A rare occurrence of lady from the 'horsey set' into the ranks of the corsetières was not a success. The clientele developed over the years by her aunt, was steadily reduced by the novice's conviction that her clients were as sturdy as her horses and, to paraphrase Tom Sharpe, "She laced and buckled her charges into their corsets with a vigour reminiscent of a race meeting."

A corset (95 times out of a 100) is designed to support, not constrict. Our Thelwell refugee did not last long in the trade!

An Irish woman ordered a black corselette which was duly fitted and the corsetière watched another presumably satisfied customer depart. A week later the corselette was returned in the mail with a desperate letter asking for a refund. Apparently the woman had not slept for the guilt of buying black underwear and she wanted rid of the evil garment.

A corsetière asked her husband to pick up a pair of corsets that needed repair from a lady in the village on his way home one evening. He went to the house, rang the bell, and a large formidable lady opened the door. Plucking up courage he blurted "I've come for your corsets". The harridan's gimlet gaze burned into him. "Old Mrs.Withering lives NEXT door" she shouted and slammed the door in his face. "Never again" promised the husband, as he realised he had mis-read the address.

A lady's husband rushed in from work. "Get your corsets off" he shouted and raced upstairs. The lady followed, somewhat surprised by her husband's sudden ardour, to find him getting into his football gear. "I need the corset laces for my football boots; they broke in last game!"

Granny was looking after her daughter's boisterous kids. After a long tiring day, and an hour getting the children to bed, she retired to her own room and divested her clothes down to her brassiere, corset and stockings. She applied a face pack in an unattractive pale green colour and re-arranged her hair for the night. She heard the children begin to increase their noise and at the end of her tether rushed into their room to give them 'what's for'. The children were stunned into silence and as Granny retreated to her room, righteous in her powers of admonishment, a small frightened voice whispered "What WAS that thing?"

On a similar vein, the daughter of a Spirella client was lounging around her Mother's house in an old housecoat, her hair in curlers and with a hardening face pack of ghastly hue in preparation for the arrival of her boyfriend later that day. The boyfriend arrived an hour early and the girl in question fled upstairs where her Mother found her virtually in tears and frantically applying her mascara and lipstick. "Quick, get my new girdle" hissed the girl. As the poor girl successfully overcame the reluctant zip of the girdle, she cried "I want him to see me as I really am!"

Spirella falls into this trap (right), and claims that a properly corseted figure is natural, not the un-corseted figure!

It is a very feminine trait to deceive oneself by imagining that the well-dressed, well made-up woman in the mirror is the 'real you', as opposed to the rather saggy object that emerges from the shower each morning!

Imelda Marcos is widely credited with her extensive, even excessive collection of shoes and designer clothes. Less well known is that this sartorial magpie had an equally extensive selection of girdles from which to chose. 

One of the less attractive epithets for the corsetière is a ‘meat-packer’. One man who was embarrassed to mention his wife’s profession often claimed that she was in the ‘meat-packing’ business. In Herman Wouk’s book ‘Marjorie Morningstar’, the chubby friend of the heroine takes a job in the corset department of Macys. When her experience was questioned, she replied “I’ve spent all my life forcing human putty into the shape of a women.” 

Life was so confusing for the young women in the 1950’s. My mother used to scold me that wearing tight girdles would give me varicose veins. My poor sister, however, developed alarming veins during her first pregnancy when she was only 28. The nurse attending her blamed the veins on inadequate corsetry. You can’t win.

(In the late 1960’s) I was invited for afternoon tea with an acquaintance. This lady had a young son, seven or eight years-old I suppose, and his noisy presence eventually began to irritate us both. “Get your toy cars out and stop whining” the boy’s mother told him. He returned a few minutes later with a box of cars. The box depicted a lady in a rather elegant girdle and was emblazoned ‘Gossard’. My hostess blushed to the roots of her hair, although why, I couldn’t imagine, for we all wore girdles then.  

We were driving with my aunt in the Ardennes of Belgium. It must have been the hot summer of 1962. My aunt's face grew redder and redder as the miles passed (there was no air-conditioning then). Finally she asked me to stop and she waddled hurriedly off into the undergrowth. Ten minutes later a cooler auntie returned clutching a large pair of white perforated rubber corsets, apparently not uncommonly worn in those days. I remember thinking that her shape seemed the same, however, her stockings had become distinctly baggy. She professed to wearing these garments every day as well as vest, knickers and her thick support stockings; no wonder she was hot!

