Granger 08
- This article is a Biography
- Chapter 08 - Pregnancy, and after
Soon our progress was halted, as Ethel told me her pregnancy was now beginning to take its natural course and the lower part of her body was expanding. So before long the corsets had to be loosened, bit by bit, until at last they were open about 6 inches at the bottom and about 3 inches at the top. She said she found them a great help, as they supported her adequately with comfort, while they also helped to retain some semblance of her figure, holding up her now fully developed breasts, so she continued to wear them.
We often left our rooms at the week ends and went home to Cambridge, when she usually rode on the pillion behind me. I remember of the last journeys we made, when we collected a nail in the back tyre, but managed to get the A.A. to take me to Godmanchester, where I picked up a spare to finish the journey home.
Also one week end, in the winter of 1929, we paid a week end visit to her relations in March, going by train. Her corsets were already coming open, but I had put on my corsets and Ethel had laced them tightly, but whether it was Ethel's cooking good food, I cannot say, or the fact that I had recently recovered from a very severe attack of gastric influenza, but I found the pressure was unbearable and I had to un ­lace myself. I now think that the continual vomiting from the influenza was the beginning of what developed later, and was only recently diagnosed as a hiatus hernia. Never more, after that date was I able to stand pressure under the lower ribs, where most of the modern corsets began at that time.
Ethel's being higher, came over the ribs and not under them, and before long I ordered a pair of the black Diagonal Seam corsets for myself and found that as they bridged the gap under the rib cage, they were much more comfortable. Furthermore, as they did not confine my hips much, I could now bend in that part of my body. I did find that they gave me great support, I think held my diaphragm in place. I began to wear them all the time, finding great comfort from the extra warmth around my waist.
Later I ordered a special pair, made to measure, with much longer busks, even higher on the chest, even more heavily boned, with a 24 waist, which allowed bending of the hips, but held the middle part of my body stiff and rigid, and these too, I began to wear regularly, deriving great benefit from this practice. After wearing these two pairs of corsets regularly for some years, I found, like many of the female correspondents, when I took them off, how lost I felt without them, the feeling as if one was dropping to pieces. One missed the support and compression and restriction imposed so much that I was only too glad to put them on again. I even took to wearing them at night in bed, with Ethel's agreement.
In fact, at a later date, I had a very special pair of corsets made, to confine me from thighs to just below the neck. The busks themselves were 18 inches long, made specially for the job. The corsets were partly on the lines of the other pairs I had, in black sateen over white coutil, with a 25 inch waist. The back was a good 3 feet in length, and they were extremely heavily boned all the way, so they weighed several pounds. The busks came up half way on the chest, and above that was a section about 5 inches higher, with front lacing to be threaded in place. Straps came over the ­ shoulders and could be adjusted with buckles in front of the corsets. Below the busks was a further section of lacing carrying down half the length of the thighs. Hip and chest measurements were made to measure. There were 3 pairs of suspenders, but here I departed from the diagonal seam, for two suspenders crossed over from the waist, like the first reducing corset I had, for I found they, controlled the abdomen to a flat finish. The laces were in three sections. Chest, waist and hips.
To wear them I put my arms through the straps, then did up the long busk studs, one by one, nine in all. Then the bottom laces were threaded through and pulled up tightly, after which the lacing above the busks was threaded and pulled tight. The front was now done, and the struggle to lace the back began. First the part over the shoulders then the waist and lastly the hips were laced. Then back again to the top, waist and hips again until they were closed all the way and I was a living fashion plate. It was difficult to get at all the laces, and I liked Ethel to lace me in, as the job took well over half an hour. Finally the straps over the arms were pulled tight and buckled down. I was now a corseted dummy, hardly able to walk, quite unable to sit, or reach down to the floor or my feet. Standing or to lie flat was the only possibility, and it was difficult to get up from the couch or bed.
To make it even more rigid, I put on the last long pair over these terrors, then laced them tightly. Then on top I put the first pair of diagonal seams and laced them tightly too. Three pairs of stiffly boned corsets were new around my waist and I had nine pairs of suspenders pulling them down with three heavy busks in front, bending was now impossible in the slightest. My waist was as hard and inflexible as wood.
