Wearing the Trousers

In the 1850s a craze swept through the wardrobes of the women of British and American society. These ''bloomers'', wearing their new loose-fitting ''Turkish dress'', represented a turn against the painful and unhealthy fashions of the Victorian hey-day with its corsets and bindings. But it was more than that: with the newspapers everywhere decrying this new style of dress, bloomers became an overn...