If you haven't read the chapter this might give some of the story away so proceed if you wish

For those of you that are interested here are a couple of notes on this chapter. I tried to portray how much was involved in a woman of that time to get dressed appropriately. I know I got the sequence wrong, but I felt it conveyed what I was trying to do. If you would like to see how it was done here are a couple of links that show how it was for different classes.
For Women of the Upper classes
For Working Women
As for hygiene well I didn’t cover it fully I probably should have but, I really didn’t want to write a historical textbook the fact is there was very little. The 18th century when this story takes place probably was one of the worst for personal hygiene. They would wash their face and upper torso with water and little else but for the most part the accumulation of day to day grime was seen as a way to protect you from illness and bathing would negate that, while also being very labor intensive such as getting something to bathe in, getting the water (if clean water could be found), heating the water, and getting the heated water to where it was to be used.

Women’s menstrual hygiene is pretty much what I wrote. The fact is from what I could tell from the research I did, wool or linen cloth was placed against your crotch and since underwear wasn’t worn you can probably imagine the struggle of trying to keep things in place. However, it was noted in some articles that belts were used to hold things in places like France; they never specified if it was done everywhere. I would imagine someone elsewhere probably could have figured that out, but most of the articles weren’t exactly clear on the subject. While other articles said they would also just bleed into their clothes or just let it drip. I used a little poetic license and had my character use a little 21st century knowledge to help her.

Now to avoid long discussions about alternative history, I opted to select that a Stuart victory in 1745 would have more than likely negated most of the causes of the American Revolution. Namely the Seven Years War. Due to the fact without having a Hanoverian king on the throne, Great Britain probably would not have declared support for Prussia’s war against Austria, therefore not coming into conflict with France who supported the Austrian cause. Preventing conflicts in North America, which is what, brought the tax increases against the colonies in order to bring in more revenue, which was one of the major causes. It probably is much more complicated than that but I wanted to keep things fairly simple.

Thanks to all of you that have been reading. I truly hope I didn’t disappoint you with this chapter.

Fiona