Calico Balls

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In an illustration from a 1890s short story, "Jenny's Calico Ball," Jenny inspects her date's jacket.


What to do in the 1850s and onward about the distressing poverty so visible in New York City and other city slums? Industrialization, urbanization and immigration brought about a changing America with large numbers of poor concentrated in cities. The rising middle class and upper class were concerned about the “dangerous classes,” the “vicious and irresponsible” poor. The slums were surely breeding grounds for crime and drunkenness. The denizens of such places weren’t properly Christian - especially with so many Catholic immigrants. Surely, if left unchecked, this criminal element would overwhelm the country. 

     What about hosting a ball - one in which ladies would all dress in calico, with no fabric costing more than 12 ½ cents per yard? Proceeds from the ball could go to support the work of Rev. Louis Peese, a Methodist minister working in the notorious Five Points slum in New York City. After the ball, the ladies could all donate their dresses for distribution to the poor. Wouldn’t that be fun?

      “As New York, to a great extent, controls the fashions of the country at large, we presume that “calico dress balls” will be all the rage,” an editor for a Mississippi newspaper said. In this, he was correct. The Calico Ball was born.


Five Points and Rev. Peese


     In 1850 Louis Peese was commissioned by the Methodist Conference, and supervised by the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society, to preach the gospel and convert the predominantly Catholic population of Five Points to Methodism. Actually working among the poor in the neighborhood, he quickly came to believe that education and employment needed to be his focus to bring about lasting rehabilitation. He was fired by the ladies when they came for a visit and found out he hadn’t preached in two days, spending the time transporting fabric to a workshop where he employed people. He and his wife refused to leave Five Points and founded a nondenominational mission, the Five Points House of Industry.  

     The  House of Industry offered vocational training, employment, free meals and schooling for kids, along with traditional missionary endeavors like Bible study and temperance classes. As was common thinking of the time, though, he believed the best thing for the children was to be removed from their parents and adopted by Protestant families; after 1857 he would only give desperate mothers help if they agreed to surrender their children. 

     It was reported that a New York society woman issued 500 invitations to the first calico ball. Rev. Peese was probably more than happy to receive the proceeds and donated dresses.


Criticism


     From the very beginning there were those who criticized calico balls. Why not save the money from printing tickets, renting a hall, paying an orchestra and just give the money to the poor? Instead of having a dress made for oneself to wear for a night, why not have it made for the woman in need? In an anonymous letter to the editor someone wrote,“To me it is a ridiculous thought that a Calico dress is unfit to be worn by a poor woman until it has once been worn by another, whom an All Wise Providence has placed in affluent circumstances, and who lives only to be looked at. Such people are too refined to wear calico at any other time or place. Their language is, “I will give my poor sister a new dress, but it must be a cast off. It must be exhibited under a brilliant gas light once.” 


Calico Balls in the Midwest


     What was it about calico balls that so captured the public’s enthusiasm? They spread across the country, but were especially loved in the Midwest. There they remained popular until the turn of the twentieth century – a fifty year time period. They became fundraisers for all sorts of organizations, from the local library to whatever fraternal organization sponsored it. In Fredonia, Kansas in 1886, a calico ball was given to raise funds to buy a clock for the Wilson County Courthouse. With a few exceptions, their original purpose of aid to the poor was forgotten. 

     In 1860 in Emporia, Kansas, the balls were described as quite a novelty. “The women are to wear calico dresses and look as washdayish as possible,” the reporter said. “The men are to dress a la fireman – no coats, no vests, and woolen or checked shirts.” At most of the balls, when a lady had her dress made, she had a tie made in matching calico for her partner. In Richmond, Indiana in 1869 a man wore a suit entirely made of the fabric. In Girard, Kansas, the men wore matching vests and ties. So did some of the men at an 1897 calico ball in Baxter Springs, Kansas, said to be the most successful dance in town "for years and years."

     Later, the name “calico ball” seemed to change in meaning, to a costume party or masquerade, usually organized for children. Calico balls in new and original form persisted until about 1905. Here’s a bit of verse from the La Cygne, Kansas Journal: 

     

     There was calico Ned

     And calico Fred,

     And Harlen with his jumper on,

     Every girl had her hair in a curl

     And was clad in a calico gown.

     Of silks and satins the poets sing,

     Of laces and flounces flowin’ —

     But the thing that wins at a La Cynge ball

     Is the five-cent calico gown.  


Sources:


      Anbinder, Tyler., “A Five Points "Orphan" Is Taken In by Reverend Pease and the Five Points House of Industry,” SHEC: Resources for Teachers, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/605.

     Fitts, Robert. “The Rhetoric of Reform: The Five Points Missions and the Cult of Domesticity.” Historical Archaeology 35, no. 3 (2001): 115–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616943.

     Heale, M. J. “Patterns of Benevolence: Associated Philanthropy in the Cities of New York, 1830–1860.” New York History 57, no. 1 (1976): 53–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23169706.

Copy

     Robinson, Solon. Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated, Including the Story of Little Katy; Madalina, the Rag Picker’s Daughter; Wild Maggie, etc. New York: Dewitt and Davenport, 1854. 

     “A Good Idea,” Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia), 10 Jan 1855, p. 2.

“British Cloths, French Silks and Dutch Trinkets,” Hinds County Gazette (Raymond, Mississippi), 31 Jan 1855, p. 2.

     “Home Matters - The Calico Ball,” The Buffalo Commercial, 1 Feb 1855, p. 2. 

     “The Calico Ball,” La Cynge Journal (La Cynge, Kansas), 25 April 1902, p. 3. 


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

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