Rainy Day Club

Rainy Day Club was an American woman's organization founded by Bertha Welby in New York City, on November 5, 1896.

It would be a dainty, light-weight skirt reaching to the shoe-tops,perfectly fitting boots with tops two inches higher than usual.

The members were impelled to this effort by the knowledge that the prevailing long trailing dresses carried into homes bacteria from dirty sidewalks.

Experience taught them that the long skirt in rainy weather was a menace to health and that the dampness oftentimes became the generator of colds and, in many cases, of more serious complications.

[1] Newspapermen found the club women a laughable subject of the newspaper wit in vogue at the time.

As a result, the Rainy Day Club quickly faded away and women went on dragging their skirts in the dirt and wet.