Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 1818–94, American reformer, b. Homer, N.Y. She was editor (1848–54) of the Lily, first published in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and devoted to women's rights and to temperance. In 1851 she recommended and adopted the reformed dress of short skirt and full trousers introduced by Elizabeth Smith Miller. Because she advertised it in the Lily and wore it in her lecture work, it became universally known as the Bloomer costume, or bloomers.
See biography by her husband, D. C. Bloomer (1895); C. N. Gattey, The Bloomer Girls (1968).
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