THE INTERESTING CASE OF THE MATRON HAT
Last week’s post combining Agatha
Christie and Conservative hats was unsurprisingly popular, provoking
much discussion in the comments.
Before moving on: I recommend all the comments, but have to
feature this one, from blogfriend and fashion expert Daniel Milford Cottam:
It's worth looking at the Margaret Thatcher striped hat scandal (such as it was) in the early 1970s to show how little it took to throw Tories into conniptions, just because said hat was just the tiniest bit too eye catching. This is the hat in question BTW. A gift to 70s cartoonists....
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/politician-margaret-thatcher-secretary-of-state-for-news-photo/575454443
The photo is from Getty Images, which means I can’t feature it here without paying, but I do advise all readers to go and take a look, and see what a real Conservative hat looks like.
And now: moving on to MATRON HATS, as mentioned briefly in the Christie post.
I first came across matron hats in the Margery Sharp
book The
Nutmeg Tree, where the wonderful Julia – a rackety and
charming person – is trying to look respectable for her daughter’s potential
in-laws. She purchases a Matron’s Model Hat, and the Christie
post shows the hat I chose for her (top right in that post).
In a comment
on an O Douglas book, blogfriend Marty reported a
mention of Matron Hats, details later. So this is a Clothes in Books perfect
storm, and I was off down the rabbit-hole.
My listing of and searching for ‘matron’s hats’ reminds
me of the business of the bridge coats (first post on them here, but there are many more). In both cases: an item that was wholly understood in its
time, but a slippery matter, and hard to pin down or find a proper definition
or picture. I have not been able to find any picture which shows a hat
with the words ‘matron’s hat’ underneath. There’s your challenge, helpful
readers. (Searches always hindered, of course, by pics of Hattie Jacques in a
nurse's bonnet in Carry On films)
This is the nearest I got – from the Ladies Home Journal, July 1917. And this is a home-made hat, not an advert for a manufactured one.
But once you start looking for matron's hats, they do turn up all over the place
in the fiction of the mid-20th century.
So this was Marty’s find, from the work of O
Douglas, in a letter from one character to another:
She is large and stout with
the roundest, kindest blue eyes, and she wears “matrons’ hats”—high and
trimmed, you’ve seen them advertised?—sitting right on the top of her head. (I
always wondered who wore those things till I met Mrs. Heggie.)
That was in The Day of Small Things. Then in Taken
by the Hand some kindly people are introduced:
They were both a little more
than middle-aged, stout, comfortable-looking women, obviously well-to-do, with
Persian-lamb coats, expensive handbags, and hats of the type known as “matrons”
set high on their heads.
In Winifred
Peck’s Bewildering Cares, the vicar’s wife goes shopping for a
hat:
I discarded a matron’s hat,
with a high ruche of black velvet (15s. 6d.), a turquoise blue saucer, and a
grey soup-plate.
One of Patricia Wentworth’s nicest and saddest older
ladies, in Spotlight,
wishes she hadn’t risen in the world so much:
She hadn’t wanted the fur
turban. She would have liked a nice neat matron’s hat in one of those light
felts like she used to get when they had their business in Clapham, before
Albert made all that money. The turban made her head ache.
There are specific ‘matron’s turbans’ in fact – much
mentioned in a book of millinery hat patterns by Jane Lowen from 1925. (one of
the suggested materials is the duvetyn mentioned in a recent Ellery
Queen book/post). The matron’s turbans are sometimes laid out
to contrast with ‘harem turbans’, which seems to be rather a Manichean choice.
But, I think it’s clear from these quotes that a matron’s hat doesn’t have to be dowdy, so although Julia probably was looking for frumpy, a matron’s hat could be expensive and attractive. We can sometimes have the idea these days that hats were utilitarian practical coverups, and perhaps some were.
matrons at the seaside 1931
But I have looked at endless
photos, and read so much fiction of the mid 20th Century, and I
believe for many women it was a real outlet, an area where they suited
themselves and chose something interesting. And yes, that's the women above. Their choices were important and
careful, and they could let themselves go, even if they were a matron.
