Burning to death sounds gruesome, and there were some instances where women died of burns when their long skirts, or petticoats, came too close to the hearth fire. And by today’s standards, childbirth did take a shocking toll on women right up until the twentieth century.
But historians who have studied death records from the first couple centuries of American history have determined that the leading cause of death for both men and women during this era was disease. The Death by Petticoat myth is a huge exaggeration. How did it come about? DAR Curator Alden O’Brien speculates that “the horrific nature of the accident may have made the rare incidents more famous and memorable, making them stick in people’s minds and seeming more common.”
An interesting aside: In the 1970s when polyester became widely available, many museums began using these cheaper, “improved” fabrics for their historical costumes. They soon switched back. Polyester brought several unexpected problems, one of which was its tendency to melt or burn very quickly when it came into contact with candle flame, hearth fires, or camp fires. Traditional fabrics–cotton, linen, and wool–do not easily burst into flame, which is probably why there were not more instances of death by petticoat.
I’m thrilled to find your blog. As a museum professional, I know it will become one of my frequent reads.
Thanks, Kristi. The DAR museum had an exhibit back in 2006/07 that got me started on this topic. Maybe you can contribute one of your own institution’s myths that won’t die!
I would love to contribute a myth for you to debunk. I’ll keep my ears open.
Pleae do. This all started with a DAR Museum exhibit several years ago, and my friend Diane Dunkley, the museum’s director, said that they sent out an APBT to museums across the country asking for whatever myths they had heard. Their exhibit was excellent. I wrote an article from that, and that article spurred a dozen letters from people who had heard various myths. A second article is due out later this year. I hope this blog reaches a larger audience and we get even more.
I work as a docent at a house museum and one of the big myths around here is the mortgage button. A museum in a nearby state even sells them in their gift shop.
I’ve always thought history needed it’s own snopes.com. Glad to see somebody moving in that direction. It will be nice to have a place to direct visitors who have heard these myths.
It’s curious that catch phrases get so much attention. I had a house tour once that was based almost entirely on things like “Sleep tight don’t let the bed bug bite” or “mind your Ps and Qs.”
Part of the problem is not every museum has the resources to provide good training and are stuck with scripts that 30 or more years old.
Hello, Deborah. I appreciate your comments, and I totally agree that part of the problem is training. Back in the 1970s, I was trained as a tour guide at Colonial Williamsburg–and very good training it was–and then carelessly adopted some of the cute stories I heard others saying. Only later did I realize those stories were myths. Museums have tried for years to correct or stamp out these myths, but until they directly address them in their training and caution against repeating them, I suspect they will persist.
And, yes, I am planning to include catch phrases in this blog. For now, there are so many myths, I thought I’d start there.
The mortgage button is a great nineteenth-century myth. I’ll tackle it soon. I’ve heard it before, but never knew that there was a museum selling them in its shop! Would you mind telling me which museum so I can check out that product? I wouldn’t mention their name in the posting. I’m not out to embarrass anyone–except maybe myself! You could reply to me directly at my e-mail address: mmtheobald@comcast.net.
I am mortified to discover that I have propagated the petticoat myth myself! Thank you so much for debunking…this re-emphasizes the constant need for vigilance in our interpretation.
Don’t feel bad. We’re all guilty. I blush to disclose that when I was a tour guide (today they call them historical interpreters) at Colonial Williamsburg in the 1970s and worked at half a dozen of the historic sites, I unwittingly passed along a HUGE myth at the Peyton Randolph House about the “burglar alarm staircase.” Have you hear that one? I’ve made a full confession in an upcoming article in Colonial Williamsburg’s magazine, the CW Journal, due to be published this winter, so I don’t plan to blog about it until after that article appears. But it’s a doozy.
A little late on the response here, having just found this blog!
I work at a living history museum in the valley of Virginia, and we frequently are busting all these same myths. This petticoat one makes me the most frustrated, because I’m a clothing person. In addition to discussing how historical fabrics usually smolder, and pointing out some burn holes in my own petticoats, I try to explain to visitors that people and fires back then were like us and cars today- in that we grew up around cars, and know car safety, how close and fast a car is before we can turn, etc., and that they knew the same about fire safety as young children.
Our museum did some research on death-by-petticoats, and found a few instances of women catching on fire and dying. Two of the women were drunk and fighting each other. Another came home drunk and passed out in the fire. Visitors liked the truth more than the myth!
