Bohemian style was not really until the First World War that "many working women ... embarked on a revolution in fashion that greatly reduced the weight and restrictions imposed on them by their clothing". Some women working in factories wore trousers and the brassiere (invented in 1889 by the feminist Herminie Cadolle and patented in America by Mary Phelps Jacob in 1914) began gradually to supersede the corset. In shipyards "trouser suits" (the term, "pantsuit" was adopted in America in the 1920s) were virtually essential to enable women to shin up and down ladders. Music hall artists also helped to push the
Susanna Phelps Gage research was often viewed as a mere adjunct to her husband's projects. Susanna Stuart Phelps was born December 26, 1857, in Morrisville, New York. Her father, Henry Samuel Phelps, was a businessman, and her mother, Mary Austin Phelps, had been a schoolteacher prior to marriage. In 1903, after her parents' death, Phelps gave the family home to the town of Morrisville to become the Morrisville Public Library; since 2005 it has been on the National Register of Historic Places. Phelps was educated at Cazenovia Seminary and in 1875 went on to Cornell University, initially for her undergraduate degree. She studied