The Mother Hubbard Dress: Dangerously Seductive?

  

     

     Nov 1883 - Coffeyville, Kansas -  The Mother Hubbard must go. …The Mother Hubbard dress is all skirt and no waist – a kind of calico rag-bag, gathered at the neck, drifting away off into nowhere and floating along after the wearer like a spanker sail in a dead calm. If the Mother Hubbard  dress is an old fashion, rejuvenated, we can only say…"shoot it.”

     30 July 1884  - Omaha, Nebraska  - The police marshal orders police to arrest every woman, white or black, wearing a Mother Hubbard. It is “vulgarly transparent and its wear upon the streets is a violation of all ideas of public morals. It is the insignia of the prostitute’s trade, her means of soliciting. The fall of the Mother Hubbard in Omaha is at hand; it must go, as all things else, unholy and illegal within its confines.”

     31 July 1884 - Jenny Green was arrested in Omaha for wearing a Mother Hubbard dress.

     8 April 1884 - Louisville - “The Mother Hubbard dress must go. The police have been ordered to suppress Mother Hubbard costumes on the streets. Lizzie Brail has been arraigned in city court and fined $5 for wearing a pink Mother Hubbard on the street…. There is a loose suggestiveness which should be frowned down.” 

     Aug 1884 Matoon, Illinois - - The chief of police forbids wearing the Mother Hubbard dress in public.

     9 Aug 1884 - Omaha - The Omaha police are busy arresting girls found clad in Mother Hubbard costumes. 

     18 Aug 1884 - Rock Island Argus - “Discrete mothers have long since noticed the loose suggestiveness of these dresses and have refused to allow their daughters to wear them.”

 “Why respectable young ladies should desire to wear a costume that has become almost a badge of the outcasts of their sex…is hard to understand.”

Loose Dresses = Loose Women

     From modern-day eyes, it’s hard to understand how the style of dress pictured above, which we would describe as a “granny gown,” or a historian dryly described as “not particularly seductive,” could have sparked such excitement and horror. It was a paradox: considered charmingly innocent on little girls and titillating on grown women. It was at once loathed for concealing the female body and for leaving too much to the imagination: a corsetless body, now all loose and free under yards of calico.

      Part of the reason it was scandalous is that it’s true it was quickly adopted by prostitutes. It was easy to pull off and put on, compared to the fashions of the day. It was similar to a nightgown, which “signaled readiness for the bedroom,” as historian Sally Gray said. “It is singular in that no other garment in the nineteenth century possessed such a variety of meanings and function,” she wrote. Clothing equated to morality. “A corseted body showed self-restraint, a well-disciplined mind and well-regulated feelings,” according to Gray. “There was a delicate balance of comfort and convenience vs. enough tightness to be respectable.” A loose dress could mean a loose woman.

     Its origins aren’t really known, including how it got the name Mother Hubbard. The old Mother Hubbard of nursery rhyme fame was never pictured in illustrations in such attire. It appeared in the early 1880s and is still worn today – in the “granny gown” nightgown, modified in the muumuu, and in some “old lady” house dresses. 

     It inspired poems expressing hate, making light-hearted fun, and - from women - support. Here is part of the earliest poem found, which ran over the wire service and appeared in newspapers in many states:

How dear to my heart is the loose Mother Hubbard,

Why can’t the authorities leave it alone?

‘Twas worn by the matron who went to the cupboard

One day to secure for her doggie a bone.

And if the staid matron could wear such a garment,

Why is it indecent if worn by a belle?

I vow I will wear it; there's really no harm in’t,

The loose Mother Hubbard that suits me so well.

The sweet Mother Hubbard, the gay Mother Hubbard, 

The frilled Mother Hubbard that suits me so well.

The garments so graceful; no one can deny it –

Enhancing the charms of the matron and maid

Then why should those Illinois deacons decry it?

Of multiplied graces they’re surely afraid.

Unlaced and unbelted, so cool and so breezy,

Within its folds it delights me to dwell

No garment I’ve worn feels so light or so easy

The sweet Mother Hubbard, 

The gay Mother Hubbard, 

The frilled Mother Hubbard that suits me so well.

     The next poem had a bit of a meaner tone:

What is it that my sister wears,

When no one comes for whom she cares;

But when it’s John, runs off upstairs?

It is the Mother Hubbard.

What is it that disgusts mankind,

Tho’ he hates to say what’s in his mind,

And makes him wish he’d been born blind?

It is the Mother Hubbard.

What is it that the boys detest;

But because girls wear ‘em, do their best

To believe that pattern as good as the rest?
It is the Mother Hubbard. 

