Volume 11 , Issue 36

1914 Everyday Life

It was about 95 years ago that the elastic brassiere would supplant the corset that was in common use. The elastic brassiere was patented in November 1914 by Mary Phelps Jacob who was a New York debutante, who devised the prototype bra with her French maid before a dance, using two pocket handkerchiefs, some pink ribbon, and thread.

Mary Phelps Jacob was a descendant of steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton. Jacob was asked by friends to make bras for them. A stranger asked for a sample and enclosed a dollar.

Jacob had been encouraged to engage a designer to make drawings, and she would make a few hundred samples of her Backless Brassiere with the help of her maid, but would find them hard to sell, and she would sell her patent to the Bridgeport, Conn., corset firm Warner Brothers Company which would acquire for $15,000 a patent that would later be estimated to have a value of $15 million.

Doublemint chewing gum was introduced by William Wrigley, Jr.

What was happening in your ancestors everyday life back in 1914? My dad, Gene M. McGill was born December 27, 1914!
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