The Jenyns Corset

The History of the House of Jenyns

The demise of the House of Jenyns

Of all the manufacturers of fan-lacing corsets, the Australian firm of Jenyns, needs a special mention. This company, one of many famous and long-lived Australian corsetry businesses, lasted for just over a century, right up to the end of the 1990's.

The factory's last location was in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. My husband comments that any woman who wore one of these corsets in the tropical heat of the Brisbanian summer, required considerable fortitude indeed. 

Sadly, it seems that in 1999, the last corsets were sold, and so another great name passes into history. We were extremely fortunate to be put in touch with a charming Australian woman, who provided some letter-heads that tell a little of the decline of this famous firm. To this day, she still wears her remaining Jenyns corsets, for there is little to touch them.

The Jenyns Standard Corset (interestingly, the word Bryant is hand-written on the label)

Big hip, long meant that the front of the garment measured 15", the sides, 19" and the back, where the fan-lacing was placed, 18".

Finished in a pretty brocade, there is no doubt about the serious intention of this corset. It is the antipodean equivalent of the 'standard' 141 series Camp corset.

Until I saw this corset, I would never have believed that fan-lacing ever passed across the stomach, but it does here. The reason is to pull the four (!) rigid spinal steels encased in their heavy fabric pockets against the wearer's spine. I tried the corset, which, in all fairness to Jenyns, was not designed for me. However, as somebody who has suffered periodically from a poorly back, I felt qualified to give the corset a 'road test' (as my husband quaintly put it).

This corset is very, very supportive, although it failed to flatten my abdomen quite as effectively as the standard version.  

This is an incredibly powerful garment. The front length is sufficient to avoid the perils mentioned above. Note the inordinate number of lace holes running the length of the garment. Jenyns lacked the mechanical pulley effect of Camp and compensated by sheer number of laces! No problem with the corset length here. Short corsets were a problem with the latter-day Camps as inexperienced fitters grabbed what was left on the shelves as the British end of the company slowly went broke. Invariably, the remaining corsets were the left-overs, the odd sizes that had resisted a decade or more of uncomfortable fitings.

Again, the convergent evolution of disparate corset companies becomes apparent in these Jenyns Orthopaedic supports (below).

In contrast to Camp's mainstream offerings, Jenyns often managed to insert just a touch of femininity. The two gratuitous panels of satin on the 4477 are there, simply to remind the wearer that although she must don the 'contraption' each day (as the old ladies used to call them), at least there were some pretty female touches. Unlike Camp, Jenyns opts for the front fan-lacing. Despite their similarities, Camp never used front fan-lacing. I wonder if there was a Jenyns patent involved?

The Jenyns Satin Corset

This surely must be the flagship of the Jenyns corset company. The corset is made from sumptuous, heavy corset satin of a quality unknown to wearers of  modern foundation garments.

Amazingly, Camp (below right) had a similar idea, but the Jenyns elevates the style to a higher plane with exquisite lace details, the apron front and the suspender flashes.

These are details that Camp overlooked, although their 'top range' corset is another stunning example of the corset-makers craft. The suspenders on the Jenyns are interesting. The front ones are painted metal with moulded rubber grommets which come from the 70's or 80's, however, the

rear suspenders, have the traditional metal pin in the centre of the grommet; a 50's - 60's feature. The garment is completely original and unmodified.  I suspect, that in the 1980's, when Jenyns was sadly in terminal decline, that the seamstresses used supplies of old stock rather than order afresh. I believe that the corset dates from the mid-1980's. This immaculate, unworn example must have been one of the last ever made.

We are very lucky to have such beautiful pieces in the Ivy Leaf Collection.

The History of Jenyns

The following articles were kindly sent to us by Pat Jenyns, grand-daughter of the founder.

THE CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE JENYNS PATENT CORSET COMPANY

HOUSE OF JENYNS

1898 The Jenyns company was founded by Madam Jenyns in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

1908   Patented first improvements in corsets

1910   Added more patents in supporting corsets

1912 sold patent rights to manufacture Jenyns Corsetry in England, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, U.S.A and New Zealand

The English manufacturer was granted rights to sell in South America and Africa

1914/18  These were difficult years because of lost shipments of goods

1916 Moved to new larger building – 327 George Street.  Increased production

1920   A very good year. Increased staff and production

1924  A difficult year because of the ‘No bra or corset’ fashion.

1925  A very good year with bras and corsets in great demand

1926  Jenyns Corsetry was being sold in every medium and large size retail draper and salon in Australia

1928  The company appointed Madam Jenyns’ son, Herbert Jenyns, as Manager of the company

1933 The company moved to a larger building – 309-315 George Street, Brisbane.  This move enabled increased staff and production and sales

1939/44  The company was declared a protected undertaking, manufacturing 40% corsetry and 60% clothing for the Air Force, Navy and Army

1945   A very good year of corsetry production and sales

1946 Madam Jenyns formed her business into a private limited company.  Increased staff, production and sales followed

1948  Sales were expanded to New Zealand, South Africa and Pacific Islands

1951 Mr G M E Offner, B.Com., F.C.A., who had extensive business association with the company became a member of the Board of Directors