A female prisoner in Britain escaped from jail using a lock pick fabricated from a spiral steel corset bone. Corsets obviously were not confiscated after the event since female prisoners still form a small but regular clientele for the remaining British corsetières.

The spiral-wound stay, although a great revolution for corsetry, did sometimes cause embarrassment when it broke loose from its casing. In the Spirella magazine of October 1959, a lady recounts walking home at night when she was terrified by something that tapped her on the back of her neck. She ran home only to find that the tapping was an errant stay from her corselette that had ridden up. 

David Niven also recounts the episode of a large and heavily corseted actress who was dancing with her partner closely clasped to her bosom. At the end of the dance, the man didn't let go and she hissed "the dance is over". "I can't move" replied the man, "One of your stays is up my nose"!

Whilst lying in bed and attempting to finish the Telegraph crossword puzzle, the gentleman in question made a mistake. Finding that the eraser on top on his pencil had expired (his mistakes were frequent), he rose from the bed, ferreted through his wife’s underpinnings on the chair, and started to rub the offending letters with the rubber material of her Playtex girdle. This ruined both the newspaper and the girdle. This incident was portrayed in a 1960’s situation comedy starring Freddy Frinton and Thora Hird.  

Reunions and weddings can be guaranteed to send women into a frenzy of discomfort if not actual pain. Trying to don a uniform that fitted in one's early 20s when one is 50 is a recipe for disaster. The tight waist-band will pull the shirt into vertical creases and the collar will not actually fasten without throttling the wearer. At such re-unions, the bulging eyes and red complexion speak not of thyroid and blood-pressure but rather collars and corsets!

An elderly widow was asked if she missed her late husband, "Oh yes, I really do" she replied. "I've nobody to do up my back suspenders any more!"

A mother was reading in the sitting room. Through the open window she heard her seven year-old son discussing with his friend, and apparently with quite some knowledge, her own girdles. "My Mummy's got lots of girdles. She wears the really tight one when she goes out with Daddy. You can tell 'cause she walks funny!" Her son's friend was less of an expert but volunteered that 'Gran' wore a corset. Later that evening, she was sufficiently concerned to ask her husband if she did, indeed, walk funnily, and was re-assured that she didn't. But the doubt was always there afterwards!

Weight loss is a common problem in the older woman, just as weight gain plagues her younger sister. Several years ago I visited a lovely old-fashioned corset shop in Rouen, France. The proprietress appeared from behind a screen and asked us if we would mind waiting for five minutes, as she was fitting a customer. My husband, who was with me, is quite used to the interior of ladies' shops, however, the groans and struggles from behind the screen eventually unsettled him and he wandered outside. He later explained that he felt dreadfully embarrassed and that somehow he was intruding on a rather private moment. After 10 minutes the corsetière and the lady emerged. The lady was in her 70's and explained that her corselettes were too big for her and she had decided to buy a smaller size. The groans were caused by the effect of the first corselette, which was far too small, and the ensuing struggle with the zip until the corsetière intervened and procured a larger size. Typical of French underwear, the corselettes she had chosen were beige, constructed from heavy elastic, well-boned and zipped up the front. Sadly, the charming satin panels were no longer included.

In the early days of the metal zip fastener, there were some catastrophic zip failures on girdles, which is why, these days, all such zips are backed by hooks and eyes. The old corset shop in Croydon, sadly extinct, refused to stock zippered girdles for several years. Talking of which, yet another euphemism for girdle was ‘zipper’. It wasn’t so common but I’ve heard of a mother asking her daughter at a wedding “I hope you’ve got your zipper on today”. My husband speaks of a girl-friend who referred to her ‘waist nipper’ as a ‘zipper nipper’, although whether this referred to the garment’s zip fastener, or to the poor girl catching her flesh in the zipper was more than my husband dared to ask! This girl, who was somewhat overweight, later purchased a basque, however, the boning on the garment simply wasn’t up to the task, and every time she sat down, her tummy would force the front bones to fold back on themselves. 

This was heard at a restaurant in Aberdeen, amazingly in 2001. "Oh, my girdle's killing me." My husband and I turned to identify the source of this archaic expression and were stunned that it came from a pre-teenage girl, and by no means plump or chubby. We were astonished!

