Ethel Smyth: Caught without a corset

Did you know? Ethel Smyth, a friend of Virginia Woolf’s and a political activist and composer, once tried to substitute a birdcage for a corset?

She was cycling to visit Woolf at Monk’s House when she became anxious that she was not wearing a corset. So she dropped into a village shop and bought a birdcage. Later, she was discovered by other Monk’s House guests trying to put it on while hiding in a row of hedges.

See her plate designed by Judy Chicago for The Dinner Party. No birdcages included.