Born: Unknown, United States (assumed)
Died: Unknown
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Miss Delavenue
The following is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
The short streets running between Tremont and Washington Streets— including Hamilton Place, Winter Street, and Temple Place—contained shops for women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many women were successful proprietors of dressmaking and millinery shops. In order to secure the best class of customers, some dressmakers, like Josephine McCluskey, took on new names—she became “Miss Delavenue.” The area also supported Dress Reform Parlors in the 1880s, where women could be freed from the restrictive fashions of the day. They could purchase or buy patterns for such items as the “emancipation waist.”