In the days before central heating (Britain in the early 1960's), a woman wrote to an 'agony aunt' that her latex girdle was so dreadfully cold to put on in the morning. Rather than receiving a helpful suggestion (my old aunt slept on top of her rubber corsets to avoid this problem) the 'agony aunt' retorted that one must suffer to be beautiful!

British public schools (which in the quaint English terminology mean private schools) to this day boast the position of matron, a female cross between house-mother and nurse. As late as the 1970’s, this character would wear, as part of her office clothes, the full regalia of a nursing matron from the white head-dress to the watch pinned to the left bosom. At a famous south London public school, the matron was very much a formidable character in true ‘Hattie Jacques’ style. At the beginning of one Easter term, the assembled staff were surprised at the laughter that greeted the raising of the school flag. As their collective gaze swiveled to the flag-pole, there, for all to see just below the school flag was a large pair of corsets. Any doubt as to their owner was dispelled by Matron’s scarlet face. There is a small addition to this episode. A school-wide hunt went out for the perpetrator of the act, and a 15 year-old pupil was found to have secreted away beneath his mattress, a good collection, not just of Matron’s foundations, but those of some of the masters’ wives as well. The pupil quietly vanished from the school.

I must confess that during the mid 1960's whilst at boarding school I too played a similar prank when I noted our own Matron's Marks and Spencer white satin-panelled girdle on her washing line billowing gently in the breeze. Clandestinely, I removed it and hoisted it up our particular flag pole. I made the mistake of bragging to other boys of my prank and an unknown school snitch reported my misdeed. Fortunately I was not expelled like the other boy. However, our headmaster was furious and I was given six of the best with one of his canes over the seat of my own white Marks and Spencers "St Michael" underwear! They were far less substantial than the girdle so the Head's cane really hurt!

Still on the subject of schools; between the wars, at a girl's boarding school near Perth in Scotland, the girls would wait until after lights out to start making a noise. The new housemistress, who slept in a separate room at the end of the corridor, was a young and inexperienced teacher. If the girls timed it properly, the teacher would rush in to scold them without taking time to reinsert her dentures. A lady in her late 80's recounted this tale (for she was one of those girls) and added, it's hard to take anyone too seriously when they're standing in their corsets shouting "Go to shleep, girlsh!"

My husband and I were walking past the Corset Shop in St. Leonards (It sadly closed in 2009 - Ivy) when I saw a stout old women emerge from the shop with her daughter (perhaps even grand-daughter). The old lady was crammed, not to put too fine a point on it, into a classic twin-set over a white blouse. A rather lovely Jaguar saloon car pulled up and the younger lady’s husband emerged. Jaguars look superb, however, in reality, they are very low and quite cramped in the rear. The performance that ensued with husband and wife, at first helping the stiff old biddy into the car, and latterly pushing and pulling, was quite comical, but rather sad. The whole story was clear to see. The old lady would come to the shop once or twice a year to replace her corsets. This expensive habit precluded the purchase of newer more fashionable clothes. Ironically, if she had purchased even a new suit that fitted her stouter body, she might not have needed such tight corsets in the first place. The proprietor of the shop (for it is owned by a man), confirmed that she came in every six months for two brand new Twilfit corsets; one in white, and one in tea rose brocade.

Walking along the Embankment by Waterloo Bridge in 1988, my husband saw the most obviously corseted women he had ever seen. He takes up the tale. “She was a big woman, but her waist was incredibly small by comparison. About 42-26-42 I would guess. Stunningly dressed”. I asked him if he was sure it was a real women; there are many theatres in the area, and Covent Garden is only just across the river. "You know" he replied, “I’ve never been certain, and I never saw the woman again”.

Madame Chang Kai Shek was famous for wearing a pair of bullet-proof corsets. When her husband was forced to leave China, they left behind many items in the rush, and her pink satin corsets became the proud trophy of one of the bandit chiefs.  

A woman hurried into the restaurant at Selfridge’s in a waft of powder, perfume and parcels. As she joined her friends for coffee, she gushed in a voice audible several tables away, “I’m so sorry to be late. I was trapped inside my panty-girdle!”

