This delicate, extravagantly embellished dress was probably worn by Elsie Howse (1883-1902), perhaps as a dress for a ball during her first London season aged eighteen. The label stitiched into the waist-tape shows that it was made by Squire & Co at 45 Welbeck Street, in London’s Marylebone district. The V&A also owns another dress made for the Howse family, labelled 'Miss Squire, 18 Wimpole St W' (Museum no. T.15-2017). A further dress by Squire & Co and a Liberty cape made for the Howse family are in the collection of the Fashion Museum, Bath. Elsie's mother, Alice (nee Marshall) married Henry Greenway Howse (1841-1914), a surgeon, in 1881. Her husband was knighted and became President of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1901-1903. The family lived at a suitably high status address at 59 Brook Street, Mayfair from the year of Henry and Alice's marriage until 1903.They may have moved after the unfortunate early death of Elsie Howse, who was registered as a student at New Bedford College in 1900-1901. The 1901 Census shows that Elsie was the elder sister to Phyllis, Dorothy and Henry.

Elizabeth Squire, who probably designed and supervised the making of this dress, was born in about 1847 in Dublin. By the time of the 1861 census, she was working as a milliner (the name for women who made dresses as well as hats) and living at 85 High Street, Salisbury, with several other women in the same trade, in a boarding house that was possibly connected with the draper’s shop run by Joseph Reith, next door. There is no trace of this Elizabeth Squire in the English census for 1871 census, but in 1881, aged 34, she is living in London with many other dressmakers in a boarding house at 10-16 Vere Street, off Cavendish Square, north of Oxford Street. At this point she may have been working for Mrs Elizabeth Chapman who ran a dressmaking business at 18 Wimpole Street, according to the Post Office directory for 1885. Elizabeth Squire seems to have taken over the 18 Wimpole Street address from 1891, trading as and labelling her dresses 'Miss Squire'. She married Isaac Grey, in 1895, and her marriage certificate shows that her father was called John Squire, a ‘Gentleman, Dec'd’. At this point she moved to 45 Welbeck Street, and ran her business from one floor of this narrow terraced house (the other floors were occupied by a physician, a dental surgeon, and a laryngist, according to the 1902 directory). Squire & Co. appears to have closed down by the time the 1904 Post Office Directory was published.

Elizabeth Squire’s business was was one of hundreds of similar establishments in the area, employed making the complex and varied garments required by women in the upper classes to achieve and maintain their prominent positions in society. Their location was conveniently close to the homes of wealthy, well-connected families such as the Howses, south of Oxford Street in Mayfair.It is quite rare to find a nineteenth-century dress that can be securely connected to its original wearer, such as this, treasured for generations. Yet many survive with labels printed or woven with the maker's names, and now that the census and other records are digitised, it is easy to discover some biographical details for these long-forgotten but skilled and enterprising women working in the Victorian fashion industry.