I actually went out done up like up like this, but after a short time I was only too happy to get home and remove the two upper pairs, then the corset suits. After that my old pair felt very easy to bend in. They were real instruments of torture, but so thrilling to wear. I would wear them when I felt like it, once with a long pair of laced boots up to the knees, with 5 inch heels. Walking was a great experience.
Now we were halted with the waist reduction, there was no reason why we should not advance in another direction, and so do some more piercings. I think it was in London Life that I first read of women with two or three piercings in different parts the cars, other than the lobes, such as the tops of the cars, the sides and the little tabs in front of the ear itself. Also the possibility of wearing two pendants, or a stud and a pendant. I brought this up to Ethel, and as she hadn't suffered from the first piercings, she was not adverse to the idea of a second piercing at the top and another one in each lobe for a pendant and stud fitting when required.
However it wasn't quite as easy, for while she was not against it, she didn't see why she should have it done. So again I coaxed her she consented to have it done. When she was prepared for the job, I sat her down in front, while I decided just where I would put the new piercing, or if I was lucky, piercings in each ear.
One pair was definitely to be done in the upper edge, where Indian women often have them done, so they can wear a jewel right across the ear. The other place was on the outer corner of the lobes so the two pendants could swing free from one another. Then I carefully cleaned each ear lobe with surgical spirit while the hand piercer, with its silver, and steel point was being sterilised, in boiling anti -septic solution, after which I carefully picked the pieces out with a pair of tweezers and dropped them into the surgical spirit, with the gold sleepers. The instrument was then assembled into the handle. For the other piercing I had made a pair out of fairly thick silver wire. Everything was now ready and she sat patiently waiting for me to begin. I had a tube of ethyl chloride, which I sprayed over the places to be pierced, one by one, as a local anaesthetic. Then with a cork behind the selected spot I approached the place and then with a quick, firm push, drove it in, and saw the needle point penetrate followed by the silver tube, right up to the handle. The sleeper was put into the end of the tube and pushed forward until it was right through and I could fasten it up. So one was quickly done, with very little complaint, so that she was quite willing to present the other ear to be pierced in a similar place and fashion. So very swiftly I had put a second piercing in each lobe, with the pearl drops on as before.
There was a little scarlet drop of blood from each, but that soon ceased and after a short time I cleaned it away and then replaced the first original earrings in the old holes. Then I started work on the top rim of her ears. However, these I found were harder to do, as they were through a part which was mainly gristle and not soft flesh. I needed a good really hard push to get them through and I am afraid the first one hurt her quite a bit for she squealed as it went through but she still turned her head for the other ear to be done. Another hard push, another squeal of pain, but the tube was through and the two silver rings were in place through the upper rims of her ears, waiting to be closed up.
Everything was cleaned up and she could survey her ears to see what had been done. She said, "Those last two hurt much more than any or the other piercings you did, and I felt them go through but they are done and feel quite all right now."
Her hair had by now grown to a fair length, and she could wind it round in little bums or 'earphones' over each ear. So few people noticed the extra rings she wore in them. Within a few days the new piercings in her ears had settled down healing up quite quickly, but I am afraid the top rings did give trouble for a different reason, for she caught first one then the other several times with her hair comb and pulled them out more than once. They went back O.K., but I decided to change them. So in the end I made her a pair of pearl headed screwed studs, with a little nut at the back. These were fitted through the piercings and soon forgotten.
Before her confinement, which she had at home in our unfurnished flat, she asked me to take out the two new pairs of ornaments, which I did. But when, some months later I looked for them I found the top pair had apparently grown over. It is certainly a fact as I discovered, that while a piercing can heal through flesh like the lobes, in a week or two, that it takes many months, up to a year, in fact, to establish a permanent hole through gristle.
When I suggested that I do them again she demurred saying that to make the piercings was a very painful job and she would have to think about it. The other pair in the lobes were still there so I put the rings back in them to make sure. Her early piercings were too well established to ever be lost and they gave her no trouble at any time.
After a lot of persuasion I got her to consent to a third piercing in each lobe between the other two. I told her I wanted to have one piercing in each lobe enlarged, so she could wear really savage looking thick rings, or heavy studs in them. The other two piercings were cleared of rings, and after the usual preparation, the needle and tube were driven in up to the handle, to be filled with the sleepers from the previous piercings, which I kept by as ready for use at any time.
These piercings gave no trouble and in a few weeks were healed through ready for the next stage, which was to enlarge them, I was hoping that one day I could develop holes through which I could push my finger, in other words, a really barbaric pierce.