A modern tale from a few years ago (2001). Three student girls were walking down a street in Sheffield when two of them started to lag behind the third. They started to giggle, as did several passers-by. "What's so funny" the third protested. "Look at the bottom of your jeans". And there for all to see, was yesterday's discarded panty-girdle hanging out and being dragged along the street. Mortification knows no bounds!  

In Britain, well before the advent of the Charity Shop (Thrift Shop in the USA), or even the car boot sale, was the Jumble Sale. These sales took place in Church Halls and the like, and represented the unwanted items that clutter a person’s life, yet cannot really be discarded as pure rubbish. During one such sale in the late 1960’s, whilst rummaging through a pile of old clothes, a teenage girl discovered an old pair of corsets that she held up and showed to her friends. Waving them in the air she crowed “Coo, just look at these; can you imagine anybody wearing these things?” All the assembly laughed, except, that is, for the haughty lady, who had in fact organized the event. Shortly afterwards, the corsets were discretely purchased by that same lady. The elderly women who recounted this tale laughed at the memory. “Those were her own corsets. I know that because the Spirella lady visited me after fitting her. She couldn’t bear to see her old corsets flourished in public and had to buy them back!”  

Tom Sharpe in his extremely funny book ‘Porterhouse Blue’ had this to say about the Dean’s wife:- “Lady Mary adjusted the straps of her surgical corset with a vigour that reminded Sir Godber of a race meeting”. Very eloquent, and very true. Mr. Sharpe, I’m sure had a standard Camp corset in mind here. Later in the book "Lady Mary disembarked languidly from her corsets."

My wife was preparing to go out and, as was almost a ritual in the 1960's, called me into the bedroom to 'do up her zip'. My wife stood up, turned around and asked me how she looked. I resisted laughing and slowly built up for the punch line "You look like a million dollars, your hair's fantastic and that dress will drive the other women wild." She almost purred. I turned to leave the room and added "What's that hanging down?" My wife looked and squeaked as she saw that a corset lace had broken its moorings and was dangling for all to see. Cats can hiss as well as purr and a good five minutes of 'engineering' was required to secure the errant lace. My wife's confidence was ruined and throughout the evening she kept asking me if she looked alright.

My ancient auntie was visiting us for the afternoon. As we toured the garden looking at the flowers, I noticed our recently acquired kitten beginning its stalk and dash game. I looked around for the object of its attention and noticed that auntie’s corset laces were dangling down. Before I could intervene, the kitten pounced on the laces and swung there, its front claws firmly caught in the laces. Auntie and the kitten panicked as one. The kitten went mad, auntie screamed, tripped and fell. The kitten killed the laces, disentangled its claws and rushed off after the next victim. Mercifully auntie, although slightly the worse for wear, damaged only her pride.

My husband was so pleased to hear of this tale. He said he was sure it must have happened somewhere at some time, and indeed it did in Wyke Regis in the late 1960’s – Ivy.

My gran always came to stay at Christmas and she always wore what she called her 'Christmas outfit'. This was a long black velvet skirt and a ivory coloured satin blouse. I later learnt that this blouse was a construction from her wedding dress; that would explain the sumptuous quality of the garment. Getting a cuddle from gran was a treat but also a surprise. I loved the feel of the satin and velvet but was always surprised at the hardness of her body - quite unlike my mum who was less extravagantly attired, but oh so much softer!

For several years pre-university, I would watch as my daughter struggled into heroically tight pantie-girdles. After a year at university she abandoned her foundations with “I can’t believe I used to suffer like that!” I then found her reclining in the bath one day wearing a pair of new jeans. She was ‘shrinking’ them onto her body in the style of the mid-60’s. So tight were the jeans, that the zip had to pulled closed with a shoe-lace (a trick she learnt from her girdle days). I pointed out the similarities with her girdles but she retorted “this is the uniform of freedom (a contradiction, but I didn’t interrupt); my girdles were objects of male subjugation.” Youth!

My son 'discovered' corsets in 1962. We were on holiday in Berwick and our walk down the High Street was interrupted by the loss of his presence. He was 20 yards behind us gazing at a shop window that was, embarrassingly, full of corsets. "What is that for" he asked, pointing at a particularly complex Camp creation. "They're women's things" I replied, hoping that would suffice. It didn't. "They keep their tummies flat" I explained. That same week, we had travelled onto Edinburgh and were staying with relatives. Their elderly neighbour had a pair of corsets hung on the washing line. We met her for tea subsequently and my son came up to me and said in a quiet, secretive voice, "I know why she's got a flat tummy!"

