The Lint & Bandage Mania in Boston

Soldiers marching on Washington Street, Boston

 

Caroline Healy Dall witnessed an impressive community event in Boston in late August, 1862. Shocked to hear that Confederate forces had badly defeated the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run, Bostonians resolved to do something about this unexpected loss as they heard that a second battle was being waged. Women responded by gathering en masse to make bandages and scrape lint, used to pack wounds.

Currier & Ives's print frames a Union victory but the

truth was the reverse.

Caroline Wells Healy Dall (1822-1912)

 in the hairdo popular in the 1840s

Caroline who lived in nearby Medford rode to the city on a car "crowded to a crush with women & bundles. Most of them were weeping." Outside Tremont Temple three tables had been set up to receive donations to pay for shipping the hospital supplies.

Tremont Hall

"On the side walk immense boxes were being packed. In the building 1800 women sewed all day."

She was most impressed by the bundles everyone was carrying into the hall, filled, presumably, with fabric and material from which to make the bandages.

"Women with bundles were crowding all the avenues and the streets as far as we could see...."The bundles were passed...tossed from hand to hand along the lines, till they reached the immense inner work-room."

For bandages newspapers advised volunteers to use absorbent, unbleached cotton muslin rather than bleached or glazed fabric, cut in long strips rolled into cylinders secured with a pair of pins. New fabric was often unavailable, and much cotton and linen from household textiles and clothing was recycled into hospital supplies.

Lidian Emerson was glad to supply the necessary pins as the war went on. See a post about her daughter Ellen and the pin donation here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2024/02/ellen-tucker-emersons-civil-war.html

 Varina Davis, wife of the Confederate president, recalled that linen was prized for both bandages and linting. A patriotic Southerner "sacrificed "the table linen she had treasured for forty years."

Detail of a painting by Mihály Munkácsy

showing European women scraping lint in 1871.

When the war began everyone was sure that poultices of well-worn linen thread scraps were the best thing for packing wounds. 

"Lint should be made of unraveled linen, new or old (the latter preferred), by cutting it in pieces of four or five inches square, which would be highly acceptable, while lint made from canton flannel is irritating to the wound.” Peterson's Magazine, August, 1861

Northerner Mary Livermore recalled the "lint and bandage mania" with hindsight in her history of women's work during the Civil War.

"Every household gave its leisure time to scraping lint and rolling bandages, till the mighty accumulations compelled the ordering of a halt."

Apparently, enthusiastic women donated far more supplies than necessary and the whole idea of packing wounds with lint or fluff raveled from linen quickly fell into disfavor with the doctors' experiences. Commercially produced linen lint was available and some surgeons preferred new cotton wadding, also available commercially.

A national call for lint a few days after the second battle of Bull Run.

Caroline Dall happened upon an example of the enthusiastic, early response of women when the nation realized that the Civil War was going to be a series of bloody battles. When she returned to Medford she found a smaller version of the same street activity. "A perfect crowd were hurrying with bundles."

Read more about lint scraping here:

https://civilwarrx.blogspot.com/2015/03/civil-war-bandages-lint-and-charpie-its.html

See a preview of Caroline Healy Dall's published diary Daughter of Boston, edited by Helen R. Deese:

https://books.google.com/books?id=A0GEcnfZ2VIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=daughter+of+boston+dall&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi067X9v5CEAxX8JzQIHTSiBawQ6AF6BAgBEAI#v=onepage&q=daughter%20of%20boston%20dall&f=false