Warwick’s
Bloomer Girl – Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck by S. Gardner
On a fateful day in her young life, Lydia Sayer applied
for admission to the Seward Institute in Florida. The very intelligent, attractive, athletic,
and independent -minded girl would have been eager to continue her education. One wonders if it had ever occurred to her
that the practical garments she had adopted at an early age – long before Amelia Bloomer ever popularized them-- would
be a problem. But problem there was,
and she never did attend Seward Institute.
She was rejected because she refused to lay aside what would later be called
“bloomers” for more traditional dress. “As
I left…I fairly bathed my soul in an agony of tears and silent prayers,” she
later said, “I registered a vow that I
would stand or fall in the battle for women’s physical, political and
educational freedom and equality.”
Thereafter she became one of the most vocal and staunchest supporters of
women’s dress reform and suffrage in
America.
Lydia was born on Dec. 20, 1827
in Sayerville, a hamlet of Warwick near Bellvale. She was the daughter of Benjamin Sayer and Rebecca Forshee. As a child she was fearless, self-reliant,
skilled in horsemanship and the domestic
arts, and keenly interested in books and learning. She finished her education elsewhere-- at
Miss Galatian’s Select School, the Elmira
High School, and Central College.
Around 1849 she became keenly interested in the health disciplines of hydropathy, or the ‘water cure’. This social movement promoted what today
would be called a holistic approach to
health. Water cure enthusiasts
advocated a vegetarian diet, moderate exercise, sensible clothing, avoidance of alcohol, and exercise, along with
cleansing the patient with a soothing wrap of wet sheets. Shortly after 1853 Lydia entered the
Hygeia-Therapeutic College in New York City and graduated as a doctor of medicine.
Dr. Lydia Sayer went to
Washington D.C. and practiced there, lecturing in neighboring cities on the tyranny of fashion.
While there she became the Washington correspondent for the Middletown Whig Press, a paper with
liberal and reformist positions on many issues. She eventually married its
owner John Hasbrouck in a simple common-law
ceremony at the Sayer home on July 27, 1856, less than a month after
establishing a reformist newspaper of her
own, The Sibyl. The only concession she made in her wedding garb was
that her bloomer outfit was cut from white
cloth.
The archive of the Historical
Society contains issues of The Sibyl from 1856 through1863.
Here one finds a wealth of
information of interest to progressive minded ladies and gentlemen of the
day:
“Ever since the agitation of
Dress Reform, newspapers, physicians, and people in general have been convinced that the present style of dress was blighting
to woman’s physical being; yet, with but few exceptions, none have shown themselves practical reformers….Upon this
point we wish to be understood, in advocating Dress Reform. It is
merely as a physiological reform, to elevate the weakened stamina of the race,
and it not to be engrafted in the woman’s
rights movement toward the elective franchise.
Though we may sustain them all, yet this reform is individualized, and of a higher importance than all else; for
until woman is physically freed from her bonds, she is unfitted, in a great measure, for the active duties of trade, or a
profession, or the arena of political strife...”
“Most of the ladies who have
retained the Reform Dress are wives and mothers. Many had suffered from the effects of weight or pressure, until the
weakened muscles cried for release..”
“…the Abbe de Deguessy observed
in a sermon, ‘Women now-a-days forget, in the astonishing amplitude of their dresses, that the gates of Heaven are
very narrow.’ This recalls an incident
we witnessed the other Sabbath…A great
rumpling, smashing and crushing startled us at the door, and looking around to
see what the matter was, we witnessed a
lady, well hoped and spangled, trying to crush the unwieldy folds, floating in
heavy luxuriance over her rotund
hoops. At last she succeeded in
clearing the door…She passed on up the borad aisle, filling it completely, and rattling her hoops and silks
against either side. Reaching the seat,
she solved the dilemma of how she was to
enter it, by crushing, and crowding, and folding, until at last she was safely
seated. It struck us as being and unprofitable task, this laboring so hard to
make oneself uncomfortable. Woman has
great endurance, truly.”
--The Sibyl, Vol. 1, No. 2, July
15, 1856
Dr. Lydia continued her
activities on behalf of women’s freedom on many fronts, as well as dress reform, for her entire life. A glimpse of her personality and tenacity is
seen in this article from the Franklin
Repository and Transcript of Nov. 14, 1860:
“Mrs. Dr. Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck,
of Orange County, New-York, who insists that a woman should not be taxed unless she is allowed to vote, has thought to
shame the collector out of his deman by offering to work out her road tax. The
doctress, having somewhat passed the bloom of youth, made no impression upon
the stony official, and therefore, instead
of paying under protest, as some of her sisters do, she went upon the road and
drove a cart.”
She lived most of her adult life
with her husband in Middletown; one cannot but think what she would have been if her family had ‘reined her in’ at an
earlier age—if that was possible—or if the Seward Institute had turned a blind eye to her eccentric dress.