This week, I am mostly doing research for my dissertation, which, as I'm sure you're bored of hearing now, is all about 'Ladies of the night' in Victorian Lichfield. Currently, I'm ploughing through every edition of the weekly 'Lichfield Mercury' from 1877 to 1900; and it's fairly slow going, so only a brief blog update this week.
However, I thought you might appreciate this idea I've just found in the Mercury from 18th February 1892...
To get round the Sunday licensing laws at the time, it seems that those crafty Canadians had a cunning plan, when the proprietor of a 'candy-store' (sweet shop to us English folk) was arraigned for 'selling liquor on a Sunday out of whiskey corsets'. After months of observation, the police had seen a customer hand the shop owner 5cents. The proprietor promptly produced a rubber tube from under his waistcoat and handed it to the customer, who gave it a jolly good suck (!). When the officer pounced, a search revealed that the shop owner wore a double layer tin corset, with sufficient space in between layers to hold over a gallon of whiskey. 'The police discovered that many a buxom candy-store woman wore similar tank-corsets and did a rushing business with rubber tubes on Sundays'. I bet they did.
So there you have it, folks, whiskey corsets... rumours of tea corsets for steampunks are hopefully scaldingly unfounded.
Back to the newspapers. I'll keep you posted...
However, I thought you might appreciate this idea I've just found in the Mercury from 18th February 1892...
To get round the Sunday licensing laws at the time, it seems that those crafty Canadians had a cunning plan, when the proprietor of a 'candy-store' (sweet shop to us English folk) was arraigned for 'selling liquor on a Sunday out of whiskey corsets'. After months of observation, the police had seen a customer hand the shop owner 5cents. The proprietor promptly produced a rubber tube from under his waistcoat and handed it to the customer, who gave it a jolly good suck (!). When the officer pounced, a search revealed that the shop owner wore a double layer tin corset, with sufficient space in between layers to hold over a gallon of whiskey. 'The police discovered that many a buxom candy-store woman wore similar tank-corsets and did a rushing business with rubber tubes on Sundays'. I bet they did.
So there you have it, folks, whiskey corsets... rumours of tea corsets for steampunks are hopefully scaldingly unfounded.
Back to the newspapers. I'll keep you posted...
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