It’s usually said that crinolines went out of fashion in the late 1860s.

Now we all know fashions change, but it’s an interesting observation that crinolines begin to go out of fashion about the same time as indoor plumbing, and particularly the standard ‘sit down’ flush toilet start to become more common in middle class households.

I’m told it’s difficult to sit down in a crinoline, particularly if it’s one of the more rigid wire reinforced designs, which must have made using a pedestal toilet a trial.

Prior to then the use of chamber pots was the norm, and the business of going to the loo was probably easier to manage even if our twenty first century sensibilities are slightly offended by the idea of peeing in a pot, and then disposing of the pee.

It’s also worth noting that you can also see this reflected in the history of women’s underwear – until the 1840’s women did not usually wear underpants, which would probably have made the business of having a pee while wearing a long and voluminous skirt easier.

From the mid century onward, underpants became more common, but even then they were usually an open crotch design to make the business of going to the loo that bit easier.

As always adoption was probably uneven, and some did, some didn’t, and some did some of the time, and of course the adoption of new technologies such as the safety bicycle would have had a role of this as no one who came off their bike would wish to risk having their private parts exposed.

However adoption was uneven, David Kerr Cameron in his social histories of NE Scotland mentions that farm girls did not routinely wear knickers until the turn of the twentieth century, but then that could be for practical reasons – it might simply be that it simplified the business of having a al fresco pee while working in the fields …