Bloomer, Amelia

Bloomer, Amelia

 orig. Amelia Jenks

(born May 27, 1818, Homer, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 30, 1894, Council Bluffs, Iowa) U.S. reformer. In 1840 she married Dexter Bloomer, a Quaker newspaper editor. She wrote articles on education, unjust marriage laws, and women's suffrage and published the biweekly Lily (1849–54). Among her interests was dress reform, and the full trousers that she wore came to be known as bloomers. Her costume generated considerable publicity and helped to attract large crowds to her lectures in New York City, where she often shared the platform with Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown.

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Bloomer, Amelia (b. Jenks) (1818–94) reformer; born in Homer, N.Y. She wrote on current affairs for her husband's newspaper before founding and editing Lily (1849–55), a temperance journal that, under the influence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, also championed women's rights. In Lily, her public defense of women's adopting a daring outfit of full trousers under a short skirt became a national cause célèbre, and the costume was nicknamed "bloomers." After she moved to Iowa (1855), her local activism was partly responsible for that state's 1873 equal rights legislation.

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Bloomer, Amelia

(1818–1894) dress reformer; designed bloomers. [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 391]

See : Feminism