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Amelia Bloomer

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Amelia Bloomer
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(born May 27, 1818, Homer, N.Y., U.S. — died Dec. 30, 1894, Council Bluffs, Iowa) U.S. reformer. In 1840 she married Dexter Bloomer, a Quaker newspaper editor. She wrote articles on education, unjust marriage laws, and women's suffrage and published the biweekly Lily (1849 – 54). Among her interests was dress reform, and the full trousers that she wore came to be known as bloomers. Her costume generated considerable publicity and helped to attract large crowds to her lectures in New York City, where she often shared the platform with Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown.

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Biography: Amelia Jenks Bloomer
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An American advocate of woman's rights in the early days of the feminist movement, Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894) spent most of her life working for the cause. She was also a reformer of women's clothing and helped promote "bloomers."

Amelia Jenks was born into a family of modest means in Homer, N.Y., on May 27, 1818. Her formal education was negligible, consisting of only a few years in grammar school. At the age of 22 she married Dexter Bloomer, a lawyer and part owner of the Seneca Falls County Courier. A man of Quaker background and progressive social principles, he encouraged his wife to write articles on temperance and other social issues for his newspaper and for other periodicals.

In 1848, at the age of 30, Bloomer attended the first public Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y., but she took no part in the proceedings. A few months later she began to publish her own temperance newspaper, The Lily, which was immensely successful, gaining a circulation of 4,000 within a few years. At this time in her career Amelia Bloomer was a small, slight, dark-haired woman with good features and a pleasant expression. Timid and retiring by nature, she was a sternly serious person, seemingly lacking in any sense of humor.

Prodded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who also lived in Seneca Falls, Bloomer devoted increasing space in The Lily to questions concerning woman's rights, such as unequal educational opportunities, discriminatory marriage and property laws, and suffrage. In 1851 The Lily supported the reform in women's dress which came to bear Bloomer's name. Female fashion in the 1850s consisted of unhealthy, tightly laced corsets, layers of petticoats that could weigh well over 10 pounds, and floor-length dresses that dragged in the filth of the era's unpaved and unswept streets. The bloomer costume dispensed with corsets in favor of loose bodices, substituted baggy ankle-length pantaloons for petticoats, and cut the gowns to above the knee. Such a costume had been worn at the utopian New Harmony colony in Indiana in the 1820s and as resort wear during the 1830s, and Mrs. Bloomer was by no means the originator of the revival in 1851. But her promotion of it attached her name to the sensation. Woman's-rights advocates, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, wore the reform dress for a year or so but abandoned it when they concluded that the ridicule it frequently elicited was preventing a fair hearing of their views. Mrs. Bloomer continued to wear the dress until the late 1850s, but, conservative by nature (she never shared the liberal religious views or abolitionist sentiments of her sisters in the movement), even she eventually opposed bloomers as inexpedient.

Bloomer moved to Council Bluffs, lowa, in 1855, where she abandoned The Lily but continued to work actively in the woman's-suffrage movement of that state. She lectured and wrote widely, served as president of the state Woman Suffrage Association between 1871 and 1873, and corresponded with and arranged lectures for Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in lowa. She retired increasingly into private life in the 1870s, troubled by poor health. She died at Council Bluffs on the last day of 1894.

Amelia Bloomer's work never matched the incessant and selfless activity of some of her contemporaries, but she contributed to the suffrage movement far more profoundly than the generally facetious use of her name would indicate.

Further Reading

Bloomer's husband, Dexter C. Bloomer, published the Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer (1895) shortly after her death. Most of the general works on the 19th century woman's suffrage movement take note of her. The most valuable work treating her career in some detail is Louise R. Noun, Strong-Minded Women: The Emergence of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in Iowa (1970). See also Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in The United States (1959); Robert W. Smuts, Women and Work in America (1959); Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (1965); Andrew Sinclair, The Better Half: The Emancipation of American Women (1965); and William L. O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave (1969).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Amelia Jenks Bloomer
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Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 1818-94, American reformer, b. Homer, N.Y. She was editor (1848-54) of the Lily, first published in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and devoted to women's rights and to temperance. In 1851 she recommended and adopted the reformed dress of short skirt and full trousers introduced by Elizabeth Smith Miller. Because she advertised it in the Lily and wore it in her lecture work, it became universally known as the Bloomer costume, or bloomers.

