Issue no 201 Summer 2023

In this issue: Loose women: Defying the conventions and constraints of Victorian undergarments, Barbara Rusch | A carrier bag theory of photography, Annebella Pollen | Liebig in retrospect, Ray Bishop | Rot in sheep: promoting rival treatments in the 1790s. A case study in the use of ephemera, David Knott  | Quarterly Notes, Mrs Pepys | Notes & Queries, Graham Hudson | Classified

Welcome to our Summer 2023 issue Nº 201 of The Ephemerist. The evolution of women’s undergarments – or ‘unmentionables’ (the Victorians being too prudish to use the word ‘underwear’) – is revealed by its surviving ephemera depicted on the cover and in this issue. Rusch’s enlightening piece covers advertisements, photographs, trade cards and packaging for corsets, bustles, crinolines, cages, petticoats, stockings, and later, brassières, bloomers and pant-aloons, and what they reveal about the role of women in society during the reign of Queen Victoria and beyond. The depiction of women as represented by the evolving Kodak girl is also evident in Pollen’s study of twentieth-century film wallets. With an additional tale about the possible cures for the devastating disease of Rot in Sheep, plus our usual regulars, the Society wishes you an ephemeral summer.