Demi-toilette and evening dress, October 1846

This portraitback to top

Described in the magazine:
No. 7. Demi Toilette. Dark grey gros d'automne robe: a low corsage and short sleeves. White lace pelerine-fichu; rose-coloured crape chapeau, a small, round, and very open shape, the garniture is ribbon to correspond, and a gerbe of foliage, in which a rose is inserted. Rose-coloured China crape shawl, the border figured in black in a lace pattern.
No. 8. Evening Dresses. Spotted tarlatane robe; the corsage moderately low, is trimmed en berthe with two flounces; they descend so low as to cover the short tight sleeves. The skirt is trimmed high with three flounces; The hair is dressed in soft bands at the sides, and a round knot at the back of the bead. A fall of lace is disposed on it, en Fanchon, and retained by a wreath of foliage.

Events of 1846back to top

Current affairs

The Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel divides his own party by repealing the unpopular Corn Laws, which prohibited the import of cheap grain from overseas, viewed by many as causing the famines in Ireland (which peaked in this year), as well as domestic hardships following a bad harvest. Peel, defeated on a separate issue, resigns. The Whig Earl Russell becomes Prime Minister.

Art and science

Ether is used for the first time as anaesthetic in an operation by the dentist William Morton, while surgeon John Collins Warren removes a tumor on a patient's neck.
Edward Lear, the popular humourist and artist, and author of illustrated nonsense verse (including 'The Owl and the Pussycat'), publishes his Book of Nonsense.

International

The first Anglo-Sikh war ends with the Treaty of Lahore, by which Jammu and Kashmir are ceded to the British. The war had been fought between the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab and the British East India Company, with conflict escalating after internal disorder in the Punjab led the East India Company to increase their military presence on the border.

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