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
Oliver Phelps their seventeen children. Phelps took a job at age 7 in a local store to help support his family. He married Mary Seymour, daughter of Zachariah and Sarah (Steele) Seymour. When he was 21 in 1770, they moved to Suffield, Connecticut, where he apprenticed to a local merchant, and in 1770 the couple moved to Granville, Massachusetts, where he opened his own store. They had a son, Oliver Leicester (22 September 1775 – 9 October 1813), and a daughter, Mary (5 September 1778 – 11 September 1859). At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Phelps joined the Continental Army and