The Dangerous Victorian Fashion that Killed 3,000 Women
The crinoline is a woman’s large petticoat that has been in and out of fashion since the early 19th century. The original garment was made from very stiff horsehair fabric that kept the fashionable hoop skirts of the 1800s in its proper position. Soon the horsehair was replaced by stiffened cotton, and later the cage crinolines became the most popular.
The cage crinoline was made from spring steel running horizontally, with vertical tape lines to keep the hoops secure. The circumference could be anywhere from a few feet up to about fifteen feet. Indeed, one had to be very careful when sitting, as the hoops could pop up unexpectedly, showing everything underneath.
The width of some of the ladies dresses made it difficult to walk through doorways and the typical Victorian parlor. A manufactured hoop, however, kept the wearer much cooler than the layers of petticoats did, and Civil War era ladies found they could smuggle medicines, guns, ammunition, and other needed items into the Confederacy underneath their large skirts.
As fashionable as the crinoline was, it became one of the most dangerous articles of clothing ever known. It was highly flammable, and about 3,000 women were killed when their crinolines caught fire. In 1858, a woman in Boston was standing too close to her fireplace when her skirt caught fire, and it took only minutes for her entire body to be consumed. In February 1863, Margaret Davey, a 14-year-old kitchen maid, had her crinoline catch fire as she reached up to the mantle for a set of spoons, later dying from the severity of her burns.
In England, over a two-month period, nineteen deaths attributed to burning crinolines were reported. Any women who witnessed the flames were unable to help for fear of their own skirts catching fire. In Philadelphia, nine ballerinas were killed when one brushed by a candle at the Continental Theater.