In the 1970's, before property buying for personal gain became common, a retired couple bought a villa in Spain. In those days, selling the property and exporting the money was prohibited by Spanish law. (The Spanish believed that price inflation of property would kill the market for local people, and lead to rural and social decay - as it has all over most of Britain. It seems that the Spanish were rather perceptive, but I digress.) Eventually, the lady's husband died and she wished to cash in the value of the villa. Transferring the money legally was out of the question so she bought an oversized pair of corsets, withdrew as much as the bank allowed in cash (they were not stupid), and stuffed the corsets with as many pesetas, dollars and pounds as she could manage and fled the country. Paper is an excellent insulator, and she nearly passed out several times from heat exhaustion in the attempt to relieve rural Spain from 20% of her property's inflated worth.

Another corset smuggling episode was widely reported in the British press in the early 1980's. A middle-aged lady shop-lifter modified a pair of corsets to carry all manner of hooks and straps. She wore it over her dress but underneath her voluminous coat. She would enter a supermarket and surreptitiously hang items beneath her coat on the corset. The theory was that in emergency, a quick unfastening of the busk would drop the evidence and she could then make a dash for it. Unfortunately, when she was queried by a suspicious saleslady, she panicked, tried to release the busk whilst running and tripped over her stays. This lady, at least, was caught; red-handed, and one presumes, red-faced as well.

Older ladies love to talk about their ailments - Ivy

Granny used to talk freely about her surgical corsets and surgical stockings. I wondered why her bra was never called 'surgical'; it certainly qualified on lacings and number of bones! My sister and I used to snigger out of earshot "I wonder if she's got her surgical teeth in today?" or "Pretty surgical blouse!" Oh how we mocked our poor granny.

Another reference to armour: R's mother was anything but coy about her underwear. "I've got my armour on today" she would announce, slapping her rigid stomach with gusto. "But isn't it uncomfortable?" chorused our young daughters. "You'll find out when you're my age" she promised them as they shivered in horror. Watching her sit down was basically fascinating. She'd lower herself gingerly toward the chair and then, unable to resist gravity, she would collapse into the seat. She would exhale noisily, the seat would creak and her thighs would spring apart revealing her old-fashioned bloomers. Most dramatically was the alarming rise in her bust, as her corset impacted the seat and forced everything violently upwards.

In contrast to the tale above, a client refused to accept a corsetière's measurements and demanded that a couple of inches be removed here and there to accentuate her waist. Despite the fitter's protests, the client prevailed and a month later was fitted with her new corsets. She then had the nerve to complain that they fitted badly and refused to accept them. This could have cost the fitter dearly except for the fact that they actually fit her quite well and she wore them regularly (against all the advice from her training) for several years afterwards.

In the snooker hall of the Conservative club in Stafford there used to play a disagreeable fellow. We laughed behind his back since when he leant over the table to play, the outline of a surgical corset was clearly visible. He was notable for taking his ale from a quart tankard although not in the presence of his wife, who was similarly abrupt and 'tweedy' in that ex-military family sort of way. I suspected she was as stiffly corseted as her husband, for when she sat down her back never left the vertical. They were a classical 'shoulders back, stomach in' couple, and with the sort of corsets available then, there would probably be no other choice! We often joked that the 'old Major', as we used to call him, wore his wife's corsets, and in the jovial male preserve of the snooker room, this supposition would call forth a bevy of ribald jokes and supposedly true anecdotes.

One of the strangest accolades for a corselette comes from a lady who was an unfortunate passenger on the ‘Morro Castle’, the ship that caught fire off New Jersey in the 1930’s and was a total loss. The poor lady spent some time in the sea, and later wrote to congratulate Spirella that the bones in her corselette didn’t rust after the harrowing experience.

I’ve known several people, usually women, who cannot wear watches. I’m not talking about the allergic reaction to base metals, but simply that the watch would stop or keep bad time. On other women, the same watch would be fine. I mentioned this to my husband who was about to retort along the lines of “silly women”, however, he thought for a bit and said “Take some old biddy with alloy ‘stays’ in her corsets, steel under-wires in her bra and chromium plated suspenders. As she walks through the Earth’s magnetic field, she probably generates enough electricity to stop a watch!” “What about the poor old soul’s heart of gold” I replied, and the argument came to rest there. But I wonder if he has a point.

