When fashion of day saw some women's lives going up in flames

JANUARY 26th, 1863: Those who ridicule the modern culture of health and safety might reconsider after reading this heartfelt editorial about the dangers of fire and fashion fromThe Irish Times of this day 147 years ago.

THE NOVELIST could invent no more frightful or agonising death for a young bride than death by burning. His readers shrank from the narrative as all too terrible; they could not say it was unreal.

Day after day, we record the deaths of young, fair creatures in the midst of their joy. Each death represents a world of agony to the survivors, the wrecks of long cherished hopes, the cruel frustration of the fondest plans. In the Princess Theatre on Friday night, the dress of a ballet girl caught fire. A companion, endeavouring to save her, was so seriously injured as that her life is despaired of. The house was crowded with those who would have risked much to save a life, but what could they do? Only her companion on the stage, clothed in her perilous finery, was near enough to aid her. It was a terrible spectacle that: two young girls enveloped in flames in the sight of hundreds of men and women who could only await the catastrophe.

But death in this terrible shape is not confined to theatres. In a ballroom, on Friday last, Miss Burchell suddenly shot up into a pyramid of flame and rushed in distraction among the guests until the fire had done its work.

On the same day, we chronicled the death of Mrs Gordon at Nice. She had tried to save her daughter from the flames a week before and now lies beside her. The coroner of Middlesex asserts that weekly there are in his district eight cases of death by crinoline. What must the death toll be for the entire kingdom! Death comes, too, in such an unlooked for shape. The young sister stands upon a chair before the mantel glass to see how the wreath becomes her: the opening of a door, or a breath of air from the windows, sets her in a blaze. Wheeling in the dance the light dress whisks by the fire, and then there is a cry of lamentation and woe. So numerous are these “accidents” that the heading “Another Death by Crinoline” creates no sensation. We look down the types to discover who was the last victim, and think no more of the occurrence.

“Vanitas vanitatum” cried the preacher, and echo repeated his cry, but none took it to heart. You may war with some chance of success against everything by fashion. It seems it is preferable to run the risk of a horrible death than be out of fashion. We bear with accidents in the streets, accidents from falls, accidents from wounds caused by crinoline. We witness a new class of diseases caused by the weight and fastenings of iron or steel garniture, but a death by flame is a terrible thing to realise, and the list of casualties is becoming so extensive as to call for parental or legislative interference.

Vanitas vanitatum! This absurd, inelegant, most dangerous fashion will continue until woman trusts to nature’s moulding for her beauty, and not to extinguishers which render every figure alike and destroy all the painter or the statuary prized.

The introduction of low grates and alterations in the fashion of the furniture or our hearths, may have increased the danger. But surely every man who does not wish to see death in its most terrible form among his household should take some precaution. A wire screen of light texture hung at a little distance from the bars would save many a life. Such appliances can be purchased for a trifle and it argues culpable neglect in parents not to have procured them. No man knows how soon a puff of air or a spark springing from the grate, might plunge his household in misery not soon to be forgotten. As our ladies will cage their limbs in iron, let us so cage their destroyer.

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