     If men hated it, women loved it. One can imagine its appeal when comparing it to the corseted figure, the layers of underclothes and the tight-fitting outer garments of the 1880s through the 1910s. Most women actually wore them only at home. But from the beginning, they pushed back at the idea of a police chief, city councilman - any man - telling them what they could and could not wear in public. Though many newspaper editors railed against it, there were those who questioned the idea of regulating it. As soon as ordinances were being passed against the dress, “leagues” of women were indignantly formed in opposition, saying they would take the issue to higher courts. One small-town paper had a particularly sharp rejoinder:

9 Aug 1884 - Columbus Telegram (Columbus, Nebraska) - “...Style…is not a legitimate subject of police regulation. The action of these Omaha policemen can proceed only on the theory that the costume in question is immodest. The moral sensitivities of the Omaha men must be of very delicate texture to be shocked by the sight of a Mother Hubbard dress. We fail to see the consistency in arresting the Mother Hubbards and allowing the cancans and ballet girls night after night to display their charms…in Boyd’s Opera House…If there is to be moral reform in the matter of dress…reform the men as well. We do know one man whose garments fit him so tight that it would seem as if he were melted into them – so tight…one can witness the circulation in his outer veins. In a word, if the mayor himself would avoid arrest, let him at once don a Mother Hubbard suit; it won’t fit him so tight as his present costume. 

Protests, Mockery and a Stubborn Perseverance

     An odd thing started in the 1880s and 1890s: men wearing the Mother Hubbards at political protests.  Historian Sharon Wood explained this phenomenon in that men who looked ridiculous in women’s clothing wanted to prove the absurdity of women stepping out of place, the women’s sphere, especially for those who entered public life or politics.

     Quite early, Mother Hubbard parties of various types popped up. Some were a joke. It was popular to host Mother Hubbard parties at skating rinks, including one as early as 1885 in Coffeyville, Kansas. Both men and women wore the garment. These parties were still happening as late as the 1910s. 

      Then there were Mother Hubbard parties, first appearing in the 1880s, hosted by young women – men not allowed – in which everyone wore a Mother Hubbard dress. They began shortly after breakfast and lasted all day. The day was given over to lounging in comfortable positions on the floor and couch, reading and snacking. 

     In the 1890s, Mother Hubbard parties were sometimes a day of picnicking and fishing – again with no boys allowed. Some described hammocks being hung and rugs and large pillows carried outside to recline upon. Mother Hubbard parties were also organized as fundraisers for such causes as churches and the city band. 

     In 1889 a woman wrote a letter to the editor in Wichita, saying, “...there isn’t much style about it, but because they are so loose, cool and comfortable is why we wear them. I know you men all laugh when you see us ladies with our Mother Hubbards on, but we don’t care…a Mother Hubbard is worn for comfort, not looks. Of course we don’t wear them in the street, but just in the kitchen to do our work in.” She closed with a snippet of poetry that was actually sobering:

How loose around my waist were the clothes 

of my childhood,

As my tightened-up corset reminds me of pain,

And the slip I wore when I used to chop kindling,

Had more real enjoyment than bustles or trains.

The bustle I know is a thing highly treasured,

By the ladies built on the mockingbird style,

But give me the garment with looseness unmeasured,

The old Mother Hubbard that mean men revile.

 

     Years later, in 1895, when the Chicago City Council considered an ordinance against wearing bloomers as “unladylike,” Elia Wilkinson Peattie, chief editorial writer for the Omaha World-Herald weighed in. She said the Mother Hubbard and bloomers

should not be worn because they're ugly – but no man should dictate what women wear. She questioned why men always seemed to have a problem with women’s attire when it was comfortable. “Uneducated men who hadn’t accomplished anything were always the ones who seemed to object to the enjoyment of women,” she said.

     Yet amazingly, for over 30 years newspapers attacked the Mother Hubbard. And women never stopped wearing them.  

Sources:

     Gray, Sally Helvenston. “Searching For Mother Hubbard: Function and Fashion in Nineteenth Century Dress,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 29-74.

     Editor’s Comment, Indecent: 28 July 1883, Coffeyville Weekly Journal, p. 5.

     “The Old Mother Hubbard,” Nemaha County Republican (Nemaha, Kansas), 13 Nov 1884, p.8.

     “Something About Dress Reform,” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, Illinois),16 Nov 1883, p. 4.

     “The Mother Hubbard’s Demise,” Omaha Evening Times-Dispatch, 30 July 1884, p. 1.

     “Mother Hubbard Hubbub - An Order Given To Arrest All Women Wearing Mother Hubbard Dresses,” Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha, Nebraska), 31 July 1884, p. 5.

     “The Mother Hubbard Dress,” Rock Island Argus, 18 Aug 1884, p. 2. 

     “The Gown Must Go - War on the Mother Hubbard Dress,” The Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Illinois), 26 April 1884, p. 4. 

     “More of the Mother Hubbard,” Omaha Daily Bee, 6 Aug 1884, p. 8.

     Skating Rink: Coffeyville Weekly Journal, 14 Feb 1885, p. 9.

     “Society Movements - Social Record of the Week,” Muscatine Weekly Journal (Muscatine, Iowa), 3 July 1885, p. 

     Reason to be a Woman: “Local Gleanings,” Coffeyville Weekly Journal, 19 Aug 1892, p. 5.

     “The Latest Mother Hubbard,” Coffeyville Daily Journal, 9 April 1894, p. 2.

     “Ball Players in Mother Hubbards,” Coffeyville Daily Journal, 30 Sept 1896, p. 1.

Note: This is just a sample. I read many more newspaper articles on the Mother Hubbard! Missionaries in the South Seas, upset by the naked local women, introduced the Mother Hubbard, which evolved into the muumuu, something I didn’t discuss above.

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023