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Corsets as worn everyday by ordinary women in the past
How everyday corsets in the 1940s and 50s differed from showbusiness ones; why they were so uncomfortable and why women nevertheless wore them; their structure based round suspenders, stays and heavy-duty hooks.
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By the webmaster, based on years of observations and discussions with older people
Everyday corsets
The corsets in the top image are designed for showbusiness glamour. The everyday ones that most women wore before the 1950s were like those in the following photo. They were functional to hold up stockings - there being no suspender belts or tights - and to keep women's figure in trim. They must have been intensely uncomfortable. Yet my mother managed to do all her housework in them without complaining. She said that they provided warmth, but she still wore them on the hottest summer day. She said that she didn't feel properly dressed without them. She certainly didn't wear them to hold her stomach in because she was quite thin - like most women in the austerity of WW2 and afterwards.
Corsets, worn everyday by ordinary women. Photographed in the Imperial War Museum. Note the suspenders at the bottom for holding up stockings.
Corsets had suspenders at the bottom edge for 'pairs' of stockings. Presumably because of these 'pairs' of suspenders, corsets were often referred to as a 'pair of corsets'. So even though the garment in the photo looks like - and is - a single item, corsets were always referred to in the plural. A woman wore corsets not a corset.
Suspender for holding up a stocking. There were four: one front and back for each leg. The clip at the top adjusted the length and the elastic suspension adjusted for leg movement.
The Victorian legacy of corsets
I suspect that women wore these corsets mainly because, having been born in the early part of the 20th century, it was just something that they were expected to do - a leftover from Victorian times. Yet in the 1940s and into the 1950s, they were still readily available for purchase. Women didn't have to shop around for them - within of course the constraints of everything being in short supply during the Second World War and the years of austerity afterwards. When I was taken with my mother to buy her corsets, the shop assistant produced them immediately.
Corset stays
Sewn into what may look like vertical hems were what were known as 'stays'. These held the body into position.
The stays were thin strips of whalebone - genuine whalebone - which was strong and yet somewhat flexible. How flexible depended on the thickness of the stays. The stays came in various thicknesses and lengths to fit various types and sizes of corsets. They looked just like narrow strips of cream plastic.
Stays snapped on occasions, presumably when a woman bent down too vigorously or too often. Then new stays had to be sewn into the corsets. My knowledge of this comes from my Saturday job in a haberdashery shop in the mid-1950s while I was still at school.
Towards the end of my time at the shop, strips of what looked like interlaced wire started coming in to take the place of whalebone. They were slightly flexible and had thicker curved ends so that they would not hurt so much if they dug into a woman's flesh as she bent over. They were known as metal stays.
Metal stays in my mother's effects which eventually replaced whalebone in corsets
Corsets and comfort/discomfort
These corsets must have been incredibly uncomfortable: They were pulled tightly round the body, from above the waist to the top of the legs and were held tightly in place with heavy-weight metal hooks and eyes. The position of the waist is shown in the top photo by the horizontal shiny ribbon.
Corset hooks and eyes which were large and heavy-duty metal in order to stop the corsets from bursting open
I can only imagine that if a woman wanted to bend down for any reason, possibly to pick something up, she had to take a deep breath first and be prepared for some significant effort to flex the stays.
My mother even did her housework in her corsets and she wore them in heatwaves because that is what 'nice' women of her age did.
Corsets, physical work and social class
contributed by Betty who wishes to remain anonymous
Corsets were a sign of social class - or assumed social class and respectability. A strong corset forced an elegant style of movement, walk and getting out of chair.
As a child, I visited an old lady who was working in her garden. She had a special 'gardening' corset that had most of the stays taken out and was easier to move in. When someone suggested not wearing a corset at all, the horrified reply was "but what if the vicar came to visit me". The corset was a mystical symbol of respectability.
In the first part of the 20th century, kitchen maids were common. As they needed to move freely in their heavy work, they did not wear corsets - which reinforced the association between social class and corsets.
Roll-ons and suspender belts
In the 1940s and into the 1950s corsets were widely worn by women of my mother's age (ie. women born in the early 1900s). Then sometime in the 1940s or 1950s 'roll-ons' or 'rollons' came in. They had no stays. They held women less rigidly, but did claim to control bulging stomachs. They were made of a strong rubbery fabric that had to be rolled up and then unrolled onto the body. My mother did buy me a roll-on when I was a teenager, but its tight elastic fabric chafed my thighs and I only wore it once. Like my other teenage friends, I used a suspender belt to hold up my stockings. This was a flimsy thing, effectively just suspenders attached to little more than a lightweight belt.
When did roll-ons first come on the market?
contributed by Nick Basden, from his aunt's diary
Rollons were in use in 1946 as my aunt mentions them in her 1946 diary. This was in Enfield, north London.
I wonder if Nick's aunt's rollon was actually from before the war or produced as a utility item during the war.
Lace-up corsets
Most of the images of corsets on the internet show ones that close by drawing laces together, pulling them tightly and tying them. These were not everyday items - at least not for underwear for working women in the mid-20th Century. For a start, the women would not have been able to spend the time putting them on every morning and there would have been no-one to help with pulling the laces tightly and doing them up.
Lace-up corsets were primarily for titillative external wear and were worn by actresses and show-girls in the mid-20th Century. Corsets in Victorian times were another matter, outside the scope of this website.
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