Clara Harris's Bloody Dress

[BettyO]

Here is a photo that I've had for years (Chicago Historical Society) - URL: http://chicagohistory.org/wetwithblood/b.../index.htm

This site shows Laura Keen's dress fragments as well as Clara Harris' silk dress fragment (a part of the "haunted dress?!).....

The fragment with the stains (whether rust or blood is anyone's guess) seems different from the other proposed Keene fragment which is in the Chicago Historical Society -- can't remember where I got that one.....

Laura Keene Dress Fragment 01

   

Laura Keene Dress Fragment 02

   

Clara Harris Dress Fragment

   

The stain in the first photo on the fabric looks to me as something other than "blood" -- I have an original 1850s night dress which I bought in a Richmond antique store years ago. It has a similar stain across the front and the man from whose antique shop I bought the gown told me that it was a rust spot from having been folded across a wire clothes hanger for years (shades of Faye Dunaway; Mommie Dearest - "No More Wire Hangers!") The stain on this piece of fabric appears to be very similar.

The fabric of this particular dress fabric appears to be a watered silk and is a print which a friend of mine who is associated with the Costume Society of America referred to as akin to to a modern "computer print"; i.e. the design was printed into the fabric against the warp making it somewhat appear as if it bled or was blurred. She had an original 1850s period dress printed with a similar fabric design and told me that the printing design in the supposed Laura Keene fragment was popular in the 1850s and 1860s.