I am putting forward a theory that the defining
characteristic of a matron’s hat was that it covered a lot of the head and hair
– so it was not a saucer or soup-plate as mentioned above, not perched on the
side of the head, or what we would now call a fascinator (though that meant
something else then – see one of the first informative posts
on the blog) But,
within that limitation, it could be highly decorated and even frivolous.
[Compare with a bonnet: in a post
on Agatha Christie we said that a bonnet is a hat with
strings or ribbons under the chin, one that frames the face and covers the
ears. Most certainly not a high-fashion hat on the 1930s, but the bonnets of
the Victorian era were very much decorated, and this was mentioned in many
books]
In the pictures here I have tried to give as many possible
versions as possible.
In a post on The
Case is Closed by Patricia Wentworth I said
I cannot recommend highly enough this page of hat patterns I found –
see the hats that people used to make for themselves in the Olden Days, and
then go out in the street in: this is just a few of them.
Fashion expert Laurene Hampstead, in a 1945 book on
colour and line, has this stern comment:
There are hats that make the
young girl seem middleaged and that add years to the apparent age of the woman
who has reached middle life. Yet these are the hats that have been designed for
the matron. There are other hats that seem ridiculously young and naive on
all but the freshest young face and figure, but which many middle-aged women
wear in the mistaken hope that they will give a youthful appearance.
But I prefer Drucella Lowrie, who, in a 1952 book on
restyling your hats, says:
Many designers will tell you
that there is no such thing as a ‘matron
hat’ – that women, all women, should wear what they like, that any basic style
can still be becoming to an older face when worn at the right angle, and that
any colour can be appropriate.
I’m going to go with the idea that women enjoyed their hats
and had fun with them, and did not pay too much attention to the judge-y
experts.
If you find a good matron’s hat – bring it on in the comments.
Top picture – shopping for hats in 1942 from the Imperial War Museum’s wonderful collection of Home Front pictures.
Crochet hats from the free vintage knitting pattern site.
Other pictures mostly from my collection, and with thanks to JS and CP who both gave me books about hats...
The Thatcher hat, I remember reading that Thatcher was quite affronted at all the negativity, saying she thought it was a perfectly smart and respectable hat, barely daring at all, but everyone from all sides of the spectrum took the wotsit out of her.
ReplyDeleteHats are such a fascinating thing. They've got so much going on. I can't say I'd really thought about matron being a specific style, I assumed it was a vibe, but I can see from some of these that it clearly described particular styles of the time. For me, I'd say the vibe of a matron hat was first and foremost about presenting as Respectable Married Lady of a Certain Age, so one hat might give matron vibes, but another, very similar, might have a shallower crown and narrower or wider brim and tilt just enough to not give "matron". And of course, the wearer themselves can give a seriously dramatic effect to clothing/hats, as we well know - I think it's in Agatha's The Hollow where there's a conversation between two women about another woman who politely asks their mutual friend for the pattern of a "ugly" sweater in which the mutual looks dreadful, and then ACTUALLY makes it up for herself, and to the disbelief of the speaker, "on her, it looked rather nice."
Yes indeed - and with women not wearing hats so much now, we've lost all that nuance and knowledge. I was complaining to my mother about a hat I'd bought for a wedding, it wasn't quite right, and she said 'surely one of your friends is someone who can fix or re-style or decorate a hat?' She said in her day, one always had at least one friend who would help you out. I was charmed by this, it makes perfect sense doesn't it? - but had to tell her that none of my friends had skill here.
DeleteYes, it absolutely is the Hollow, a great moment, I did it on the blog here
https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2015/09/agatha-christie-week-sharp-brittle-book.html - though I wouldn't say I was 100% satisfied with the knitting patterns I found.
