Random Women's Dresses Used To Be Flammable Death Traps, Killing 3,000 Ladies In One Year (11 items)

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  (#1) Despite Thousands Of Fatalities, Women's Fashion Didn't Change

  Although death by flaming dress might seem like only an occasional hazard, Victorian garments catching on fire actually killed thousands of women a year. Through the early-to-mid 1800s, women continued to wear incredibly flammable clothing despite widespread reports of death and injury; apparently they just considered it the price of fashion.

  Even when the British medical journal The Lancet decided to publish their findings regarding the surge in deaths, it did little at the time to deter prevailing trends. The Lancet estimated in 1860 that at least 3,000 woman were killed in a single year by fire.
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  (#2) Dresses Were Basically Made Of Kindling

  Victorian dresses were practically designed ot be flammable; most dresses of the day were made of cotton or other open-weave fabrics, especially in the United States, where cotton was a major cornerstone of the economy. Some of the petticoats were even made of horse hair. What's more, the style of the day was all about lace, which burned easily due to its lattice-like structure.

  With so many flammable materials combined, attempting to put out a dress fire wasn't a simple or easy process. The dress would become a ball of fire within moments and, because those dresses were held on with dozens of buttons or laces, there was no way for a woman to get out of them in time. 
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  (#3) Ballerinas Were Particularly Susceptible To Fiery Doom

  Even for those who didn't wear the enormous crinoline hoop skirts that were popular in the Victorian era, death by flaming dress was still a very real possibility. Ballerinas in particular were in constant danger of being burned alive. For one thing, their dresses were made of terribly flammable material, such as bobbinet, cotton muslin, gauze, and tarlatan. All of these made the ballerinas seem light, ethereal, and delicate when they moved, and made their skirts stand out in the traditional style. However, these fabrics were also prone to light up in a heartbeat when exposed to the open flames often used in stage lighting, and they did so with shocking regularity.

  In 1862, a popular ballerina named Emma Livry was running through a dress rehearsal for an opera when tragedy struck. Her skirt got too close to a gaslight, and her costume was lit ablaze. She was consumed by flames before someone was at last able to put her out. Livry was given immediate medical care, and managed to survive for eight months, but ultimately died of blood poisoning related to her burns.

  Livry was hardly the only dancer to succumb to such a fate; in 1844, a dancer named Clara Webster met the same end. In 1861, six dancers died when they tried to help a fellow ballerina who caught fire backstage. It was not unheard of for entire ballet troupes or theaters to go up in flame.
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  (#4) Women Actually Wore Arsenic

  The danger of a Victorian dress was compounded by the fact that it was often dyed with dangerous chemicals, most especially arsenic. Green was a particularly fashionable color in the Victorian era, and a good way to get that shade was with arsenic dye. Hats, gloves, and yes, even dresses, were colored green with the chemical; without even catching on fire, some women died horrible deaths as a result.

  In 1861, a 19-year-old artificial flower maker named Matilda Scheurer was felled by the simple act of working with the dye. She convulsed and vomited, then foamed at the mouth in a harsh shade of green. It was later discovered that there was arsenic in her liver, lungs, and stomach. The level was so high that even the whites of her eyes were tinged green.

  While arsenic-laced dresses were dangerous enough, the flammability factor only made things worse. Burning an arsenic dress could release toxic fumes into the air which, of course, the woman wearing the dress would inhale. Even if she wasn't killed immediately by the flames, just breathing the smoke could cause serious health problems and lead to her early demise.
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  (#5) The Shape Of The Dresses Made Them Even Deadlier

  Besides the materials, the very shape of the dresses themselves were a huge hazard. Crinolines – stiffened, cage-like petticoats – were very popular in the mid-1800's. These petticoats held out skirts in bell-like shapes without adding extra weight; this allowed women to feel lighter and move more easily, but it also made their dresses far more flammable.

  The full skirt with a pocket of air beneath would act like a cone or funnel, and when it caught fire the woman's body would be held in the center without escape. Couple the shape with the layers of light fabric draped over it, and you're left with the perfect recipe for a whole lower half of a dress to be engulfed in moments.

  As an odd side note, this shape actually did have a few benefits. On more than one occasion, a crinoline dress reportedly acted as a buoy and saved women from drowning. A few others were even saved from suicide attempts as their gown slowed their fall from heights. Still, none of this was nearly enough to offset all the deaths they caused. 
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  (#6) Even Archduchesses Weren't Safe From Death By Dress

  There were no social divides when it came to dying by burning garments. In 1861, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wife, Fanny, died when her dress caught on fire; she perished in front of her own children. In 1871, Mary and Emily Wilde, the half-sisters of Oscar Wilde, met a similar fate at a Halloween party. One of the women was dancing when her dress caught fire, and her sister rushed to help her. However, the fire just spread, and both women burned to death.

