Thanks, David for remedying part of my deficient education with this website – fascinating. (Or should I have been a structural engineer to understand such things, for didn’t Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, engage such an engineer to design a bra for his lady friend - Jane Russell, I think it was?)
But I still don’t understand it all. What are the trolley band and darts? Also the buttons mentioned are invisible in the illustrations; what was their function? So can an enlightened lady reader (or an engineer, of any gender) explain these mysteries?
Angela Pratt wrote:Oh I remember those pink Hertford bras well. Also how the Ward mistresses inspected youngsters to see how soon they needed one...!
The coming of age of Hertford girls seems to have been gentle and supportive (pun intended) by the action of the Ward mistresses. In contrast the boys had a traumatic and abrupt entry to adulthood. The first “wet dream” was not supported by kind mistresses. But then boys at Horsham were not coddled.