attempt of a few lunatic and crotchety old maids and widows, induced by the socialist philosophers to persevere in their folly, has resulted in the putting on of breeches—called the Turkish costume—by those females who are silly enough to be led into such an absurd practice.� Satirical images abounded.
John Leech cartoon from New York Public Library Digital CollectionsAt the Woman’s Rights Convention at Syracuse, New York, in September 1852, a number of attendees appeared in the Bloomer, most notably Lucy Stone, who had started wearing the costume at home in 1850 and had gone public with it after about a year. Stanton, who had young children to care for, did not go to the convention, but her new friend Susan B. Anthony was there—the first time Anthony, active in the temperance movement, appeared at such a gathering. Stanton had not yet converted Anthony to Bloomers, but by December 1852, Anthony, writing to Lucy Stone from Stanton’s house, reported, “Well, at last I am in short skirt and trousers!� Both Stone and Anthony cut their hair as well.
Library Company of Philadelphia (Illustrated News, May 28, 1853)But the Bloomer remained the garb of a decided minority. Not even all women’s rights activists adopted it. Lucretia Mott, one of the older women in the movement at the time, continued in her usual attire, as did Ernestine L. Rose and Lucy Stone’s close friend and future sister-in-law, Antoinette Brown (later Blackwell). Sarah Gilson, who interviewed Antoinette Brown Blackwell years later, wrote that Brown found long skirts a nuisance, but eschewed the new costume because she “believed it a mistaken emphasis to cause so much discussion about mere clothes.�
Indeed, the press became increasingly hostile to the garment, and those who wore it were subjected to street harassment and stares. Whether it was the pantaloons, the disapproval of the influential (and woman-edited) Godey’s Lady’s Book, the fear of being conspicuous, the association of the Bloomer with the unpopular women’s rights movement, or the fact that many simply found reform dress unflattering, most women continued in their long skirts.
Metropolitan Museum of ArtOne by one, women’s rights activists gave in to public pressure. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had donned the Bloomer with such enthusiasm, was one of the first to abandon the garment. As she recalled ruefully, “But, while the few realized its advantages, the many laughed it to scorn, and heaped such ridicule on its wearers that they soon found that the physical freedom enjoyed did not compensate for the persistent persecution and petty annoyances suffered at every turn. To be rudely gazed at in public and private, to be the conscious subjects of criticism, and to be followed by crowds of boys in the streets, were all, to the very last degree, exasperating.�
Having purged her wardrobe of “every short skirt,� Stanton campaigned for her friends to do the same. “[L]ay aside the shorts,� she urged Lucy Stone in early 1854. “We put the dress on for greater freedom, but what is physical freedom compared with mental bondage? By all means have the new dress made long.� Both Stanton and Lucy Stone began to work on Susan B. Anthony, who in March 1854 grimly reported, “I have let down some of my dresses and am dragging around with long skirts.� She later recalled of the Bloomer, “I found it a physical comfort but a mental crucifixion. . . . The attention of my audience was fixed upon my clothes instead of my words.� Years later, Antoinette Brown Blackwell recalled, “On one occasion some years later when some of the younger women were trying to reintroduce the short dress and were advocating it at a public meeting, Miss Anthony turned to me with a queer look and whispered, ‘They may do it, but I shan’t. I’ve suffered enough.'�
Elizabeth Smith Miller, whose father and husband had heartily approved of the Bloomer, continued to wear it for some years, even though she found that sitting in such attire “produced an awkward, uncouth effect.� Giving way to her “love of the beautiful,� she finally abandoned the Bloomer, though she avoided corsets and fashion extremes. Amelia Bloomer, who claimed that she had never encountered “open opposition� while wearing her titular garment, gradually laid it aside when the invention of the hoop skirt relieved women of the need to wear “heavy underskirts.�
Library of CongressBut despite its abandonment by its best-known advocates, the Bloomer still had its adherents. Some women in the water-cure movement continued to wear it, and health advocates went so far as to found the National Dress Reform Association. Others found the Bloomer useful on the overland trail. Versions of it were worn in gymnastics classes or as swimwear. Dr. Mary Walker, who had adopted the garment as a teacher in the early 1850s, wore it for years until finally moving in the 1870s to clothing that was little different from menswear; in her last years, she even added a top hat to her ensemble. “I don’t pretend to be a dude,� she told The Boston Globe in 1898, “and I don’t care very much about following the latest styles.�
Library of CongressSources:
Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman’s Rights.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell, typescript of memoirs recounted to Sarah Gilson (, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute).
Amelia Bloomer, “Mrs. Kemble and her New Costume,� The Lily, December 1849.
D. C. Bloomer, Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 2, 1851.
Brooklyn Evening Star, June 2, 1851.
Gayle V. Fischer, Pantaloons and Power: A Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform in the United States.
Ann D. Gordon, ed., In the School of Anti-Slavery: The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. I.
Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.
Kenneth L. Holmes, ed., Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters From the Western Trails, 1854-1860.
Amy Kesselman, “The ‘Freedom Suit�: Feminism and Dress Reform in the United States, 1848-1875, in Gender and Society, December 1991.
Sara Latta, I Could Not Do Otherwise: The Remarkable Life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.
New York Tribune, June 27, 1851
Thomas Clinton Pears, Jr., ed., New Harmony, An Adventure in Happiness: Papers of Thomas and Sarah Pears.
Theodore Stanton and Harriet Stanton Blatch, eds., Elizabeth Cady Stanton as Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences.
“Symposium on Women’s Dress� in B. O. Flower, ed., The Arena, vol. VI, 1892.
From my collection