Famed Olympian and golfer, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, was once asked how she managed to hit 250 yard drives. "It's not just enough to swing at the ball," she replied. "You've got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it!"

The wearing of corsets over one’s nightie is simply the recourse of the elderly when forced to walk around after having prepared for bed. Virtually unknown today of course, thirty years ago, there were women who had worn corsets most of their life and any physical effort without their support was almost impossible. Gerald Durrell and Ian McRoberts both describe elderly women arising from bed and putting on their corsets before venturing further.

When my mother came to stay, our crowded Monday washing line received an addition with Mummy’s pink corsets enjoying their weekly wash. Our young son was always amazed at these heavy garments and would ask what they were. I would explain that older women wore them to keep their figures trim. To this he would ask if I wore them. How do you explain to a seven year-old that a 36 year-old mum is not an older woman. “No. I wear a lighter support called a girdle,” and I would show him one of mine to avoid any unnecessary curiosities developing. At this my 10 year-old daughter assumed a haughty air and announced that in a few years, she too would have to wear a girdle. My ex-naval husband simply used to comment in his dry way “I see the Admiral’s raised her flag!”  

When 'Bob-a-job' was common (Boy Scouts searched the area for job to do. One shilling - a Bob - was given to the scout movement for each job) my son used to roam the houses of our neighbours. Apparently one arrogant woman, who I disliked, had little time for boy scouts and in an effort to be rid of him just handed him a plastic bag and told him to dispose of it somewhere else. My son's curiosity was aroused (why didn't she throw this in her own bin?) and he investigated the contents and found a pair of sturdy pink corsets. They became a clandestine trophy of his troop, and I got one up on my snooty neighbour!

I visited the daughter of a famous British politician (this was in the mid-60's) to fit her for a girdle. When I arrived at the house, a party was in full swing although it was early afternoon. The lady was gushingly enthusiastic and wanted to be fitted in front of her friends, however, I had my standards and refused. Reluctantly she retired to her bedroom where the fitting was accomplished. (What a sign of the times. Even when intoxicated, a women put a girdle fitting high on her list of priorities - Ivy)

 

A fanatical bridge player used an opponent's corsets as a weapon against her. The opponent wore corsets of such a severity that she could only sit in the most upright of chairs. Our fanatic always arranged the seating so that the poor woman sat for hours in the softest and least supporting chair that she could find. Her concentration never lasted the match and the hostess unashamedly won a regular income from the unfortunate woman.

I read about multiple foundations in your diary of November 2013. I remember a friend of my mother. Now as both of them and all the other ladies of their group are gone for nearly two decades, I can tell the story. This women in her late 60's always wore firm panty-corselettes since she had large breasts and was very conscious regarding her physique. Often she also wore a long-leg-panty-girdle over her corselette to achieve a very molded and flat abdomen. This was very effective, but in addition her bust was very prominent. For this reason my mother and the other female friends of this group of ladies sometimes called her 'armoured cruiser Potemkin'.  But to be honest, although I was a man in his 20's at that time I liked her trim figure very much. This lady was widowed some years later and - together with my mother - went on holidays together. Mom later told me that her friend used to relax on a lounge chair on the lawn of the hotel but only dressed with her skin-coloured corselette. I don't know if she only forgot her swimsuit or wanted to attract men, but very likely the latter was the reason. Of course my mother strongly disapproved this.

At a family gathering one Christmas, a young boy was heard to ask his Aunt whether she wore her corsets too tight like his own Granny. Apparently, like his Granny, she suffered from the slightly pronounced eyes of the thyroid sufferer. The young boy had been told by his Mother that it was a side effect of too tight underwear.

My Mother, who lived for many years near Ascot, regularly visited the big horse races since, like many of her generation, she was a firm royalist and loved to get a glimpse of the late Queen Mother or the Queen herself. One year, by dint of queuing, and not a little elbowing and shoving, she got right to edge of the Royal enclosure where the great ladies and a retinue of lesser Royal mortals would walk past. Oh dear. My poor Mother, how disillusioned she was. “Pancake” she told me later “Pancake makeup and corsets! There was one old dowager Duchess who looked like she was wearing a mask. She could barely move her face and there wasn’t an inch of movement in her torso.”  