  An influential woman in her own right, Archduchess Mathilde of Austria, also met a fiery end. She was smoking a cigarette when her father, who had forbidden them in his presence, approached her to talk. She hid the cigarette behind her back, which then set her dress aflame. The gown was gauze, and very flammable, and her whole body went up in an instant. She died at only 18.
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  (#7) Flammable Fabrics Made Daily Tasks Dangerous

  Even if you weren't a dancer or royalty, and even if your attire wasn't a super expensive crinoline gown, the material of the era still put you at risk. Many women who died from flammable dresses were simply going about their daily tasks, or were specifically house staff.

  In 1865, two unnamed women in New York reportedly died when they got too close to a hot stove and their clothes went up in flames. In 1858, another woman died in Boston after standing too close to a fireplace. In 1863, a 14-year-old kitchen maid named Margaret Davey burned to death when her crinoline sparked as she grabbed spoons off of a mantel. You could even get fatally caught by an errant coal popping out of a hearth – that apparently happened to 16-year-old Emma Musson as she was simply sitting in her kitchen.
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  (#8) A Lack Of Electricity Made Every Room A Potential Hazard

  Completely separate from the shape and material of the dresses, the very nature of daily life in the 1800's put people at risk. Electricity only began to catch on towards the end of the century, so lighting in homes was mostly left to natural lighting, candles, and gas. The average home, both in the UK and in the United States, relied on oil lamps and fireplaces for light and warmth, both of which had dangerous open flames.

  Since many buildings were made out of highly flammable materials, and fireproofing was essentially nonexistent, women could burn down entire houses when their dresses caught fire.
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  (#9) The French Made Fire-Resistant Clothing, But It Was Slow To Catch On

  The amount of fire-related deaths couldn't go unchecked forever, and the French were among the first to take steps to fight against the scourge. In 1859, there was a decree that all theater workers must wear flame-resistant clothing. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac actually started creating flame-resistant fabric in 1821, using ammonium phosphates, borax, and boric acid. The process made the clothing yellow and stiff, and it could wash out if you weren't careful, but it was a start.

  However, many ballerinas refused to wear the stiff fabric. They believed it took away from a woman's beauty and her delicate poise on stage, which could hurt a dancer's image. Most dancers of the day lived off money from patrons, and as such they felt pressured to appear as pretty and delicate as possible. For some, it simply wasn't an option, and they paid the price with their lives.
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  (#10) These Ornate Dresses Used To Be Called Sinful

  Believe it or not, many people did object to flowing dresses during the Victorian era, but not because of how flammable they were. Instead, they were regarded as preposterous, and even evil. To be fair, crinoline dresses were sometimes used for nefarious purposes. French toll bridges regularly seized alcohol, tobacco, gunpowder, partridges, and even concealed people that women hid within their dresses. During the Civil War, women smuggled goods to troops in their massive skirts. Cartoonists of the day depicted men as being unable to hold hands with their wives because their skirts were too big.

  What's more, some preachers suggested that these skirts were sinful. Ministers began to tell their congregations that crinoline skirts were basically going against Christianity, and were a social evil.

  It was this belief, as well as the dresses' impracticality, that eventually caused them to become passé, saving countless lives in the process. 
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  (#11) Changing Fashion Trends Actually Made Clothing Safer

  You might think that, with all these deaths, changes would be made to clothing in order to protect women. A few places of work did step up to ban the dangerous dresses, including a textile company that reportedly restricted crinoline usage in 1898 after the death of a worker at a firewood factory. But such rules had less impact than the tide of fashion – it simply changed, and different shapes came into vogue.

  Arsenic dyes were eventually phased out; flammable fabric was still generally used, but at least the shapes of dresses began to change. In the 1870s, bustles became the new fad, meaning the bulk of the dress was in the back while the front remained relatively slim. This drastically reduced the possibility of a skirt becoming a flaming cone of fire. By the 1890s, skirts had become even slimmer, meaning that women could move around their homes without being at such a constant high risk of catching flame.

  Fashion aside, the large-scale implementation of electricity helped reduce prevalence of open flames within the home, further cutting down on deadly incidents.

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