IMD W011 Website: www.illawarramercury.com.au WEEKENDER Saturday, June 16, 2012 11 FLASHBACK Going postal We are looking for interesting photos from the past. Send us an old photo along with a description of the picture. Email entries to [email protected] or post photos (copies only) to Weekender Editor PO Box 1215 Wollongong 2500. SEND US YOUR OLD PHOTOS Elizabeth June (EJ) Paine’s Post Office store, undated, on the SE corner of Allen St and Mt Keira. HERITAGE FLASHBACK HERITAGE When miner’s wife Annie Murphy became postmistress at Mt Keira in 1899, residents living closer to Wollongong in a locality known as Paradise took issue at her location further up the mountain, according to historian Anne Wood. A petition was circulated to have the outlet more centralised, this followed by a counter-petition led by Wollongong Mayor Henry Osborne MacCabe to have the office remain at Mt Keira. Those in support of Mrs Murphy won the day with 130 signatures to 45. But the matter was again raised in 1902 when Paradise storekeeper Dempster Robson petitioned for the contract and won. Matthew Paine became postmaster in 1908, conducting the business from his store on Mt Keira Rd. When he died in 1916, his wife Elizabeth June and daughter took over. GEN SEA Paying price for fashion A tight corset proved deadly for one young woman, writes MICHELE HOCTOR. Women have always been devoted to fashion, sometimes to their own detriment. CREDIT: From the collections of the Wollongong City Library and the Illawarra Historical Society. GENEALOGY SEARCH TIP For insight into women’s Victorian era fashion and their place in society, go to www.fashion-era.com A YOUNG SYDNEY WOMAN PAID THE ultimate price for fashion in June 1874 when an inquest found she was killed by her tight corset. At the hearing, the doctor who conducted the post-mortem examination said he found some of the principal vital organs severely injured and out of their natural place, the cause attributed to tight lacing. ‘‘That such an injury to the system is likely to result from that practice is at once apparent to everyone and yet, strange to say, young ladies will try to improve upon nature at the risk of not only of injuring their constitutions, but of actually destroying them,’’ the Mercury said. In November 1875, a Maitland man expressed his opposition to the ‘‘absurd custom’’ of women wearing hats at the back of their heads, exposing themselves to heatstroke. ‘‘Sometimes, I have observed a good quarter of a yard between the head and the hat; by which means the face is exposed to the full rays of the burning sun,’’ he said. Women were not the only ones to suffer for fashion. In February 1876, a London newspaper reported that a considerable demand for small birds, especially robins and wrens, for the decoration of ladies’ hats, had led to demand outstripping supply. ‘‘It is urged that whatever legal power exists should at once be put in force to ensure their protection.’’ Other fashions ranged from silly to downright expensive. Take the fashion ‘‘frivolity’’ of 1875 with the extensive range of stockings that came in every colour and featured the most exquisite designs. According to the Home Journal, one pair of stockings which ‘‘excited much admiration’’, was in lemon colour and the instep of each foot was covered with bunches of black currants, with their twigs and leaves ‘‘most delicately embroidered in the coloured silks’’. ‘‘Stockings so embroidered are, of course, enormously dear, (however) the mania is instilled, and henceforth the woman of the world takes rank according to her stockings.’’ In March 1876 the London Courier said that the petticoat was no longer in vogue. The ‘‘grande mode’’ was that the female body be encased in a ‘‘fourreau of the richest material so constructed that with every movement the lines of the limbs shall be fully displayed’’. Not only was this new fashion, complemented by thickly wadded drawers, deemed immodest, the narrowness of the style checked the movement of the wearer. ‘‘The enormous crinolines of a dozen years ago were no less absurd, perhaps; but they were certainly more decent,’’ the Courier concluded. ■ DONATE NOW 13 SALVOS ( 13 72 58 ) salvationarmy.org.au 50 , 000 HUNGRY PEOPLE THANK GOD FOR THE SALVOS EVERY WEEK. WE THANK GOD FOR YOU.