17.7.67   Leased Plant 5 and commenced production. 6000 sq.ft. area leased for 3 years with options

1968  Leased Plant 6 and commenced production 13-5-68 7100 sq.ft. area leased for 5 years with options

Leased Plant 8 and established new warehouse 7-10-68 19000 sq.ft. area leased 5 years with options

1969  Leased Plant 7 and commenced production 11-8-69. 26,300 sq ft area built to our design leased for 5 years with options

November 1969 – company purchased by Triumph International Overseas Ltd. of Munich, West Germany 

1970  Leased Plant 9 Ipswich and commenced production 1-9-70. 40,000 sq.ft. area leased from the Jenyns family for 5 years with options

From the early 1970's.

The upbeat message would not last for much longer...

The Demise of Jenyns

Jenyns and Camp in the late 1980's

Letter from a Jenyns Wearer #1

Your site has brought back many memories from during and after the war years in England. Sad to say, but in Australia where I now live, those days are long gone, although I do know a couple of women who still wear Jenyns surgical corsets. They wouldn't do without them, but on days like today when it is so hot (38 ^oC Dec 2005) they do suffer. Jenyns have now gone out of business, and at the end were basically surgical suppliers.

One of the ladies is a Miss H., who is 83 years old. We had quite a chat recently and she invited me to visit her, as she had some Jenyns catalogues to pass on. I met up with Miss H. yesterday at her home. She is a very pleasant lady and made me most welcome. When I arrived the front door was open, I rang the bell and she called me in. She was sitting at a large table in the lounge which had on it five or six old Jenyns corsets and she was re-lacing one of them in the hope that she would have at least one that she could use. She had been working for hours on 'the darn thing’ as she put it. She had started wearing corsets just before the war after a riding accident and had worn then ever since.

For such a lady, who has worn corsets for over 65 years, it will be impossible to do without. Sadly, the manufacture of corsets is dying out as the profit margins have long gone. Maybe with a burgeoning older class of 'baby boomers' this loss of knowledge may yet turn out to haunt us. - Ivy.

Letter from a Jenyns Wearer #2

As a long time resident of Brisbane (eighty years and counting!) I was delighted to read your well informed article on the Jenyns company. My sisters and I bought our corsets from their Fortitude Valley Outlet for almost half a century until they closed a few years ago (was it really as long ago as 1993, as your article states?) I suppose I am one of your few die-hard women in Australia , lovingly repairing and caring for their Jenyns corsets in the hope that we will see out our time together!

Contrary to popular belief, Australia was until relatively recently a very old fashioned and straight laced place. We were always taught there was absolutely no excuse for a lady to not to always look her best and firm foundations were accepted as a natural part of life. Australia liked to think of itself as the best corseted country in the world and until the 1970s even the slenderest of teenagers wore a zippered step-in, and their mothers something rather more substantial. Firm corsets, along with hats, gloves, stockings, full face make-up and a smart set of dentures were seen as a natural part of an adult woman’s engagement with the outside world!

I obtained my first Jenyns shortly after the war when I commenced work at David Jones (a well known department store in Brisbane ). We wore rather slim fitting black skirts and blouses in those days, and decent foundations were a must. A great deal of standing up was required, and a few years later I moved up to the Dorsal Lumbar Support. You are correct that when leaning forward an unsightly and rather draughty ridge appears. Rather than be greeted with my friends sing-song  “I can see your corset”, It was soon retired to the back of the drawer!

I have worn the Jenyns Side-Lacing Corset since the mid sixties, which although heavier, gives a snugger fit and is generally more comfortable and quite easy to put on. They often came without suspenders, which you bought from Woolworths and sewed on yourself

The standing up all day meant that by my late twenties support stockings had become a fact of life. Surgical stockings seemed to be fairly common in the decades after the war, and they were not particularly frowned upon, although at David Jones they did expect you to put something more fashionable over the top. If this was required, one needed two sets of suspenders, as the two pairs of stockings were seldom the same length or weight. You either sewed on extras, or wore a suspender belt or corselette over your corset

I still own six wearable Jenyns corsets, plus two Spirella corsets I bought while on holiday in England in the early 1990s, none younger than a decade! How nice it is to think that some things are made to last

In another letter, she elaborates on her first corset experience.

I remember very well my first corset. I the week before I left school and started at David Jones, we rode on the tram from Wooloongabba to Fortitude Valley (both inner city suburbs of Brisbane ) to the Jenyns outlet. I was fourteen and until then had worn liberty bodices and knee high socks for both school and home, but it was time to join the “grown-up word” of corsets and stockings

I distinctly remember being lead by the hand into the cool, rather dark interior of the shop, and my mother telling the corsetiere she wanted me measured for “ a standard fan-laced corset". After the measuring, the trying on, and I remember the hard, grippy hug of that first corset and the rising thrill as I watched its effect in a full-length mirror. Mt torso kinked dramatically into my waistline, my spine straightened and stretched, I lifted my chin in an automatic counter-reflex. I metamorphosed from podgy 15-year-old girl to tall, shapely woman. All the parts of me that I did not really like, suddenly molded into this lovely adult, shape.

