Fighting for Equality in Bloomers - Amelia Jenks Bloomer 1818-1894

Amelia Bloomer edited the first American newspaper for women, The Lily. It was issued from 1849 until 1853. The newspaper began as a temperance journal. Bloomer felt that as women lecturers were considered unseemly, writing was the best way for women to work for reform. Originally, The Lily was to be for “home distribution” among members of the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society, which had formed in 1848. 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s cousin Elizabeth Smith Miller introduced the outfit and editor Amelia Bloomer publicized it in The Lily.

Like most local endeavors, the paper encountered several obstacles early on, and the Society’s enthusiasm died out. Bloomer felt a commitment to publish and assumed full responsibility for editing and publishing the paper. Originally, the title page had the legend “Published by a committee of ladies.” But after 1850 – only Bloomer’s name appeared on the masthead.

1851 Currier and Ives

Although women’s exclusion from membership in temperance societies and other reform activities was the main force that moved the Ladies Temperance Society to publish The Lily, it was not at first a radical paper. Its editorial stance conformed to the emerging stereotype of women as “defenders of the home.” 

Photo c 1855

In the first issue, Bloomer wrote:  It is woman that speaks through The Lily…Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness. It is that above all that has made her Home desolate and beggared her offspring…. Surely, she has the right to wield her pen for its Suppression. Surely, she may without throwing aside the modest refinements which so much become her sex, use her influence to lead her fellow mortals from the destroyer’s path. The Lily always maintained its focus on temperance. Fillers often told horror stories about the effects of alcohol. For example, the May 1849 issue noted, “A man when drunk fell into a kettle of boiling brine at Liverpool, Onondaga Co. and was scaled to death.” But gradually, the newspaper began to include articles about other subjects of interest to women. Many were from the pen of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pseudonym “sunflower.” The earliest Stanton’s articles dealt with the temperance, child-bearing, and education, but she soon turned to the issue of women’s rights. She wrote about laws unfair to women and demanded change.

Bloomer was greatly influenced by Stanton and gradually became a convert to the cause of women’s rights. Recalling the case of an elderly friend who was turned out of her home when her husband died without a will she wrote:  Later, other similar cases coming to my knowledge made me familiar with cruelty of the laws towards women; and when the women rights convention put forth its Declaration of Sentiments. I was ready to join with that party in demanding for women such change in laws as would give her a right to her earnings, and her children a right to wider fields of employment and a better education, and also a right to protect her interest at the ballot box.  

Bloomer became interested in dress reform, advocating that women wear the outfit that came to be known as the “Bloomer costume.”  Actually the reform of clothing for women began in the 1850s, as a result of the need for a more practical way of dressing . The reform started in New England where the social activist Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822-1911), called Libby Miller. Mrs Miller  was the daughter of abolitionists Gerrit Smith and his second wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh. She was a lifelong of the women's rights movement. She  became famous when she  adopted what she considered a more rational costume: Turk trousers - loose trousers gathered at the ankles like the trousers worn by Middle Eastern and Central Asian women – worn under a short dress or knee length skirt. The outfits were similar to the clothing worn by the women in the Oneida Community, a religious commune founded  by John Humphrey Noyes in Oneida, New York in 1848.

This new fashion was soon supported by Bloomer, by then a women's rights and temperance advocate. Bloomer popularized Mr Miller’s idea in her bi-weekly publication The Lily. And this women's clothing reform soon was named bloomers. The rebellion against the voluminous and constraining fashion of the Victorian period was both a practical necessity and a focal point of social reform. Stanton and others copied a knee-length dress with pants worn by Elizabeth Smith Miller of Geneva, New York. 

For some time the "Bloomer" outfit was worn by many of the leaders in the women's rights movement, then it was abandoned because of the heavy criticism in the popular press. In 1859, Amelia Bloomer herself said that a new invention, the crinoline, was a sufficient reform.  The bloomer costume returned later, adapted and modified, as a women's athletic costume in the 1890s and early 1900s.

