The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-15 00:00:00

MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF A WHOLE

HOUSEHOLD.

Yesterday morning, shortly before two o'clock,
as a police•constable of the H division was passing
along his beat, his attention was suddenly attracted
to the premises belonging to Mr. S. Davis' a corn-
chandler and seed merchant, carrying on business
at No. 169, St. George-street, in the East. Smoke
which he saw issuing from the ground-floor ware-
house, at once satisfied him that the building was
on fire, and without a moment's delay he sprung his
rattle, and after repeatedly knocking at the front
door he succeeded in making Mr. Davis sensible of
the great danger he and his family were exposed
to. Other police-officers having arrived, some
were sent off for the Royal Society's escapes and
the engines. During the interval, Mr. Davis
and several children made their appearance at
the front window, the former stating that
none of them could get down-stairs, owing to the
density of the heated smoke, which no doubt arose
from burning hay and clover seeds. The police told
him to drop the children one at a time out of the
window and they would catch them. He did as
requested, and fortunately the only injury they re-
ceived was from inhaling the smoke. By the time
the children had been got out, Conductor Douglas
came up with the Royal Society's escape just in
time to rescue Mr. Davis and his servant, there
being then no other means of escape. The engines
of the parish and London Brigade under the direc-
tion of Mr. Brydges, the foreman the district, and
engineer Maidman, were remarkably early in arriv-
ing, and the mains of the East London Company
having been drawn, a copious supply of water was
procured, and the firemen taking advantage of the
same they went to work in their usual daring
manner, but they were unable to get the mastery
over the flames until the warehouse on the ground
floor and the contents were nearly destroyed, and
the remainder of the premises was seriously injured
by heat and smoke. The origin of the fire is un-
known. Fortunately Mr. Davis was insured in the
State Fire-office.

The Lord-Lieutenant's visit to Lord Castlerosse
has terminated. On Wednesday his Excellency was present
at a grand stag-hunt on the lakes.
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A REAL SOCIAL EVIL.

Last week we had to report of an inquest at
Holloway on the body of a young lady who met her
death, as many other women have within the last
five years, from the absurd and mischievous fashion
of wearing enormous and distended skirts. From

Wakefield we had an account of a female servant
burnt nearly to death from the same cause, and
yesterday a London physician walking in the
public streets had his leg caught by a steel skirt
tend received very serious injuries. The remark
seems to be a just one—that no fashion of dress on
record has probably caused so many deaths. In
the fatal case of last week the jury added to their
verdict of accidental death " a strong recommenda-
tion that, from the numerous fatalities which have
occurred in all classes of female society, the present
fashion should be immediately abandoned." The
deputy-coroner agreed with the jury.
A wish has been more than once expressed that
somebody would publish the number of victims to
accidents from the sue of crinoline and hoops since
the present mania set in. In the last century there
was a fashion of hoops which we all, in our young
days, considered so foolish and ugly that it sensibly
affected our impression of female character in that
generation. The idea that our countrywomen
could ever again alopt such an absurdity was
scouted, when propounded by some philosopher who
understood the laws of the human mind in regard
to the authority of fashion. But the hoop of the
18th century was far less troublesome and mischie-
vous than that of th 3 19th. Readers of " Sir Charles
Grandison" remember that Harriet Byron and her
friends were wont to " slip their hoops over the left
shoulder" in order to get into a sedan chair, and
also to make room for the gentlemen in the coach.
The roomy family coach of those days would not
accommodate the' gentlemen if the ladies' hoops
had hung down. B A the ladies were more conside-
rate then than now, and had their dress so made as
that the hoop would slip out of the way. The grates
then stood higher and further into the fireplace ;
there were no railway platforms, and no narrow
steamboats from which victims could be swept to
destruction by the ladies' petticoats. Bad as the
fashion was, it did not compel the appeal to the
conscience and humanity of the sex which our
make.
very juries now find themselves called upon to

Nothing can be more distasteful to us, and to
many others who will say " Amen !" to the com-
menterb aof thisjury, than the petty tyranny which
vthe will and pleasure of women in regard
or
s
to their dress, or which annoys them in their proper
work and amusement of arranging themselves ac-
cording to their own taste and convenience. True
gentlemen were as heartily disgusted as any ladies
when, some years ago, a dirty trick was resorted to
discredit the Bloomer dress, which was supposed to
have some recommendations in regard to health,

