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| The Victoria & Albert Museum |
Nineteenth Century nightshirts remained relatively unchanged throughout the century. All had a plain turned-down collar, buttoned at the neck, with a central opening extending down the front. Think about Ebenezer Scrooge's nightshirt. You can picture it with short slits up the side, reinforced with gussets, made of white cotton or linen.
During this period men's shirts were almost as long as nightshirts. So, it's easy to confuse them. Nightshirts, until the 1860s, were worn with nightcaps, but that fashion quickly went out of style.
Ultimately, nightshirts went out of style, too--replaced during the 1880s with pajamas based on Indian designs. By the 1890s, the nightshirt was so out of fashion that the "Tailor and Cutter" of 1897 reported:
"The doom of the sleeping shirt is written. Those possessed of any ought to preserve them carefully so that they can show to succeeding generations the wonderfully and fearfully made garments their forefathers slept in ... The pyjama sleeping suit is to take its place ... of oriental origin, of silks, etc., generally striped."
This cotton nightshirt from 1874 is an excellent example of the latest stage of the fashion with its small stand collar fastened with a pearl button, a front placket closed with a matching button, and cuffs each fastened with a button. This nightshirt is marked in ink with the wearer's name and the date, " R. McAntrim 1874.". This was done so that maids and laundresses could identify them when doing them. Sometimes names were embroidered in silk thread.
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