Home of Lavinia Foy, 19th century patent holder and manufacturer of corsets (5 High Street)
Introduction
Author-Uploaded Audio
This narration was recorded by Anne Marie Murphy, author of A Proper Fit (working title), TidePool Press 2025, www.cityofcorsets.com
Text-to-speech Audio
5 High Street is currently a vacant lot but was once the site of the boarding house where Lavinia Foy lived from 1854 until the mid 1860s. Widowed and self-supporting, Lavinia launched a lucrative career from here, becoming a nationally prominent designer and manufacturer in the emerging corset industry.
Note: If you are walking the route, this address and the following stop (David Hale Fanning Girls Trade School) can be viewed from the same corner: Chestnut St and Pleasant St.
Images
Lady shoppers on Middle Street in Portland, Maine, could inspect in person the latest in support technology in a corset designed by a woman.
Skirt Supporter, patented by Lavinia H. Foy, July 22, 1862.
A Skirt Supporter corset patented by Lavinia H. Foy on March 22, 1864
Designs for a corset, patented by Lavinia H. Foy on September 15, 1863.
Corset patented by Lavinia H. Foy on May 1, 1866.
This close-up of an 1886 map of Worcester's downtown shows property owned by C. Aldrich at 5 High Street, where Lavinia Foy lived. It appears to have been a boarding house aka a "hotel" where, in 1888, its residents held jobs as varied as tailor, pattern maker, painter, carpenter, tailoress, and cook. Twenty years earlier one of its boarders Lavinia Foy was a seamstress, a patent holder, and a corsetiere. The Aldrich building is long gone, now the site of an empty lot used for parking.
Backstory and Context
Author-Uploaded Audio
This narration was recorded by Anne Marie Murphy, author of A Proper Fit (working title), TidePool Press 2025, www.cityofcorsets.com
Text-to-speech Audio
An innovator from the earliest days of Worcester's corset industry, Lavinia Jenkes Harmon Foy was a multiple patent holder from the 1860s onward. The U.S. Patent Office has at least twenty applications from her in the 19th century; some news articles from that time mention that she filed quite a few more than that. Only twenty-two patents had been issued to women by that Office before 1858, putting Foy into a select group, the very few female American patent holders of the 1800s. A journalist commenting on her death added historical context: "whether the war stirred the female mind to unusual activity or not, the women took out more and more patents." (fn: 1908 charlotte news article)
The only daughter of a preacher, Foy was born in 1813 in Hudson, New York. After marrying farmer Marvin Harmon in 1835 she lived in Brookfield, Massachusetts with her husband and son George. Following husband Marvin's death in 1854, she moved to Worcester where, as one biographer notes, "she maintained herself by her sewing machine" (fn: north brookfield history). During her years in Worcester (1854-1866, estimated), she made corsets for a living and filed patent applications for the many modifications that she devised for them.
Marrying James Foy in 1858 she found her partner for life, both in marriage and business. They eventually settled in New Haven, Connecticut, where they lived for the rest of their lives, running a profitable corset manufacturing factory. Using the name "Madam(e) Foy" in a nod to the world's belief that all things French are imbued with high style, she became an extraordinarily successful businesswoman. Newspapers of the late 1800s are full of ads for Madam(e) Foy corsets. Many of the articles published at the time of her death describe her as the "inventor of the modern corset." According to one obituary, she was a multi-millionaire who, when she died in 1906, was the wealthiest woman in Connecticut.
Sources
A Proper Fit (working title), Anne Marie Murphy, Tidepool Press, forthcoming 2025, www.cityofcorsets.com
"The Reward of a Benefactor," The Scranton Republican (Scranton, Pennsylvania) · Sat, Apr 21, 1906 · Page 2
"One Thousand Patents for Edison," The Charlotte News (Charlotte, North Carolina) · 7 Jan 1908, Tue · Page 2
"History of North Brookfield, Massachusetts," Temple, J.H., published by the town of North Brookfield, 1887, p.616
newspapers.com
The Portland Daily Press, January 31, 1881.