Early Victorian wedding dress

The middle class girl and marriage

Marriage in the 19th century marked a transformation in a young woman’s life – for some this was a change for the better, for others it could be worse. The style of Victorian wedding dresses tended to be influenced by the Royal weddings of the day.

This wedding dress is made from ivory silk brocade and is recorded as circa 1840-45, although the neckline would suggest it is probably later, about 1850.

This is the earliest wedding dress in the Bolton Museum costume collection, although it probably was not worn by a bride related to this town.

In the Victorian period royal weddings led bridal fashions. The deep ‘v’ at the waist of this dress, together with the full skirt, suggests the influence of Queen Victoria’s bridal gown, although the flat pleated neckline is a departure from her style.

The waist is decorated with a column of ornamental buttons with silk covers. The plain sleeves narrow at the wrist and have an inset of stiff net.

Modesty would have required the wearing of a garment beneath the plunging neck line. No veil or train was associated with the dress when it was donated. Unfortunately, this dress has sustained some damage.

The silk is deteriorating under the armpits and there is a stain on the lap of the skirt. The waist of the dress is about 60 centimetres round, and the wearer would have stood about 170cm high.  Sadly, her name is not recorded.

By 1850, when this dress was worn, Bolton was a fully established Lancashire cotton town experiencing the profits and pains of the industrial revolution.

Bolton was socially divided between a combined middle and upper class group made up of land owners, employers and professionals, and the numerically larger working class.

This dress would have been worn by a woman from the middle class. At this time, life for an unmarried middle class woman was very limited.

Male dominated world

Society was led by men, and home was considered women’s proper sphere. Unable to work, middle class women undertook (or at least oversaw) housekeeping duties and represented her family and husband’s interests in polite society through rounds of visiting.

The way they were dressed communicated the wealth and status of the household. Their lives were often tiresome and frustrating.

Marriage could socially transform a young woman, making her ‘visible’. For example, a married woman automatically received seniority over her older single sisters. However, the 1851 census indicated that there were many more women than men in England, so failing to marry was a real and serious threat.

Since young middle class women were not permitted to have an independent social and working life, it was essential that family - brothers and parents - took an interest in introducing women to prospective husbands. Without these interested parties women were at a grave disadvantage.

The working class and marriage

Working class women and men were much more at liberty to choose their own spouses. Even though most children lived at home until they married, parents might not be informed about a courtship until marriage was proposed.

Couples often delayed marriage if they could not afford to set up a new household or if the man was not financially able to support the woman when she could not work during late pregnancy or when children were infants.

The suffragette Hannah Mitchell (née Webster) was born in 1871 and met her husband in Bolton. In her autobiography The Hard Way Up she reflects that working class marriages often led to poverty through a failure to control fertility. Mitchell saw women losing control over their own lives through marriage, excessive childbirth and child rearing, with little or no personal income. She writes:

"I have seen many pretty, merry girls who had married on a small wage and whose babies had come fast, turn into slatterns and prematurely aged women. I had no mind to join their ranks."

Mitchell’s own wedding was ‘a very simple one’, although she was unconventional in her number of bridesmaids:
My three bridesmaids were a novelty for working-class folk in those days. Couples in our social status were usually attended only by another couple who ‘stood’ for them as witnesses. So it was rather a swank on my part to have such a bevy of bridesmaids.

Mitchell wore a ‘simple grey frock’ and ‘grey velvet hat’, two bridesmaids wore pink, while the third, her friend Sallie ‘looked like a bride herself in grey, trimmed with lace.’ There were no formalities of speeches or toasts at the wedding breakfast, and after eating, the party went for a walk in the local park.