Bibliography

See biography by her husband, D. C. Bloomer (1895); C. N. Gattey, The Bloomer Girls (1968).

Wikipedia: Amelia Bloomer
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Amelia Jenks Bloomer (May 27, 1818 – December 30, 1894) was an American women's rights and temperance advocate. Even though she did not create the women's clothing reform style known as bloomers, her name became associated with it because of her early and strong advocacy.

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Early life

Bloomer came from a family of modest means and received only a few years of formal schooling. When she was 22, she married attorney Dexter Bloomer who encouraged her to write for his New York newspaper, the Seneca Falls County Courier.

She spent her early years in Cortland County, New York. Bloomer and her family moved to Iowa in 1852. She died at Council Bluffs, Iowa. She is commemorated together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Ross Tubman in the calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church on July 20. Her home at Seneca Falls, New York, known as the Amelia Bloomer House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[1]

Social activism

In 1848, Bloomer attended the Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. In 1849, Bloomer began publishing her views on temperance and social issues in her own bi-weekly publication, The Lily. While the newspaper initially focused on temperance, Bloomer came under the influence of temperance activist and suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton who contributed articles on the broader issues of women's rights. The newspaper contained a broad mix of contents ranging from recipes to moralist tracts, including topics such as marriage law reform and higher education for women. In publication through 1853, The Lily eventually had a circulation of over 4,000. This newspaper is believed to have been a model for later periodicals focused on women's suffrage.

Bloomer, describing her feelings as the first woman to own, operate and edit a news vehicle for women, wrote:

It was a needed instrument to spread abroad the truth of a new gospel to woman, and I could not withhold my hand to stay the work I had begun. I saw not the end from the beginning and dreamed where to my propositions to society would lead me.'
Bloomer Suit

In her publication, Bloomer promoted a change in dress standards for women that would be less restrictive in regular activities.

The costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once to her health, comfort, and usefulness; and, while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.

In 1851, New England temperance activist Elizabeth Smith Miller (aka Libby Miller) adopted what she considered a more rational costume: loose trousers gathered at the ankles, like women's trousers worn in the Middle East and Central Asia, topped by a short dress or skirt and vest. The costume was worn publicly by actress Fanny Kemble. Miller displayed her new clothing to Stanton, her cousin, who found it sensible and becoming, and adopted it immediately. In this garb Stanton visited Bloomer, who began to wear the costume and promote it enthusiastically in her magazine. Articles on the clothing trend were picked up in The New York Tribune. More women wore the fashion which was promptly dubbed The Bloomer Costume or "Bloomers". However, the Bloomers were subjected to ceaseless ridicule in the press and harassment on the street. Bloomer herself dropped the fashion in 1859, saying that a new invention, the crinoline, was a sufficient reform that she could return to conventional dress.

Bloomer remained a suffrage pioneer and writer throughout her life, writing for a wide array of periodicals. She led suffrage campaigns in Nebraska and Iowa, and served as president of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association from 1871 until 1873.

Although Bloomer’s work was far less renowned than her contemporaries were, she made many significant contributions to the women’s movement — her ideas of dress reform and her work in the temperance movement were notable. Moreover, The Lily was a voice for many women reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. It spoke on many issues such as dress reform and the need for enfranchisement for women.

References

  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. 
  • Bloomer, Dexter C. Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer. Boston: Arena Pub. Co., 1895. Reprinted 1975 by Schocken Books, New York. Includes bibliographical references.
  • Coon, Anne C. Hear Me Patiently: The Reform Speeches of Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Vol. 138. Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1994.
  • Smith, Stephanie, Household Words: Bloomers, sucker, bombshell, scab, cyber (2006) -- material on changing usage of words.
  • The Lily: A Ladies' Journal, devoted to Temperance and Literature. 1849.

See also

External links

Search Wikisource Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Bloomer, Amelia Jenks.

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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
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