Figure 1.--. |
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Both the American and Canadian mail order catalogs (together with related advertisements) show the concern that manufacturers of support garments for long stockings had about health issues (such as posture) connected with the practice of children wearing hose supporters. Round shoulders as a result of the strain of garters, garterwaists, suspender waists, and the like was one concern. A
related concern was the effect of making a boy or girl stoop forward from the pull of the supporters and the possibility of damage to growing muscles in the upper body. So relieving the strain on young shoulders and waist lines (Dr. Bradford's warning) seems to have been a major objective in the design and manufacture of support garments.
We notice several references over time.
As early as 1901 (the same year as Dr. Bradford's medical article) a
garter waist was being sold in Canada that addressed the problem.
Eaton's promoted the so-called G.H.I. Shoulder Brace and Hose Supporter. This garment not only claimed to be a shoulder brace to keep shoulders
straight but featured a belt with the supporters attached on the sides
so that the strain of holding up stockings would not come directly from
the shoulders and cause the boy or girl to stoop forward. The position
of the garters--at the sides over the hips or in front (in line with
the shoulders)--seems to have been a major issue.
In 1917 we note two
other support garments that show the garters in both positions. Here
Eaton's advertised General French hose supporters with the garters
arranged on the side over the hips but still drawing entirely from the
shoulders, and also a more basic kind of shoulder supporters with the
the garters suspended from the shoulders on the front of the upper leg.
Note that this second type is also advertised as a "Shoulder Brace"--a
garment to prevent round shoulders rather than causing bad posture.
A
year later (1918) we notice an Eaton's ad for boys' underwaists with
the hose supporters attached to a "graduated" strip of cloth inserted
into the garment underneath the armpit and thus only indirectly
supported by the unreinforced shoulder straps of the waist itself.
A similar Eaton's waist designed for
summer wear appeared in an Eaton's catalog for 1919.
Eatons, however, was still selling an alternative style of hose
supporters that were suspended entirely from the shoulders and had the
supporters placed in front, not on the sides. Notice that the boy in the
center of this page (with black underwear) illustrates this style--a
style that must have exerted a fair amount of pressure on the
shoulders, especially the
shoulders of a very young child and might indeed cause the kind of
stooping of which Dr. Bradford complains.
One of the issues about garter waists and the possible effect on posture was the placement of the supporters--either on the sides or in front. We mnote an ad for garter waists sold at Eaton's in 1939. Here we notice that, unlike most of the American garter waists which
tended to attached hose supporters on the sides over the hips, this
Canadian garter waists (similar in construction to the Dr. Parker
waist) has the supporters in front directly underneath the should
straps. I'm not sure that by this date (1939) the placement of the
garters was all that significant in the matter of affecting a boy or
girl's posture. Garter waists were becoming much lighter in weight and
much less binding. But the difference here is worth noticing, I think.
The issue of whether garters should be worn on the sides or in front
had not entirely disappeared even as late as 1949-50 in Canada. The
Eaton's catalog for that year showed a variety of underwaists and
garter waists in which supporters are pinned onto the front of the
waist (some models have only the pin tubes, not the garters themselves)
as well as a lighter-weight skeleton waist with the supporters attached
on the sides so that the garters are suppended over the hips.
With lighter-weight stockings and undergarments, the issue of shoulder
strain is less of a problem, perhaps, but the designs illustrated here
show that customers and underwear designers were of two minds about the
correct placement of garters for long stockings.
In addition to the Eaton's advertisements we have the statement of a
French Canadian about official government advice about garter placement.
Under the heading, Stocking Supporters, he reports that a handbook on
child rearing issued by the government of Canada advised mothers during
the 1940s "to avoid a four garters system which exerts too much
pressure simultaneously at front and at rear." Instead mothers were
advised "to attach the garter clasps at the side and strongly
discouraged placing the clasps at the front" of the waist.
What this Canadian apparently remembers is the Canadian equivalent of
the German Leibchen--a bodice with four single garter straps, two
attached at the front and two others in the rear. HBC has no Canadian
illustration of what the Canadian government warned against, but we do
have an American garter waist from the same period that shows the four
individual garter straps in front and behind. See the Sears
illustration (Figure 1) from the 1940 catalog. This American waist,
however, is constructed entirely of elastic and would stretch easily at
every point of the wearer's movement. What the Canadian government
warned about was four garters attached to a stationery, non-elastic
waist, in front and in back.