I nearly accomplished my purpose in the end.
After the birth of our daughter, which was not too difficult a time for Ethel, once more Ethel put on her black corsets, and very soon, working to a strict systematic reduction every day, little by little, we got them closed again and her figure was back again to its former wasp like shape. So easy was it now, that I proposed getting some thing smaller for her, with a waist of at least 19 inches. This time I thought I would try her with a pair specially made for her, this time in the old spoon bask style, a really long pair, even higher at the front and back, also well down over the hips too. They were made this time in pink broche, a kind of brocade with very long busks, about 14 inches long. I had them right up under the armpits and as long over the hips as possible, with elastic inserts to give some freedom of movement in this region. The waist was made 19 inches and the length of the corsets was about two feet.
When the corsets came they were very heavily and as closely boned as possible. We had quite a time threading the long laces in place through the back eyelets. Despite their length, nevertheless they fitted Ethel with remarkable case, and before many days we had got them closed from top to bottom and her waist so reduced by an inch. There was also a section about 6 inches long, below the busks at the front, which had to be threaded and laced up with a short length of lace. When they were closed Ethel could not sit down in an ordinary chair, as she could not now bend at the hips very much. So she was stiffly held erect. They restricted her much more than the previous pair, but she was now a completely corseted fashion plate, with a tiny wasp like waist; her breasts, which were still well filled, for she had breast fed our daughter for 9 months, were pushed high on her cheat.
Every time, after I had laced her close, I complimented her upon what was now a truly magnificent figure, saying, "Darling Effle! You are a wonderful little wasp waisted wife. Not many men have such a wife. With these long corsets you are really adorable. To think that less than two years ago you were corsetless, waistless, and without the decorations in those dainty ears, more decorated than those of any other woman I know or have seen. You have let me transform you into something I have long dreamed about. Are you sorry that you let me do those things to you?"
She put her arms around my neck and standing on her high heels, pulled me down for a responsive kiss, saying, "Will Darling! I didn't like it at first, but now I have got used to it I don't mind, in fact, in some ways I have got to like it. However, these corsets are really too long for me to do much work, as I cannot bend or stoop in them. Still as long as you love me I am happy to please you."
I clasped her tiny waist and ran my hands up and down the long length of her well steeled and tightly laced body, feeling the steels, which made her so rigidly corseted. It was delightful to see her swaying walk as she tottered carefully on her high heels, with two long pendants swinging from each ear lobe, while her heavily painted lips were pouting for the reception of a well deserved kiss.
Ethel now found that as the size of her waist decreased, the restrictions every time she came to me to put on her corsets in the morning, a job which was now a matter of routine, and then turned her back to me to pull in the laces, that they now caused her quite a lot of pain for a short time - until she had settled into them.
This settling in took quite a lot of time and I often had to pause several times while lacing her to allow her body to accommodate gradually to the reductions. This process of lace in and wait for it to adjust, went on until the laces were fully closed every day. But by the end the of the day, wearing them fully laced, she would be feeling comfortably loose in them. How wonderful is the human body.
So I suggested that the trouble was, that although her corsets reduced her during the day, her body would expand back again when she was released at night. So the reduction process had to be gone through every day. Therefore the only way to progress painlessly, was to prevent the night expansion of her body and see that it did not occur. If we ever had to make any real reduction from where we were now, she must be prepared to try to wear the corsets all the time, day and night. I had read that this was the proper procedure necessary to train down to a really small waist.
She said, "What do you mean by real reduction? Have I not got down to 19 inches, and is that NOT enough? Do you want me to be cut in two? In any case I prefer my freedom at night, and I could not stand them day and night as well."
I then read her extracts from London Life, where waists were smaller than she had ever recorded, and that she had a long way to go before she was out in two. If other women had done it, why should she not try to emulate them. She said, "Yes, but some of them say that they started training in childhood, and I never wore anything until I married you, and then I only did it to please you, as I had promised."
I told her she could at least try the idea before condemning it so in the end I persuaded her to try them for a night or two and when she had done so for a time she had to admit that she could now almost forget that she was wearing them, for her body adapted itself to the corsets, so the painful process of daily lacing in was over. Besides, this night wear saved time in the mornings for a little extra love making. So from this time she was never out of corsets for any length of time, day or night.
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