And yes, it's a very real thing, bringing your own style to an item of clothing
What a great discussion on hats, Moira. And they do come up, as you know, quite a lot in Agatha Christie's work. There's a particular scene in Evil Under the Sun where there's a discussion of the hats that one character has brought along with her on a holiday: On a wide shelf were hats. Two more beach
ReplyDeletecardboard hats in lacquer red and pale yellow—a Big Hawaiian straw hat—another of
drooping dark‐blue linen and three or four little absurdities for which, no doubt, several
guineas had been paid apiece—a kind of beret in dark blue—a tuft, no more, of black
velvet—a pale grey turban.
I may have to look more at hats in crime fiction...
Oh yes, thank you Margot for adding those! Agatha gave good hat, certainly.
DeleteAnd I very much hope you will do hats for us...
I didn't mention a Miss Marple short story in which the size of a hat is a vital clue...
This makes me think of Elizabeth Jenkins' The Tortoise and the Hare and Blanche Silcox, a middle-aged unmarried lady who wears 'extraordinary' hats; I think they're high in the crown and very unbecoming. Blanche is a plain but powerful person, who becomes the mistress and then wife of the heroine's husband. On reflection, they're probably not matron hats, just a bit unusual!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't remembered the hats, but I do think that is one extraordinary book, I'm not sure that I love it, but it is memorable, thought-provoking, unexpected, and rather sad.
DeleteNot quite on topic, but in Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, Tuppence loved buying beautiful hats. The tv series from the 1970s I think showed marvellous creations on Francesca Annie
ReplyDeleteChris Wallace
Thanks yes - your comment immediately summoned up a memory of such a hat! the costume designers must love getting the chance to make fabulous hats.
DeleteI used to wear hats when I was younger even though it was certainly not fashionable at the time, and I used to pooh pooh all those who said how brave I was and how they could never do it. But after I turned 50 or 60 this somehow changed. Some time ago I brought out all my dramatic, wide-brimmed hats and tried them on, and that's when I realised what the problem was. When I did as I used to and pushed the hat down on my head so that my face was completely shaded by the brim, I looked older and more worn because all the unevenness and all the wrinkles in my face were brought into relief by the shades cast on them. So I have come to the conclusion that if I still want to wear a hat, it cannot be one that casts that sort of shade on my face; it has to have narrower brims or being worn further back, pushed away from the face. The descriptions of matrons' hats above seem as if they take this situation into consideration.
ReplyDeleteWhat a helpful comment, explaining some of the implications of hat-wearing. I hadn't thought of it like that but that makes perfect sense. I haven't bought a hat (apart from woolly for winter) in years, but still have quite a few of them, which I always assume I could dig out if I needed a hat. But I may have to try them all on like you and make a grown-up judgement!
DeleteHats more than any other item of apparel can make one look wonderful or dreadful - they affect the complexion as Birgitta says, the shape of one’s face as well - this is why I’m glad that I can choose to wear one but I don’t HAVE to wear one as women did in the past; and if the fashionable style of the moment didn’t suit them hat shopping must have been a nightmare! Early in “The Diary of a Provincial Lady” the PL remarks that she only looks good in a hat with a brim but current hat fashions dictate no brim. She never mentions knitting or crochet though so presumably can’t just run up a brimmed hat herself.
DeleteSovay
Nancy Mitford's Fanny in Love in a Cold Climate wonders why no hats suit her face. But I think Nancy herself looked good in a hat - there's a true-life story of her in a hat so frivolous people laughed when they saw it.
DeleteThere's a small number of instances in Golden Age crime fiction where the absence or presence of a hat is a clue - in that a woman could NOT be going far if she didn't have a hat on. And there are a few others.
The Queen Mum's hats definitely show this! She always wore hats that came off her face (Royal protocol, not good to hide the Royal visage from the unwashed masses) but the swept back brim with a bit of a veil in front was definitely her staple for the last few decades of her life.