More interestingly, and probably a contributor to the story, is that a few months ago, I found a page in an 1850s Godey’s Lady Book magazine, telling ladies to be careful around fires. The sheer cotton dress became all the rage in the 1850s, and was worn by non-working class people (i.e., women who maybe had a servant or slave tending the fire for her since a young age). Godey’s warns that some young ladies burned to death, because they got their sheer cottons too close to the fire, and it caught. They didn’t seem to know Stop, Drop, & Roll at the time, so as the ladies threw open the door to run outside, the gust of air that greeted them when they opened it fed the fire its much needed oxygen, and made the lady go up in flame more quickly. Thus, these women were afflicted by heavier burns and at times, death.
Welcome, Julie! You really are on the front line in the fight against history myths, aren’t you? Glad to have your personal experience (with burned holes in your petticoats) to back me up. And I’m glad to know about that Godey’s Lady’s Book reference–you are surely right that about that being one probable source of the myth.
Frank Clark, supervisor of Historic Foodways at Colonial Williamsburg, noted that the real concern about burns was not dying from burning, but dying from the burn becoming infected. Without antibiotics, an infection could mean death.
And yet…in the book, The Cook Not Mad or Rational Cookery, published by Knowlton & Rice of Watertown, NY, in 1830, you’ll
find the following (p. 91):
So, apparently petticoats/skirts/dresses DID catch on fire
now and then, or this wouldn’t have been included in a
cookbook of the time. AND the “drop and roll” method was
not only known, but specified as the way to deal with it!
In addition, as a former interpreter at a living history museum
and as a current freelancer, who did/does ALOT of hearth cooking,
I know all too well how easy it is for a dress to catch fire. Hems
can be singed, sparks fly up and burn holes in aprons or dresses,
hot embers stuck to a pan burn an apron that’s being used as
a pot holder, and so on. I even wore a newly-made dress one
time, and it wasn’t until later, after I’d gone home, that I noticed
a quarter-sized half-moon-shaped burn on the hem. dagnabit.
Huzzah, though, for singe-only cotton!
Thanks for the cite! I always thought Drop-and-Roll was a relatively new tactic.
I don’t think anyone would suggest that petticoats or skirts never caught fire. The oft-repeated myth says that this was the leading cause of death for women. Another version says it was the second leading cause, after childbirth. Neither is even close to true.
One of my great great Grandmothers caught her skirts on fire while burning dead sweat pea vines in her garden one spring. She needless to say panicked and ran for the house. Her daughter in-law smothered the flames with a lap robe that had been hanging on the cloths line, but unfortunately she was badly burned and died a week later. While I agree it was by no means a leading cause of death, it did happen.
My GGG grandmother died when her dress caught fire.
How sad! It did happen. It happens today. But it wasn’t anywhere near the leading cause of death for women in those days.
(I wanted to share this interesting comment with everyone)
Hi Mary,
I’ve enjoyed your blog for a long time and am looking forward to the book.
I am a long-time reenactor who recently started working at a museum, and since starting I have twice heard about women wetting the bottom few inches of their skirts so they would not catch fire while cooking on the hearth. I believe this to be a myth for two reasons. One, as you know, skirts made of natural fibers don’t catch fire all that easily. I have stood too close to the cook-fire in my wool skirts, I got a scorch hole in my skirt, but no flames, I promise. The other reason I can not imagine this is true is the weight that a couple of inches of water add to a skirt. When reenacting outdoors we inevitably run into wet weather, and once the bottom few inches of our skirts soak up the moisture they get so heavy, they stick to the ankles and ultimately become harder to control. None of us would ever willingly soak our skirts then work over the fire. That would make hard work even harder!
Thanks, Alena
Thanks for posting this! The myth about dipping skirts in water just will not die. Our local historical society teaches it as gospel–then we get the kids at our house and cannot undo it!
Thanks for the idea! That’s really a slightly different myth, dipping skirts in water, so I’ll add that one to my list. Am running out . . . finally . . . after two and a half years! A few trickle in now and then. When I get to the wet hems, why not send an anonymous message to your local historical society with a link to this blog?
More interesting information about deaths from childbirth in early America:
One study of 17th century Plymouth (Catherine Scholten, Childbearing in American Society 1650-1850) says fewer than 20% of women died in childbirth. Also mentions Maine midwife Martha Ballard who, from 1778-1812, wrote in her diary that she delivered 996 babies and lost 4 mothers. The rev. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, tracked childbirth deaths from 1760-64 and found that 900 women had 1600 babies during those years and 10 women died.
These are all snapshots but they do suggest that women were not dying in childbirth, at least in the north, at rates that would make it a leading cause of death.