DAILY TIMES [LEAVENWORTH, KS], October 18, 1860, p. 2, c. 2
"Male Crinoline."—Describing the immense preparations made by both sexes of the invited to the Renfrew ball in New York, the "Herald" says in regard to the gentlemen's costume:
"The most costly cloths have been imported for the occasion, and those who considered forty and fifty dollars enough for a ball suit, have reached the amount of seventy and eighty dollars; not to speak of the other items, including embroidered shirt bosoms, and, extraordinary as it may appear, crinolined shirt breasts; for after all the ridicule which has been heaped upon this commodious, expansive, light, airy, elegant and indispensable article of female attire, the gentlemen have literally taken the crinoline to their bosoms.—they are formed of steel ribs, and are fastened around the body by means of hooks and eyes—another innovation against which the ladies have every right to exclaim. The object of this crinoline arrangement, it is almost necessary to say, is to prevent that most disagreeable of all things, a collapse of the shirt breast—a casualty which is not by any means unfrequent in the ball room, for the prevention of which the gentlemen are primarily indebted to that much abused article to which we have alluded.
Sighted at Vicki Betts' indespinsible newspaper project:
http://www.uttyler.edu/vbetts/leavenworth_times_60-61.htmNow, the question becomes, this was apparently done in New York. Were the readers of Kansas laughing at the slick city folk?