DeleteOh gosh yes, your description summons up such an instant image!
DeleteRe: hats in GA Crime: not a clue as such but I remember being struck by an adept use of hat etiquette in Christopher St John Sprigg’s ‘Death of an Airman’. The police officer investigating the death has been chatting to the young woman who manages the airfield, in her office, and mentions that he wants to interview another character. The young woman says this character will be in another building elsewhere on the site and she’ll walk across there with the officer; he doesn’t want her there for the interview so shakes her off with ease simply by striding out of the door and away. She can’t go along because she’s not wearing her hat, and by the time she’s found it and put it on he’s halfway across the airfield and she can’t be bothered to chase him. Book was from the library so I can’t check but IIRC this was a deliberate ploy on the part of the police officer who knew she wouldn’t go outdoors without a hat.
DeleteSovay
Oh brilliant, yes, that's exactly what I was talking about and I'd forgotten that incident....
DeleteGriselda in Murder at the Vicarage threatens to buy some "hats for matrons". She has been spotted browsing childcare books in the local library. My theory - it's all about hair. Young girls were bobbed and shingled. Matrons hung on to their hair and wore a large chignon on the top of the head. They couldn't get all that into a cloche! The high crown accommodated the hair, and the brim shaded the eyes. See your picture! (Lucy)
ReplyDeletethank you Lucy, I'd forgotten about the splendid Griselda, and your explanation is a very good one.
DeleteIn D E Stevenson’s Charlotte Fairlie, Charlotte, the young headmistress a St Elizabeth’s School, has a Board Meeting Hat, dowdy hat she got at a jumble sale. She tells a friend it was this hat that got her the job, as the board would never have hired her otherwise.
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly a Matron Hat.
Oh yes I remember - I failed to illustrate that hat when i did the book, what was I thinking of 😊
DeleteWe must have some psychic connection unknown to both of us. I just finished and put up a post on hats. The ladies of the 21st Century wearing the hats made by Calliope "Callie" Foster in The In Crowd would take offence at being described as matrons. While they would resent a category of young matrons, should there be such a group, they would be "in" it. Thanks for a fascinating post. Here is a link to my post - https://mysteriesandmore.blogspot.com/2025/06/hats-in-in-crowd.html
ReplyDeleteWe are definitely connected! I very much enjoyed your post, and recommend it to my readers. The book sounds great....
DeleteIn Miss Ranskill Comes Home, by Barbara Euphan Todd, the central character falls overboard whilst trying to rescue her hat - ‘a silly little pull-on felt’, which she doesn’t even like, but ‘it stayed on better than the others’. She fetches up on a desert island, and there are some wonderful descriptions of her clothes, especially her disintegrating knickers.
ReplyDeleteWell that sounds intriguing! I don't know the book at all, but feel I ought to find it. I only know her as the author of Worzel Gummidge....
DeleteI think you might enjoy it. It’s a wonderful account of life in WW2. Miss Ranskill is swept overboard on a cruise in 1938, and when she returns home three and a half years later she has been declared dead, doesn’t know about the war, and can’t understand rationing, coupons etc. There is a hilarious scene where she goes to buy new clothes, but can’t (even though she has some money). She’s very practical, independent and feisty. It’s one of my favourite books - do try it.
DeleteIt sounds unmissable, I will put it on the list.
DeleteLoved the crocheted "hourglass hat"! Not very matronly!
ReplyDeleteWell-spotted! that was, to me, the weirdest me, and I meant to draw attention to it and forgot - but you picked up on it anyway.
DeleteThe instructions are a little vague but I'm quite tempted to have a go at one just for the fun of it. Not sure whether one can still get "feather boning" though and I suspect that is vital - no good making a floppy hourglass.
DeleteSovay
I am trying to visualize the structure and failing...
DeleteTo Sovay: feather boning is extremely thin, like the centre bit of a feather. I've seen reproduction makers and reconstructionists use zip-ties as a substitute for this, but it depends on the garment. I wonder if twist tie wired tape would work?
