"Mignonette's case is not an 'unusual' one. She has just finished her education at a 'West-End school' where the system was strictly enforced. As she entered as a pupil at the age of thirteen and was very slender, she was fitted on her arrival with a corset, which could be drawn close without the extreme tightness found necessary in Mignonette's case. They did not open in front, and were fastened by the under-governess in such a manner that any attempt to unlace them during the night would be immediately detected at the morning's inspection. After the first week or two she felt no discomfort or pain of any kind, though, as she was still growing, her stays became proportionately tighter, but owing to her figure never being allowed to enlarge during the nine or ten hours of sleep, as is usually the case, this was almost imperceptible."
The Crinoline of a South Sea Islander.
Madame La Sante also refers to the custom as being much more general than is commonly supposed. She says—"Several instances of this system in private families have lately come to my own knowledge, and I am acquainted with more than one fashionable school in the neighbourhood of London where the practice is made a rule of the establishment. Such a method is doubtlessly resorted to from a sense of duty, and those girls who have been subjected to this discipline, and with whom I have had an opportunity of conversing, say that for the first few months the uneasiness by the continued compression was very considerable, but that after a time they became so accustomed to it that they felt reluctant to discontinue the practice." In the United States of America the ladies often possess figures of remarkable slenderness and elegance, and the term "illusion" is not unfrequently applied to a waist of more than ordinary taperness. In a great number of instances the custom above referred to would be found to have mainly contributed to its original formation. The way in which doctors disagree on matters relating to the corset question is most remarkable.
The older writers, as we have seen, launched out in the most sweeping and condemnatory manner against almost every article of becoming or attractive attire. Corsets were most furiously denounced, and had the qualities which were gravely attributed to them been one-thousandth part as deadly as they were represented, the civilised world would long ere this have been utterly depopulated. When we find such diseases and ailments as the following attributed by authors of supposed talent to the use of the corset, we are no longer surprised at remarks and strictures emanating from similar sources meeting with ridicule and derision: "hooping-cough, obliquity of vision, polypus, apoplexy, stoppage of the nose, pains in the eyes, and earache" are all laid at the door of the stays. We are rather surprised that large ears and wooden legs were not added to the category, as they might have been with an equal show of reason. Medical writers of the present day are beginning to take a totally different view of the matter, as the following letter from a surgeon of much experience will show:—
"My attention has just been directed to an interesting and important discussion in your magazine on the subject of corsets, and I have been urged as a medical man to give my opinion regarding them. Under these circumstances I trust you will allow me to attend the 'Englishwoman's Conversazione' for once, as medical men are supposed to be the great opponents of the corset. It is no doubt true that those medical men who studied for their profession some thirty or forty years ago are still prejudiced against this elegant article of female dress, for stays were very different things even then to what they are now. The medical works, too, which they studied were written years before, and spoke against the buckram and iron stays of the last century. The name 'stays,' however, being still used at the present time, the same odium still attaches to them in the minds of physicians of the old school. But the rising generation of doctors are free from these prejudices, and fairly judge the light and elegant corsets of the present day on their own merits. In short, it is now generally admitted, and I, for one, freely allow, that moderate compression of the waist by well-made corsets is far from being injurious. It is really absurdly illogical for the opponents of the corset to bring forward quotations from medical writers of the last century, for the animadversions of Soemmering are still quoted. Let us, however, merely look at facts as they at present stand; statistics prove that there are several thousand more women than men in the United Kingdom. A statement in the Registrar-General's Report of a few years since has been brought forward to prove that corsets produce an enormous mortality from consumption, but these would-be benefactors of the fair sex omit to state how many males die from that disease. If there be any preponderance of deaths among women from consumption, the cause may easily be found in the low dress, the thin shoes, and the sedentary occupations in close rooms, without attributing the blame to the corset. Dr. Walshe, in his well-known work on diseases of the lungs, distinctly asserts that corsets cannot be accused of causing consumption. With regard to spinal curvature, a disease which has been connected by some writers with the use of stays, an eminent French physician, speaking of corsets, says—'They cannot be charged with causing deviations of the vertebral column.' Let us, then, hear no more nonsense about the terrible consequences of wearing corsets, at all events till the ladies return to the buckram and iron of our great-grandmothers. Your fair readers may rest assured that what is said against stays at the present day is merely the lingering echo of prejudice, and is quite inapplicable now-a-days to the light and elegant production of the scientific corsetière. As a medical man (and not one of the old school) I feel perfectly justified in saying that ladies who are content with a moderate application of the corset may secure that most elegant female charm, a slender waist", without fear of injury to health.
"Medicus."
A great number of ladies who, by the systematic use of the corset, have had their waists reduced to the fashionable standard, are to be constantly met in society. The great majority declare that they have in no way suffered in health from the treatment they had been subjected to. Vide the following letter from the Queen of July 18, 1863:—
"Madam,—As I have for a long time been a constant reader of the Lady's Journal, I venture to ask you if you, or any of your valuable correspondents, will kindly tell me if it is true that small waists are again coming into fashion generally? I am aware that they cannot be said to have gone out of fashion altogether, for one often sees very slender figures; but I think during the last few years they have been less thought of than formerly. I have heard, however, from several sources, and by the public prints, that they are again to be La Mode. Now I fortunately possess a figure which will, I hope, satisfy the demand of fashion in this respect. What is the smallest-sized waist that one can have? Mine is sixteen and a-half inches, and, I have heard, is considered small. I do not believe what is said against the corset, though I admit that if a girl is an invalid, or has a very tender constitution, too sudden a reduction of the waist may be injurious. With a waist which is, I believe, considered small, I can truly say I have good health. If all that was said against the corset were true, how is it so many ladies live to an advanced age? A friend of mine has lately died at the age of eighty-six, who has frequently told me anecdotes of how in her young days she was laced cruelly tight, and at the age of seventeen had a waist fifteen inches. Yet she was eighty-six when she died. I know that it has been so long the habit of public journals to take their example from medical men (who, I contend, are not the best judges in the matter) in running down the corset, and the very legitimate, and, if properly employed, harmless mode of giving a graceful slenderness to the figure, that I can hardly expect that at present you will have courage to take the part of the ladies. But I beg you to be so kind as to tell me what you know of the state of the fashion as regards the length and size of the waist, and whether my waist would be considered small. Also what is the smallest-sized waist known among ladies of fashion. By doing this in an early number you will very much oblige,
"Yours, &c.,
"Constance."