We notice the same issues being discussed in the United States during comparable time periods. Here we have more actual references.
Some of the same issues can be illustrated from American mail order
catalogs and advertisements. The Montgomery Ward catalog for 1895
illustrates two different styles of shoulder hose supporters--one with
the garters suspended in front and another on the sides. Both are
called "Daisy" hose supporters. Further down the page we have a more
elaborate style of child's waist with supporters both in front and on
the sides. In 1897 we see a different illustration of the shoulder supporters with
the clasps in front.
An ad for Velvet Grip pin-on supporters, designed to be attached to the garter tabs at the side of an underwaist, is shown in an advertisement dated 1909. Note that pinning the garters on the sides over the hips is supposed to relieve pressure on the shoulders.
Various innovations to relieve pressure on children's shoulders are shown in ads for support garments in 1911 and 1912. The Wilson Garter tried to revolutionize the problem of uncomfortable strain on the waist line and the shoulders by manufacturing a kind of hose supporter that arranged the garters on cords and could slide as the active child changed bodily positions in active play. This ad is quite revealing. It stated plainly, "Children can't stand clothing restraint. That's why their garters are important for comfort, as well as the condition of stockings and underclothes ... A strong cord gently changes at different poses of the body. Thus any strain is entirely done away with--the stockings are not torn, the underwear lasts [i.e. is not damaged by the pins on garters], and the garters themselves last twice as long as before." Another ad for Wilson garters from the same general period advises mother to "Study this Picture": "Think of the old way of fastening
garters to the waist, pulling forward on the back of the neck, causing
the child to stoop. None of this in Wilson Cord and Slide Garter. The
Child is absolutely free to grow straight and trim. For Boys and Girls
1 to 16 years." The Wilson garter was made in two styles--one that
suspended garters from the shoulders and another that pinned them to
the waist. But both styles have the slide-and-cord construction to
relieve pressure.
The popular Kazoo suspender waist, made eventually by the Harris
Suspender Co. was also interested in the problem of strain on young
shoulders. An ad for the Kazoo waist (1912) stressed the "athletic" character
of its garment, which was both a "Body Brace and Hose Supporter." The ad
goes on, "Freedom of circulation and quickness in dress is assured. No
strain on shoulders."
Note that in this Kazoo ad, the hose supporters are placed directly in
front. Later models, interestingly, switched the placement to the
sides, as is the case with the 1921 Kazoo Suspender waist for boys.
One way of addressing the problem of weight was to promote the so-called
skeleton waist--an arrangement of suspender straps to hold up a belt
from which the supporters were then depended. Wards in 1915 showed a
wide variety of such skeleton waists of various weights and styles.
Note the two different illustrations on this page. We see skeleton
waists with the supporters attached in front as well as at the sides.
Further down the page we have two underwaists with different placement
of the garters--one model with the supporters in front, another with
them at the sides. Wards was obviously trying to please all comers and
those with different opinions about where the strain of garters would
be most comfortably borne. By 1916, when Hickory pin-on garters were
being widely advertised, the advertisers obviously felt that the normal
thing was for supporters to be attached on the sides of an underwaist.
Here, clearly, the boy showing off his garters to his school friend is
wearing them on the side of his leg.
The makers of waist union suits obviously concurred with the idea of
wearing garters on the side attached to underarm reinforcement
straps rather than to straps that passed over the child's shoulders.
Nazareth waist suits were designed in this way, and an ad for 1919
shows a boy in his waist union suit with the supporters placed over his
hips on the sides and attached to a pin tube at the end of an underam
reinforcement strap.
Supporters worn on the side seems to have become the most usual custom
by the end of the 1910s. But, interestingly, an ad for Laurel Elastic
supporters (1921) shows them attached to the front of an underwaist.
The same year we have an ad for a Ward's skeleton garter waist,
referred to here simply as a "belt with supporters" (it is the basic
Dr. Parker style although not so named), showing the garters attached
at the side.
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[Return to the Main stocking supporters page]
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