Lord Liverpool climbed out of his carriage at Kensington Palace on June 15, 1837, under blue summer skies. He was wearing a grey suit and a top hat — the top hat was now considered the mark of a gentleman, even though the first man to sport one in public, forty years earlier, was arrested on the grounds that it had “a shiny lustre calculated to alarm timid people.” (Four women had fainted upon seeing it, and pedestrians had booed.)
Julia Baird, Victoria: The Queen, 2016
Can you imagine? Woman fainting and the wearer being arrested!
Jessica
It’s a good thing you didn’t include a photo! I would have booed. And maybe fainted. I’m soooo timid! I can’t handle shiny lustre.