Regarding who wore what when, Australian women tended to stick to what they started with, so my mother, who lived to be 103 and only passed away in 2005, wore her entire life the “Warner’s Rust Proof” Corset she was first introduced to as a teenager. Her corsets must have been very old by the end. I similarly have stuck with the Jenyns side-lacing corsets that I had adopted in the mid fifties

Australian women from the generation behind me favoured the all-in-one foundation, a combination of brassiere and elastic corset introduced in the thirties by Warner’s with the introduction of the two-way stretch material.  By the late fifties, many younger women were wearing girdles that were constructed out of rubber elastic and the newer stretch net fabrics in rayon or nylon.  The different types were:-

Step-ins - zippered or laced girdles.

Roll-ons - all-elastic tubular girdles that were rolled on like a stocking.

Pull-ons - tailored girdles elastic enough to pull up like a pair of briefs.

Wrap-ons - which opened out fully like corsets and were closed by hooks and  eyes.

My husband was British and I did spend several years in the UK in both the fifties and seventies. Australia , in those days was several years behind the times in terms of fashion, and Queensland , which was very conservative and rather puritanical, was several years behind the rest of Australia ! I think Corsets were more greatly used, and for longer, that in England , and for any family that liked to think of itself as middle class, strict corseting was seen as a sort of status symbol and mark of respectability. Certainly, I remember once at a genteel County Womans' Association Tea Party, while the Lady Mayoress gave a speech, all I could hear in the background was the whirl of the fans and gentle creaking of many corsets!

Because of the conservative nature of Queensland , mini-skirts and trousers were never thought appropriate, and subsequently, panty girdles and pantyhose caught on much later that in England – perhaps not until the mid-seventies, and not at all among women above middle age.  Pantyhose were viewed with suspicion, and the general belief (not always wrong!) was that they would not stay up on their own – I remember my husband offering me a pair of his braces if I wanted to try them!

Young women seemed to have abandoned shape wear altogether after around 1980, although in recent years, the shops seem to be full of “miracle suits” – very high wasted, long legged panty girdles, almost like bike pants, and I understand they are very popular

In the days before air conditioning, Brisbane summer heat was oppressive, and (strictly in the seclusion on ones own house, and seldom in the presence of company) you did your housework in nothing but your slip/petticoat and your corset.  It was not an uncommon site to see a neighbour pinning out her washing dressed in a bright salmon “passion killer”, but that was never considered “quite the thing.”

Although there are many good brands in available in Australia, my sisters and I always bought Jenyns, as they were a Queensland brand, and Queenslanders patriotically like to support their own. My daughter, on the other hand, has always worn an open-bottomed corsolette, and I don’t believe my granddaughters wear very much at all, unless they are dressing up for the races!   

As for me, I am sticking to what I  know – my corsets are for people who like to look like people, more than people who look like grasshoppers!

Very best wishes

The Kellogg corset company was formed in 1907 by D.C. Kellogg Sr., who was a leader in the development of 'scientific corsetry' (there's that expression once again).

The charming and knowledgeable Lyn Locke wears an original Kellogg, one of the prizes of her collection. This is a seriously long corset of about 21 inches. I have seen only a few fashion corsets of this length and they were all made-to-measure Spirellas. Note that Kellogg has circumvented the Camp patent and used the multiple-lacings-sewn-to-the-adjustable-strap technique, like Jenyns.  Note also the absence of the 'swing' suspenders.

Actually, the corset is rather long for Miss Locke. It would have been intended for a lady of at least 5' 6".

When I first saw this corset, I assumed it was a CAMP, however, CAMP always had a five-hole former on the lower-lacer and this has but a three-hole. It is manufactured under the name 'Juno", and I've only ever seen this one example.

The strangely named "Fisher Burpe" corset, is another "Jenyns style" buckled fastened device.

Other famous brands have tried the fan-lacing principle, notably the Ambrose Wilson V80, and the amazing Controlacing Berlei. Ambrose Wilson, purveyor of mail order corsets to the British masses for many decades sold fan-lacers, some constructed from sweaty rubber, a corset material that never quite refuses to die out!

“Lady Mary adjusted the straps of her surgical corset with a vigour that reminded Sir Godber of a race meeting” writes Tom Sharpe in his hilarious novel, Porterhouse Blue. These corsets remind me how ridiculously simple fan-lacing is. One goes from bulging abdomen to youthful flatness with a firm pull of the straps.

I tried on a Camp (one of our collection) in 2005 and it reminded me how ridiculously simple that lacing method is. One goes from bulging abdomen to youthful flatness with a firm pull of the straps (“Lady Mary adjusted the straps of her surgical corset with a vigour that reminded Sir Godber of a race meeting” writes Tom Sharpe in his hilarious novel, Porterhouse Blue.) Would that my other lost youthful attributes were as easy to recreate!

From the Ambrose Wilson catalogue of 1962. Fan-laced and busk-fronted, this was powerful and practical.