cleanliness, and convenience, as well as grace. In-
stead of leaving women free to decide this for
themselves, their judgment was overborne in a
singularly disgraceful way. This was not the only
occasion on which Englishwomen have: had reason
to complain of molestation by masculine opinion in
a province which is professedly their own. They
have also, 'on the other hand, met with great and
long-continued indulgence in regard to fashions
pernicious to themselves and others. The bonnets
of the last two or three years are declared by our
physicians to be the cause of the great increase of
maladies of the head and eyes ; the rheumatism,
the neuralgic pains, the decaying teeth, the in-
flamed eyes; yet the bonnets which Mr. Spurgeon
would have preached against, but that looking round
him he " could not see any," have not been inter-
fered with by coroners' juries, or by patriarchal
domestic authority, any more than the tight lacing
which has tortured to death many a poor martyr to
a conventional idea. This very evil of crinoline
and hoop we have borne now for above five years,
with more or less discontent, but without
interfering. The date is fixed, and will be remem-
bered in history, by its being a trifle older than the
Prince Imperial of France. It suited his mother's
convenience to adopt the fashion when his birth
was expected ; and " all ladies in all lands" in
which French fashions bear sway had senselessly
followed the lead of the Empress till they have be-
come responsible for more deaths, as we before
observed, than any other &shim ever caused.
During these five years we have done our best to
be patient under an evil which we hoped would be
short-lived. We have had no comfort in social
meetings, because no dinner-table and no ball_
room, no box or stall at the theatres, no carriage,
and no boat could accommodate both our families
and ourselves. We have found it difficult and dis-
agreeable to walk with our wives and daughters on
pavements and in lanes and country footpaths made
for people more naturally dressed. We have seen
the choicest flowers in our gardens, and the most
cherished plants in our greenhouses cut off by the
hoop, We have paid a fare and a half each for wife
and daughters in travelling by coach in rural dis-
tricts, and have lost all our pleasure on board
steamboats from the anxiety of watching lest any
of our party should sweep a child over into the
lake or river. Our wardrobes afford no room for
our clothes, because the women of the family
want more space than they can get. For fire
years we have not had room to turn our-
selves round in our own homes. The cost of
female dress in a household when every gown
and petticoat, from the wife's to the cook's,
is twice as large as it ought to be, is no small
consideration to the bread-winner of the esta-
blishment ;
and a graver one still is the effect
sense, and taste of the maid ser-
recent report of the Education Com-
vonantthse. mlnortahlse,
Com-
missioners there is an anecdote of a school filled by
150 girls, nearly all of whom would afterwards be
domestic servants. Of those 150 scarcely one had
a pocket-handkerchief, and • scarcely one had not a
hoopr—aan thick,addre address
shabry ad, heavy,lady who remonstrated unyielding hoop.
againt the folly, and cited Miss Nightingale's ex-
cellent remarks on crinoline petticoats in her
"Notes on Nursing," many hoops disappeared, and
pocket-handkerchiefs became more common. The
girls who did not yield had the example of ladies
and their maids to plead for continuing to require
yards of space apiece wherever they went. But
what a prospect was before them ! The cook could
not pursue her business without incessant personal
danger; the housemaid miay 'meet the fate of other
housemaids, and be burnt to death upon the hearth ;
and the nursemaid is more likely than not to push
some of the children off a footbridge, or a river side
path, or from the causeway into the road. Such
things as these we have borne for five years with-
out further resistance than a declaration of our
distate to the fashion, and an occasional hint of its
inconveniences, and of the effect produced by this
folly to the general estimate of female sense and
delicacy in our day and generation.
The matter has now become more serious. It is a
question whether we can be justified in permitting
a practice which we were anxious to keep our tem-
pers with as a nuisance, but which is now recog-
nised as dangerous to life. It would be a public ser-
vice if somebody would publish a list of the known
casualties from this cause. Besides the deaths by
fire there have been many by crushing under car-
riage wheels and in machinery, and in narrow
spaces where a woman reasonably dressed would be
in no danger. There have been cases of actual dis-
embowling from the gashes inflicted by broken steel
springs and hoops. There have been drownings,
wounds, crushings, burnings, many torturing
modes of death ; and it is no wonder that juries and
coroners now appeal to the sex to cease their sub-
ornation of murder.

How is it to be done ? some ask. Our country-
women arc apt to follow a fashion abjectly, we are
told, because they have a horror of appearing inde-
pendent in their judgment about external appear-
ances, and earning the name of being " strong-
minded women." Has it never occurred to them
what dreadful strength of mind it must require to
uphold a fashion which will inevitably cause the
death by torture of a certain number of persons
before the end of the year? We are told that the
imaginations of women are too strong for their
judgment ; and that they are carried away by an
idea. We should rather say that it is from defect
of imagination that they erx in thifi mo.