'Nursing Secrets: The Story of a Victorian Nursing Dress'

‘Nursing Secrets: The Story of a Victorian Nursing Dress’

Kate Lampitt Adey, University of Edinburgh

In the archives belonging to Glasgow Museums there lies a silk dress cradled in tissue paper. The dress, dating from about 1850, has an unusual secret which can be discovered on further inspection. Hidden in the bodice are openings in the fabric to facilitate breastfeeding. This dress intrigued me as the sweat stains and the provision for nursing tell of intimate bodily functions and personal details.

This paper explores what stories this dress can help us tell about the experience of being a woman and mother during the Victorian period. I will discuss my personal interactions with this dress, suggesting that the luxurious fabric, corseted waist and provision for nursing can fuel rich and evocative discussion. The paper will take the audience through the process of investigating this dress, and explore how we might use and negotiate issues of objects as evidence and the potential for shared experience across time to generate insights into lived experience.

After setting out some methodological thoughts on these issues the paper discusses, in turn, the style and fabric, the corseted waist and then Victorian breastfeeding. Each of these features are positioned as representations of aspects of the owner’s identity. I will suggest that looking at clothing in this way we can imagine how this Victorian woman might have negotiated her individual identity and her identity as a wife and mother and how dress might be both an imposer of identity and as a vehicle to challenge impositions.

1b: Textiles and Labour (Chair: Louisa Yates) – CWE 125