DeleteI’d assumed it would be something lightweight – I had thought of pipecleaners but if zip ties are what I think they are (ie cable ties) they would make a better substitute. With careful choice of yarn and hook it might well be possible to make an hourglass hat that would stand up without extra stiffening – crochet lends itself to making a really firm fabric rather better than knitting does – but it might also be quite heavy and uncomfortable.
DeleteSovay
Thanks Daniel - and Sovay let us know if you get anywhere! with photos, obv
DeleteI love hats and wear them a lot still. I too thought of Blanche in The Tortoise and the Hare. I think they ARE matron hats. Described as intimidating, 'for ordinary wear they were stiff felts with unusually high-domed crowns ; on dressy occasions they mounted quills that were absolutely formidable.' On several occasions her hat is described and it's always significant.
ReplyDeleteSorry, that was Chrissie
ReplyDeleteBrilliant description. And it is such a gripping and unusual book - I may have to re-read it now.
DeleteYes, once I started looking for hat quotes, I started reading it all over again and found that my sympathies had shifted a bit. I could see how irritating Imogen could be. As for the hat theme, when Cecil, Imogen's friend, first meets Blanche: 'To her startled eye the [hat]. in black velvet, of lofty and copious design, recalled the sable helmet that descended with a crash upon the pavement of Otranto, "a hundred times larger than any casque made for human head."'
DeleteOh my goodness that's wonderful! the book is remarkably even-handed...
DeleteI just finished reading it. Faults on all sides, I thought--Imogen was a bit too much a doormat for my taste, but the husband's behavior made me mad even though I realized he wasn't a bad man. What was he thinking? And the Other Woman no doubt loved him, but she didn't care what pain the situation caused his wife (and she would not like herself, as a wife, to be treated as he had treated Imogen!) The second marriage did seem more "equal" than the first--he seemed awfully condescending to Imogen.
DeleteI know - it is such an unexpected book in the way it changes your sympathies. I just re-read my post on it, which expresses my views https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2016/01/cross-blog-reviewing-tortoise-and-hare.html and has a link to Chrissie's post on the book.
DeleteMore Tortoise and the Hare fans - fabulous! It is even-handed as you say, Moira, though I absolutely can't condone Evelyn's behaviour. But you can sort of see that he had outgrown Imogen.
DeleteI thought they were very much stuck in the expectations of their era - nowadays I think it would all not be quite so fraught and difficult, though still sad. Evelyn was awful and she was better off without him, but in those days it wasn't so easy to say that.
DeleteI did wonder what on earth Imogen had done for a living before she met Evelyn - we are told that she didn't have any money. And when the novel opens she is leading such an idle life - has a housekeeper who looks after everything, doesn't interest herself in local affairs, was incapable of learning to drive ... A tribute to the writer that her characters seem so real that I am wondering about this! Chrissie
DeleteI totally agree, but also think that half the women in novels like this were the same. I feel am going to have to do another post on the book, because there is so much to say about it....keep the conversation going.
DeleteBlanche is described as elderly. Turns out she is 50! Chrissie
DeleteOh yes of course! We should establish a table of these mentions, age against description. Ngaio Marsh well to the fore.
DeleteEvelyn meanwhile is 52 and clearly considered by everyone to be in the prime of life.
DeleteImogen’s ineffectualness is exasperating but Evelyn seems to have undermined and belittled her throughout their marriage - he tells her at one point “Your mind is wrongly orientated, my dear girl. At least, “ he amended, “I expect I should not say ‘wrongly’ but ‘differently from mine.” But there’s no doubt that ‘wrongly’ is what he means. Not surprising that when the crisis arises in her marriage she doesn’t have the self-confidence to deal with it.
Sovay
I always think of Evelyn saying that happiness wasn't an end in itself, it should be a by-product. Very much a man of his time. And he was shushing his wife who was concerned about whether their son would be happy at school. I can only be relieved that most people would not be like him now. That unthinking certainty that he was right.
