Victorian era skirt fires : Just dangerous fashion, or a bigger tragic history?

The Victorian era fashion for the crinoline dress had a tragic problem : skirt fires! But were dress fires the fault of a deadly fashion trend for hoopskirts, or part of a larger tragic pattern in history? Get 15% off your first Brooklinen order! Just click here https://bit.ly/SnappyDragon_BrooklinenDec24 . This video is kindly sponsored by Brooklinen. Dress fires are much covered in blogs about dangerous fashion trends in history, from the literary case of Miss Havisham in Dickens' Great Expectations, to the estimated 3000 fatal skirt fires over a 20-year period in the mid Victorian UK. Hoop skirt fires are unquestionably tragic, and it's extremely important to take proper safety precautions around fire! There's always been sensationalism in how modern articles talk about the tragic history of dangerous fashions in the Victorian era, but I don't think this is another of those fashion history myths! So, I wanted to look into whether crinoline dress fires, tragic as they are, fit into a bigger pattern of Victorian life. Skirt fires are often blamed on the crinoline dress and hoop skirt, but the most famous (fictional) fatal dress fire was actually a Regency era gown! Miss Havisham, according to the timeline of Great Expectations, was wearing the wedding dress she was jilted in before 1812, when she died of a fatal dress fire in 1828. Regency dresses in the 1800s were slim and collumnar, and only court dresses used hoopskirts during this time. And while Miss Havisham was a fi