Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/46

38 spoils the received methods of extinguishing such a fire. She died in the Infirmary; and the Leicester Coroner declared at the inquest that the “absurd expansion and profusion of the dress now worn by females, had occasioned more fatal accidents than he had ever before read or heard of.”—M. C, aged fifteen, was sitting by the fire with another girl about her own age, when she stood up to reach something from the mantel-piece. Of course her dress touched the bars, and in a moment the flames were rushing over her head.—There was one younger still whose fate seems to me more piteous than almost any. Little J. B, aged ten, had taken pains to dress herself for school, and had put on the fatal present just received from a cousin—a crinoline. “O mother! I was lacing Freddy’s boots by the fire,” was the explanation she gave. She was stooping down to her little brother’s feet when the new petticoat thrust itself into the fire. The foreman of the Coroner’s jury strongly condemned the fatal fashion; and the jury agreed with him: but they were too much afraid of “the sex” to put their judgment on record in the newspapers. Who, of the whole sex, would like now to have been the giver of that fatal gift?

Many of the young ladies’ cases arise from their dressing their hair before the glass with their extended petticoats on. The act of raising the arms to the head is sure to stick out the skirts in one direction or another; and we find, therefore, that several have perished in this way when the glass was within several feet of the fire-place.

M. A. L, living with her parents in lodgings near London, rushed screaming out of her bed-room,—the flames reaching above her head. The landlord was on the stairs; and he did the best that could be done, at great risk to himself; but she died that night, from burns and the shock together. She had stooped before the glass, and so thrust her skirt against the bars of the grate. She was a fine healthy girl of seventeen.—Miss M. J combed her hair with her face to the fire, and perished in the same way, except that her skirts caught fire in front, instead of behind. Both these young ladies died in Guy’s Hospital, where the doctors must have long ago seen enough of the burnings of women to have a very strong opinion about the fashion of crinoline. Perhaps they may be fond of quoting, as some other doctors are, the saying of old gentlemen from India,—that we English have made a great outcry against the Suttee in India; but that we burn more women in twelvemonths by slavishness to fashion than the Hindoos do by their superstition. One morning last winter, M died of burns received since midnight, by her having hung up her gown upon a peg before she took off her crinoline petticoat. She had set her candle on a box at some distance; but the act of reaching brought her clothes against the flame, and she was dead before the observances of the day began.

A good many people say that all this sacrifice of life happens because ladies will not insist on their muslins being dressed with a preparation which would render them non-inflammable. They are saying so now about Mademoiselle Emma Livry, who was burned almost to death on the stage of the Grand Opera at Paris, the other day, during a rehearsal of “La Muette de Portici.” They say so about Miss C, who was a guest at Lord Monteagle’s, at Mount Trenchard, when she set herself on fire by reaching to a window-curtain, and igniting her hanging sleeve. (Another perilous fashion!) They say so of the case of Miss E. M. S, who was dressing for dinner after a wedding, in the same week, and, stooping to a trunk, set her sleeve on fire. Both these young ladies died; and it is alleged that they, and the crinoline victims, could have escaped, if their muslins and gauzes had been dressed with starch duly prepared. It may be so: but I should be sorry that more lives should hang on the question which will happen first,—the going out of wide petticoats or the general introduction of non-inflammable starching. Let the laundresses of empresses, princesses, peeresses, and prima donnas extol the life-saving property of the starch they use: but how long will it be before the ordinary starch is superseded by any new article in the laundries of the great middle class, and the kitchens of cottages throughout the land?

This brings me to the class of victims which, I own, interests me the most.

I wonder whether the Empress of the French, who is responsible for the introduction of the fashion;—whether our Queen, who is, it seems, not supreme in the world of English fashion;—whether the high-spirited young ladies of the aristocracy, who conceal their slavery to the mode under an air of wilfulness, ever cast a thought towards the humbler orders of their own sex, whose lives they put in peril by their caprices. I can fancy these ladies laughing at the cautions, and resenting or despising the remonstrances of their friends of the other sex on this particular matter, and claiming to be the sole judges of what they shall wear. I have seen some of them enjoying the opportunity of defying opinion, and of proving that they dress to please their own notions, and not men’s taste. I have known the extent of daring to which some middle-class ladies will go in spending more money on their skirts than they have warning that husband or father can afford. I have long ago perceived the recklessness with which they throw away, in this case, the prestige of their sex, which it will take generations to repair. Of all this I am fully aware. I see how the habitual politeness of well-bred women gives way when the question is of incommoding their neighbours by their dress. From knocking my furniture about when they come to see me, to cutting my shins with their sharp steel in a throng, and allowing me and their other acquaintance of the order of gentlemen no room at the dinner table, or at church or the theatre, they give pain and do mischief without remorse or regret. All this I know; and perhaps I hear more of the consequences to their repute than they do: but what I yet want to know is, whether they have any sense of responsibility for the sacrifice of life they have caused in the class of maid-servants, and of schoolgirls who are to be maid-servants. It is no doing of theirs that deaths do not happen in that way in factories. The mill- owners have very properly taken the matter into