 1864 Godey's Lady's Book

Although Bloomer refused to take any credit for inventing the pants-and-tunic outfit, her name became associated with it because she wrote articles about the unusual dress, printed illustrations in The Lily, and wore the costume herself. In reference to her advocacy of the costume, she once wrote, “I stood amazed at the furor I had unwittingly caused.” But people certainly were interested in the new fashion. She remembered: “As soon as it became known that I was wearing the new dress, letters came pouring in upon me by the hundreds from women all over the country making inquiries about the dress and asking for patterns – showing how ready and anxious women were to throw off the burden of long, heavy skirts.”  In May of 1851 Amelia Bloomer introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton said, "I liked her immediately and why I did not invite her home to dinner with me I do not know."

The circulation of The Lily rose from 500 per month to 4000 per month because of the dress reform controversy. At the end of 1853, the Bloomers moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, where Amelia Bloomer continued to edit The Lily, which by then had a national circulation of over 6000. Bloomer sold The Lily in 1854 to Mary Birdsall, because she and her husband Dexter were moving again this time to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where no facilities for publishing the paper were available. She remained a contributing editor for the two years The Lily survived after she sold it. US National Park Service

Bibliography

Books:

Baker, Jean H. Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005.

Buhle, Mari Jo, and Paul Buhle. The Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Selections from the Classic Work of Stanton, Anthony, Gage, and Harper. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984.

DuBois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Durnford, Dorothy. Amelia Bloomer: Champion of Women’s Rights. New York: Franklin Watts, 1984.

Fischer, Gayle V. Pantaloons and Power: A Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform in the United States. Kent: Kent State University Press, 2001.

Ginzberg, Lori D. Women in Antebellum Reform. Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, 2000.

Hewitt, Nancy A. Radical Friend: Amy Post and the Transformation of American Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

O'Dowd, Sarah M. A Rhode Island Original: Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2004.

Schneiderman, Howard. Amelia Bloomer: A Little Woman in Big Pants. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.

Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Women’s Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830–1870: A Short History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience: A Concise History. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

Articles:

Clinton, Catherine. "Reform in Bloom: Amelia Jenks Bloomer and Women’s Dress Reform." Journal of Women’s History, vol. 3, no. 2, 1991, pp. 26-50.

Fischer, Gayle V. "The Issue of Dress Reform: Amelia Bloomer and the Bloomer Costume." Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1/2, 1999, pp. 19-33.

Ginzberg, Lori D. "Amelia Bloomer and the Popularization of Women's Rights." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 3, no. 1, 1977, pp. 20-35.

Hewitt, Nancy A. "Recasting Women's Activism in Antebellum America: Amelia Bloomer, Dress Reform, and the Press." American Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3, 1984, pp. 323-336.

Lebsock, Suzanne. "Amelia Bloomer: Suffragist, Dress Reformer, and Advocate for Women’s Health." The Journal of American History, vol. 62, no. 3, 1975, pp. 489-507.

Lutz, Alma. "Amelia Bloomer and the Struggle for Women’s Rights." The New England Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 4, 1953, pp. 531-546.

Reed, James. "Fashioning Reform: Amelia Bloomer and the Dress Reform Movement." Fashion Theory, vol. 9, no. 3, 2005, pp. 345-364.

Socolow, Elizabeth. "Amelia Bloomer’s Feminist Advocacy and the Evolution of Dress Reform." American Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 2001, pp. 97-120.

Wellman, Judith. "Amelia Bloomer, Dress Reform, and the Politics of Style." Women’s History Review, vol. 4, no. 3, 1995, pp. 423-439.

Notes

One of the most recent and significant works on Amelia Bloomer is Gayle V. Fischer’s Pantaloons and Power (2001), which provides a detailed analysis of the dress reform movement and Bloomer’s role in advocating for women's rights through clothing. Nancy A. Hewitt’s (2018) work, although more focused on Amy Post, offers a broader context of women’s activism that intersects with Bloomer’s influence in antebellum reform movements.

Clinton’s (1991) article remains an essential reading for understanding Bloomer's pivotal role in the dress reform movement, while Hewitt’s 1984 article provides an in-depth look at how Bloomer used the press to advocate for women’s rights and dress reform.