Dr. Throckmorton & that devilish peek-a-boo waist

Dr. Jeannette Throckmorton (1883-1963) had practiced medicine in Chariton with her father, Dr. Thomas Morford Throckmorton, for roughly 10 years by the early winter of 1918, when she accepted a position with the U.S. Public Health Service as traveling consultant and educator. The primary reason was increasing deafness, which made it difficult to communicate with patients.

As a result, she found herself during early December of that year in Chicago to address delegates to the annual convention of the American Public Health Association.

World War I had just ended, but economic challenges remained worldwide --- including a shortage of coal as winter set in. So one topic addressed during the convention was the advisability of Americans dressing more warmly in order to conserve what then was the most widely used fuel.

Dr. Throckmorton chose to direct her comments toward women, who had increasingly during recent years shed many of the garments that had shielded them from both the elements and the lustful eyes of men. And it was those remarks that caught the attention of reporters for the Chicago newspapers and spread nationwide via The Associated Press.

Here's how The Chicago Tribune of Dec. 12 reported Dr. Throckmorton's address under the headline, "Doctors Argue For and Against the Peekaboo Waist."

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Is the present fashion in women's dress hygienic and moral or unhygienic and indecent? This discussion came up before the administration section of the American Public Health Association convention yesterday.

Dr. Jeannette Throckmorton of Chariton, Ia., denounced the present fashions. She said: "Morals and dress are intimately associated, and never before has modesty in dress seemed to be so little in demand among our young girls. The customary street dress of last summer was an offense to one's finer sensibilities, with its abbreviated skirt, shoes designed to attract the eye, hose likewise, thinnest of crepe waists with only a little ribbon and lace underneath and cut so low in the neck as to be indecent.

"I believe the good women of our country are to blame because they do not frown upon such vulgar costumes. We must teach our girls that they have a responsibility toward young men, that the uniform is a symbol of a sacred cause, and if they aid the man who wears it to degrade himself they surely are degrading the cause for which he is fighting. A great factor in accomplishing this is to dress modestly, so as not to attract or arouse the sex passion.

"The majority of young girls who come into my office in winter are half clad, from choice rather than from necessity. This condition prevails also among college girls in my state, and I presume feminine nature is no different in your respective states.

"If mere man in the dead of winter should strip off his flannels and, attired in a low necked undershirt, silk pajamas, cobweb stockings and paper soled slippers, should venture forth to spend an evening at the opera, with no protection about his bare shoulders except a pearl necklace, it would be necessary to remove him from the theater in an ambulance. Pneumonia or influenza would set in.

"Yet high school girls and college girls and some of their mothers, too, do this very thing. Hence we are forced to conclude that the feminine physique, frail though it appears, is able to resist hardships and exposure that no man could survive.

"The corset worn by the majority of women is a relic of Victorian barbarism and tends to produce that ideal of feminine beauty of the age of hoop skirts. Gradually there is coming into use the corset known as the straight front, which gives the desired upward and backward pressure on all the viscera and which fits snugly at the hips and loosely at its upper extremity."

Dr. Throckmorton also denounced the fashionable footwear for women.

Dr. Effie L. Lobdell, of Chicago, endorsed the peekaboo waists, thin stockings and all the other features of modern dress, declaring that they strengthened the constitution of women. She said this kind of clothes also compelled women to keep clean, something they did not always do before. She was not afraid for the girls' morals.

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Dr. Throckmorton's remarks, although endorsed by many, were scorned by more and did nothing to affect fashion trends.

In 1928, she married Dr. Charles Noah Dean, a Keokuk Medical College classmate, but he became critically ill within days of their marriage and died 10 days later.

In 1929, Dr. Jeannette became head of the Iowa State Medical Library in Des Moines and remained in that position until shortly before her death on July 24, 1963. She is buried in the Throckmorton family enclave at the Derby Cemetery.