UNINFLAMMABLE DRESSES.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 236, 12 March 1875, Page 3

UNINFLAMMABLE DRESSES.

Since it appears to be hopeless to expect that the terrible warnings of the folly of lighting fires by pouring from a can of kerosene on kindling sticks will ever stop the practice, the next best thing, thinks Dr Blair, is to try to render woman's dress uninflammable. So he writes to the Argus to suggest that, in view of the danger of ignition in a climate like this, where women wear light and highly inflammable dresses, the peril should be lessened by making the fabrics uninflammable. From a medical journal Dr Blair accordingly extracts the following paragraph:—"ln these days of inflammable ladies we shall, perhaps, render good service by giving publicity to the discovery recently made by a French chemist, that muslin, lace, &c, may be rendered lireproof by steeping them in starch mixed with half its weight of carbonate of lime." It is worth giving the recipe, but there is little reason to suppose that it will be utilised. To judge from the accounts that are constantly appearing in the papers, women prefer the use of kerosene to increase the danger of combustion to the highest pitch rather than to lessen it by any such prescription as this. The number of cases of this kind that are always occurring shows the enormous amount of ignorance, stupidity, and laziness that is mixed up with the common affairs of life. If these people like to light a fire by the rather wasteful and expensive aid of kerosene, there are ways in which they can do so with perfect safety. But they prefer to kindle the fire and then to pour upon it a stream of kerosene out of a large tin, with the almost inevitable result of an explosion and loss of life. However, for those who think that without any wilful recklessness of this sort women's dresses are already dangerously inflammable, as has been illustrated of lute by two or three painful cases, the method suggested for reducing the risk is of very easy application.