Clothes Make the Man (or Woman)

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Two years ago COVID-19 arrived, and since then we’ve all learned to live with a variety of changes. One of those changes that continues to evolve is how we present ourselves at work. With more meetings happening remotely, some office workers are opting for a more casual look on the job but keep “zoom shirts” or jackets handy to appear more presentable online.

In the past, people in the medical field, transportation, and business professions were expected to wear specific types of clothing to reflect their position, indicate their responsibilities and communicate their status and class. Think of them as work uniforms.

Our current exhibit All in a Day’s Work: Dressed for Success shares examples of how, over the years, different Chemung County professionals have dressed for work.

Three uniforms on display in our exhibit reflect some ongoing changes in our societal expectations for work attire.

A woman’s nursing uniform, like other uniforms in the medical profession, is designed to inspire patients’ confidence and trust. Being attended by someone wearing a dirty uniform is almost hard to imagine, and the importance of wearing a uniform in nursing can be traced back to Florence Nightingale. When Nightingale established the world’s first secular nursing school in 1860, she dressed her nurses in gray uniforms. The outfits helped identify nurses who had training, and the gray didn’t show the color or blood when wet. The uniform was also meant to neutralize the wearer’s appearance and deter unwelcome advances from patients under their care, who were commonly young male soldiers far from home.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, nurses shifted to wearing white. There were strict protocols and expectations for them to keep their uniforms starched and pristine. Wearing white was “proof” that nurses were clean, sanitary, and offered scientific care. Mid-century nurses wore starched white dresses, white caps, white nylons and white shoes, similar to the example on display from St. Joseph’s Hospital. Often nurses were required to care for their own uniforms which meant time-consuming work to remove from bodily fluids.

When women’s fashion became less restrictive, the style of nursing uniforms followed along. By the 1970s and 80s, nurses began to wear scrubs, and today scrubs are the primary outfit of choice for the profession which includes more male nurses. Scrubs allow the wearer more freedom to move, often come with pockets to carry tools, and can be worn by any gender. Scrubs come in a variety of bright colors and patterns which allows nurses to personalize their look, if their affiliated institution permits it.

Uniforms have also been part of transportation work. Each style of dress indicated what position workers held and informed the public what to expect. Early train and trolley conductors, airline pilots, and bus drivers wore matching uniforms that had a distinct military style. This inspired confidence in their skills and abilities, and helped to make them look competent. The Lackawanna Railroad conductor's uniform from 1954 is a good example of that style. It comes with fancy brass buttons that include the Lackawanna R.R. logo to indicate the wearer was someone of note. Today transportation uniforms vary. Airline pilots still wear military influenced uniforms, often with brimmed hats and epaulets on the shoulder. Bus drivers are more casual and if they wear hats, tend to favor ball cap styles.

Unofficial uniforms have been worn by office workers providing business services since the beginning. In the 1930s, American writer Upton Sinclair called professionals who receive salaries “white collar workers,” referring to the white shirts and business suits many workers wore. The term stuck and is still used today. “Business casual,” or business attire was expected in many professions as a way to command respect from peers and customers, as well as show respect to those they worked with. Male workers who dressed this way communicated an unwritten message of who was in charge, and what position someone aspired to.

For women entering the workforce during the last century, fashion trends shifted from ultra-feminine to more traditionally masculine. Early on, it was unthinkable for women in offices to show up without wearing stockings, heels, skirts or dresses. Women began to wear suits similar to their male colleagues, adding shoulder pads to convey power and authority. The office worker’s outfit we have on display is a man’s suit from 1930, when white-collar workers were expected to wear suits, hats, and dress shoes to the office every day.

Today, advice for anyone interviewing for a job is often to dress for the job level above the one they’re applying for. What we choose to wear is a kind of language. We represent the organizations we work for as well as representing ourselves, and our clothes can say something about us.

Whether or not the more casual styles adopted during the pandemic stay with us, we’ll just have to see.

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Lost in the Mail

by Erin Doane, Curator

On March 3, 1951, a heavy snowstorm was raging as Erie Railroad Train #7 from New York City sped through Wellsburg at 8:15 in the morning. In those days, mail was delivered by non-stop dispatch to the village. That meant that the train did not stop or even slow down to drop off the mail. The railway postal clerk on the train simply threw the locked canvas mail pouch from the train as it passed by. Train #7 always delivered the heaviest mail of the day, usually around 300 individual pieces of all kinds except for parcel post. On the morning of March 3, because of poor visibility caused by the snowstorm, the clerk threw the pouch a little too soon and it went right into the Chemung River.