DeleteThis reminded me of the comments in a recent post about whether Puritanism had survived in England after the Restoration; Evelyn’s view of happiness could hardly be more Puritan.
DeleteSovay
How true!
DeleteI am not much into hats (sorry), and my favorite hat scene is in a movie and is not related to matron hats at all. In Gold Diggers of 1933, Joan Blondell and Aline McMahon persuade Warren William and Guy Kibbee to buy expensive hats for them. One of our favorite quotes from that movie is... "Do all hats cost $75?"
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious! $75 would be a lot now, let alone in 1933. I just bet they weren't matron hats! I think I saw that movie a long time ago, but I should look out for it again.
DeleteAnd... I forgot to say I had also noticed Bill's post on hats in a book, and now I need to go check that post out.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's really enjoyable, and I think I will have to read the book he mentions.
DeleteI've been away and confined to my phone - this is the first time I've been able to get a proper look on a decent-sized screen at the many fabulous images. The felt round crown/moderate-to-narrow brim/bit of trimming style (as worn eg by the two pairs of women in pictures 5 and 6) is what I always think of as a 'uniform' hat - schoolgirls, women's services in the early 20th century, early policewomen (though they do seem to have had some reinforcement in the crown).
ReplyDeleteCrocheted turban could go either way - on the wearer in the picture, definitely harem. I love all the make-your-own options, though the second calot wearer looks as if she's about to play water polo.
I was sure I recalled a reference to matrons' hats in Barbara Pym's "Jane and Prudence" but it's not quite as I remembered - still relevant to the question of hats for the respectable older woman though:
'It seemed that there was a particular kind of hat worn by ladies attending Parochial Church Council meetings - a large beret of neutral-coloured felt pulled well down to one side. Both Mrs Crampton and Mrs Mayhew wore hats of this type, as did Miss Doggett, though hers was of a superior material, a kind of plush decorated with a large jewelled pin.'
Sovay
So glad you appreciated them! I love the picture of make-your-own hats SO MUCH, the egg timer particularly. I had never heard of a calot hat before seeing this picture.
DeleteYou can just see the Parish Meeting can't you?
E.R. Punshon equipped his detective with a hat-maker for a girlfriend. In Suspects Nine a hat indeed plays an important role. No description is given, with the excuse that no description could make the hat justice.
ReplyDeleteOh I will have to get that one! I like ER Punshon, and just read one now and again in a non-completist way, but he is very good on clothes. With this one I will have to imagine it for myself...
DeleteJust came across this blog whilst trying to visualise the Matron's Model in The Nutmeg Tree, thanks!
ReplyDeleteExcellent timing for all of us! Hope you found it useful. I love that book, of course, and did a few posts on it https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Nutmeg%20Tree
DeleteLate comment here, but writing to say you can find vintage featherboning on Etsy. Look for the kind for dresses. It's lightweight. It could be made by Warren's and later by Dritz, at least here in the states.
ReplyDeleteIt would be perfect for making that hourglass style..
Happy doodling around with hat making!
Fascinating! Thanks very much for the extra info.
DeleteMore on the question of when a woman can be described as elderly: in Anthony Gilbert's Something Nasty in the Woodshed Agatha Forbes is described as that - she is 47! Chrissie
ReplyDeleteIt is particularly depressing when it's women authors, isn't it? I'm definitely making a list. Is the book good?
DeleteI think technically "elderly" originally meant "getting on a bit," rather than "exceptionally old," which might explain some of these references.
DeleteHelen
But always with an implication of declining powers....
DeleteFor me, not one of her best, though Crook is always good value - but doesn't come in until half way through. Chrissie
DeleteYes, I always want Crook in earlier! And am always fascinated that the authorial voice is often quite prim and snobbish, while Crook is nothing like that.
Delete