Vanity and its consequences are well-known to the St. John's ambulance crews who attend Royal Garden parties. These days it is usually heat exhaustion and the blistered feet caused by new and tight shoes, however, (and it still occurs but rarely - IL), in days gone by, the word would go around the marquee for a female helper. This almost always meant that some woman, often in a dead faint, required the loosening of over-tightened corsets. Pursuing this theme, I have seen women in such tight dresses that not just walking and sitting was an effort, but the very act of eating and breathing was impeded.

I was lacing an elderly aunt into her corsets one morning when there was a sudden popping sound. "What was that?" I cried in alarm fearing some injury to the old dear. "That was just my eyeballs" she laughed "that's tight enough you know." My old aunt had a wicked sense of humour and had popped her finger using her mouth in the time honoured tradition of children the world over.

I realised from an early age (I had two older sisters), that women can usually absorb any amount of flattery, however exaggerated or preposterous it might be. I could always score brownie points with the women in our family simply by saying "You look really good today" or "I like your hair" - simple stuff. It was the older relatives and friends that produced the most interesting responses. One old aunt (actually I was a teenager then so she was only about 60 or so - old in those days), always was over made-up, over-dressed and over-bearing, however, a "You look smashing Auntie" always produced a clucking, a touching of the hair and a cooing worthy of the most over-acted pantomime dame. Shame about the lipstick on your dentures would have been more appropriate, but flattery will get you anywhere; it always got me a few shillings at Christmas anyway. The only riposte that really floored me was from one old virago who tottered through the front door. In response to my cheery greeting she stared at me for a few seconds and said "Would you like to try on my corsets young man? Then you'd look smashing as well!" I was mortified and was never quite as flippant again.

My mother introduced me to my first girdle when I was still  at school. This was not the bitter argument you might have expected for my peers all wore girdles then, but on one thing I was adamant "No zipper!"

I well remember wearing a similar outfit when I was a teenager. In those few years between the 'sensible' 50's and the 'bra-burning 60's', I wore a panty-girdle and bra; both were boned as well. By the standards of the day, a boned undergarment on a thin teenager was certainly not exceptional. I remember that my outfit sported a broad belt, just to make the point of the attenuated waist. No Victorian corsetted heroine ever sported the weals that I did after an evening thus attired!

One of my parents' friends, who I called Aunt Ada, was pleasant company except when she observed any woman that she considered to be over-dressed or over-styled, in fact, compared to my rather plump and frumpy aunt, most other women. It would only take an elegant figure to enter a restaurant for my aunt to hiss "She'll be well strapped up underneath you know" or "Without her make-up and corsets she'd be nothing." I used to whisper to my mother "Without her make-up and corsets she'd be like Aunt Ada."

My aunt used to live in Indonesia in the 1950s. On the rare trips that she and her husband took back to Holland by ship, she would stock up on several years' supply of corsets which she always wore despite the tropical heat. What she hated was the customs inspection on arriving back in the Far East. On one occasion, a curious customs officer rummaging through her personal effects grabbed a corset and waved it at my aunt asking "What is this for?" My aunt was mortified particularly since half the ship's passengers witnessed the display.

The Spirella corsets were fantastic feats of engineering. I remember suggesting to my mother that she would be far better off without a corset, as I thought that they caused more trouble than they were worth, but she was horrified at the idea. "They are a great source of warmth and comfort", she told me. "Plus, they have the added advantage of pulling in the stomach, and making me look in much better shape than I am". "But Mummy," I protested, "You tell me that they’re most uncomfortable, that they hurt when you kneel down, and the bones stick into your ribs and thighs, that they are impossible to dry after they are washed. Why do you have to put yourself through such torture, just to feel that you are looking right."

My protestations were met with a tight lipped. "Just you wait until you have lost your figure through having babies and you’ll know why people need corsets for their self-esteem". To get back to the corsets on approval, I remember, on one occasion, my mother getting trapped into a corset that she couldn't get out of. It had the usual hooks and straps, but, in addition, it had a zip which went from the thigh to the waist. When she got into it after much difficulty, she couldn’t get out of it. I was called to assist. Eventually, I had to make her lie on the bed while I endeavoured to get the zip down. After a long struggle, I was able to get the zip down and I unleashed the hooks and clamps. Her reaction was, "I don’t think I’ll be buying this one this year".