The problem of mail thrown from trains being damaged or lost was not new. Less than two years earlier, the Erie Railroad had discontinued direct mail service to the area precisely because of the loss and damage. Earlier in the century, locomotives had run on steam, but by 1949 all of Erie’s engines were diesel. The mechanical change meant that trains ran 15 to 20mph faster than they had before. This was great for the railroad companies but not so good for the communities who had mail delivered by the direct, non-stop method. Pouches that were not thrown clear enough of the tracks sometimes got sucked under the train and the mail was cut up or scattered for miles down the tracks.

On October 1, 1949, direct mail service from the Erie Railroad ended in Wellsburg in favor of a star route. The government contracted out star routes to private companies and individuals who delivered the mail through means other than by steamboat and railroad. Elmer Peck of Lowman got the contract for the new local star route. Peck’s son-in-law Ralph Jilson picked up mail and parcels from a central office at the Waverly railway station and drove them to the post offices in Wellsburg, Lowman, Chemung, and Wilawana early each morning and late each afternoon. 

The new system of mail delivery kept letters safe from being accidentally destroyed by speeding trains, but postal customers almost immediately protested the change. Delivery slowed down considerably, and there was soon a large number of vigorous complaints demanding that the old non-stop service was restored. Customers got their way, and by February 1, 1950 mail pouches were again being launched from trains.

Sarah Wilcox was postmaster in Wellsburg in 1951. When she got word that snowy March morning that the mail pouch had been flung into the river, she sent a team into action. Her husband Lester Wilcox, office clerk Leroy Miller, mail messenger Norman Dallas, and school teacher James Underwood launched a boat and searched the river. They came up empty handed. The river was unusually high at the time with a swift current. The next day, Sunday, volunteers spread out along the river banks, looking for the lost mail. On Monday, auxiliary mail carrier Eldon Hughes and Edward Burt took a boat as far as Nine Mile Point looking for the mail pouch. Ten days later, the postmaster was still appealing to fishermen and people living along the river to help in the search, but it was becoming clear that the mail would never be found.

In 1970, Sarah Wilcox announced her retirement from the Wellsburg post office. She had served as postmaster for 25 years and worked as a postal clerk 6 years before that. A Star-Gazette reporter interviewed her on this momentous occasion, and the story of the mail that went missing in the river came up. At the time of the accident, it must have been distressing for those who never got letters, bills, or cards they were expecting, but, nearly 20 years later, it made for an amusing little story.

This Train is Bound for Glory

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

On August 1, 1851, R.W. Thompson, a black barber from Owego, New York, purchased a first class ticket to travel to Seneca Lake on the New York and Erie Railroad along with his wife and sister-in-law.  Upon reaching Elmira, they were approached by the conductor, John McWilliams, and asked to move to the colored section of the train car.  Thompson refused and that’s when the story got complicated.  According to the Owego Gazette, Mr. Thompson was tackled by 8 or 10 railroad employees and forcibly thrown off the train while Mrs. Thompson was locked out on the platform of the rear car until the train reached Horseheads.  The Elmira Gazette, however, reported that Thompson was forcibly moved to the colored car and then chose to remove himself from the train in protest.  Within a week, Thompson and his attorney George Sidney Camp, Esq. had filed suit against McWilliams and the railroad.  I was unable to find any record of who won.

The press coverage of the incident was, unsurprisingly, painfully racist, even the stuff which supported Thompson.  Here are some choice examples:

Owego Gazette, August 7, 1851.  This is an example of what modern civil rights activists call "respectability politics."

 

Elmira Gazette, August 14, 1851.  Why bother fighting racism when it's just so upsetting and inconvenient for everyone involved?

In 1890, Louisiana became the first state to mandate that railroad companies have separate cars for blacks and whites with the infamous Separate Car Act.  The act was wildly unpopular with both blacks, who thought it was racist, and the railroad companies, who thought it was too expensive to implement.   On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mix-race civil rights activist working with the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens), boarded a whites-only train car on the East Louisiana Railroad in deliberate defiance of that state’s Separate Car Act.  Plessy and the Comité des Citoyens, along with the railroad company, had arranged to have Plessy arrested specifically so they could challenge the constitutionality of the law under the grounds that it violated the Thirteenth and Fourteen Amendments to the Constitution.  Unfortunately, the plan backfired.  Badly.  After losing at every level of the courts, Plessy brought to case to the Supreme Court of the United States where, on May 18, 1896, the court upheld the law in a 7-1 decision establishing ‘separate but equal’ as the law of the land.  It was not until Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954) when the court realized that separate was inherently unequal.  Even then, it took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to officially prohibit segregation. 

Chemung County's Famous Train and Trolley-Riding Dogs

by Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

I spent part of this last week putting together a conference proposal about Railroad Jack, a train-riding dog based out of Albany, NY, who was nationally famous in the 1880s and 1890s.  When I'm not busy researching Chemung County for our exhibits, blog posts, and programs, my work focuses on the rise of canine celebrity in the late 19th century.  Fortunately, these two intersect occasionally and I can sometimes write about famous Chemung County dogs.  In this post, I'll tell you about some of Chemung County's trolley and train dogs.

In the late 19th century, there was a trend of dogs gaining recognition for their train-riding prowess.  The most famous example is the United States Post Office's Owney, a terrier mutt who road the mail trains out of Albany.  He is still remembered today and his taxidermied body is on display at the US Postal Museum.  However, Owney was only one of many dogs who lived in rail yards, road trains, and befriended rail workers.   The exploits of train dogs, even those who were less famous, were published in newspapers and magazines throughout the country.  These tales are often heavily embellished, but still indicate that many dogs closely associated themselves with trains.  This is likely for several reasons: strays found attention and food at rail yards and stations and some dogs probably enjoyed the movement of trains (like dogs in cars today).

Chemung County played host to travelling dogs, including Railroad Jack.  In 1890, Jack came to Elmira and the railroad workers brought him to the Elmira Telegram office to have a play date with the newspaper's famous dog mascot, Colonel.  

Drawing of Railroad Jack clipped from a newspaper.  This is in our collection in the scrapbook of Elmira Police Chief Levi Little.  The scrapbook is primarily clippings about crimes, but Little clipped an occasional pop culture piece.  Railroad Jack was one of those few non-crime stories that Little cared enough about to add to his scrapbook.

But the county's homegrown travelling dogs are pretty interesting, too. For example, in 1894, the papers reported that an Erie yard switchman brought his black and tan dog with him to work.  The dog reportedly was fond of quickly ducking under and out from moving train cars, riding on the steps of the engine and in the cab, chasing off tramps and other dogs, and then eating his dinner in the switch shanty.

Elmira also had trolley dogs.  The image below shows a trolley line car, probably in the late 19th century.  If you look closely at the road on the far right side of the image, you'll see a small, fuzzy image of a collie.  On the back of the image, someone noted that the dog always followed the line cars. 

 

The dog is on the far right side of the image.  On an unrelated note, I'm glad I didn't have to use that rickety-looking line car!

Elmira even had its own Railroad Jack (this was an exceptionally common name for rail dogs).  In the early 1900s, a bulldog named Jack gained local fame for chasing the trolley from Horseheads and Elmira Heights down the line to Elmira.  He did this, reportedly, everyday for years, earning the admiration of the linemen.  In August of 1906, he was falsely reported to have been killed in a trolley accident, but it evidently had been an "imposter."  In September of 1906, however, Jack retired.  One day he was chasing the trolley as usual, but he became tired around the Reformatory and stopped to lay down by the tracks.  This was the first time Jack ever stopped chasing the moving trolley.  He walked over to the nearby Stearns silk mill where the employees fed him.  Apparently he decided this was a more favorable arrangement, and he was adopted as the Stearns mascot.  Jack's trolley-chasing job was apparently taken over by a deaf dog named Dummy.  However, the train workers didn't respect him as much because he would ride the trolley when he got tired, which was something Jack wouldn't do.

 

Train dogs still got some attention a few decades later, but the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the height of the train dog craze.  In 1937, a dog named Jack the Bum, who was based out of Scranton, PA, was shot and killed.  Jack was famous for riding the trains on the Lackawanna line and was a frequent visitor to Elmira.  George E. Griffis, an engineer from Elmira who took many trips with Jack in the engine, memorialized him in the newspaper.  He said that he would ride with his head out of the windows and "that dog would brush cinders from his eyes with his paws, same as any man."

Like a Train Wreck

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

             If you’ve ever rubbernecked at a car crash, you’re probably not alone.  Curiosity and schadenfreude are, after all, perfectly natural human emotions.  It’s not even that weird to whip out your cell phone, take photos and tweet all about it.  Tacky?  Yes, but weird? No.  After all, people have been taking and sharing disaster photos for over a hundred years.

            In 1903, the Eastman Kodak company came out with the No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak, a camera which used special postcard-sized film so that photographers could print their own postcards without having to crop the image.  In 1907, Kodak began offering ‘real photo postcards.’  This allowed anyone to have any of their photos printed on a mail-able card.   Now, people could easily mail baby photos to grandparents.   Now they could share their awesome disaster photographs.

            On May 8, 1911, a Lehigh Valley Railroad train derailed in Breeseport.  Locals flocked to the site to provide assistance and gawk.  Some enterprising soul took and sold real photo postcards of the wreck.   Sarah of Horseheads wrote to her cousin in Missouri in June on the back of one, catching her up on family news and sharing the details of the crash. 

Postcards sent by Sarah of the May 8, 1911 wreck

Another postcard of the May 8, 1911 wreck



            It was a similar story when the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Express No. 11 collided with a passenger train just outside Corning on July 4, 1912.  41 people were killed in the crash and for days after people swarmed the site looking for victims and souvenirs.  And taking photos.