Sue McLane, The Victorian Lady, used to look to the health of her patients as a nurse, but now she’s making history come alive.
She and members of the Victorian Social Club will be giving a presentation on Sunday, April 15, at The Brookside Museum in Ballston Spa from 2 to 4 p.m. Admission for the event is $5, and light refreshments will be served. Stone Soup Antiques at 19 Low Street is sponsoring the program.
Setting Sail on the Titanic will give the audience a glimpse into what it may have been like to be a passenger on an ocean liner in the early 1900s.
McLane’s first career was in nursing — critical and cardiac care to be exact. Then she “fell into” dealing antique furniture in the mid 1980s. But after seeing a Victorian era dress at an auction, she was so smitten with its details and the craftsmanship with which it was made that she entered into its world – one where etiquette and ways of life were much different than those we know today.
“All of a sudden this gorgeous Victorian dress came up and I fell in love with it and I bought it. I started buying more and more of this antique clothing because nobody wanted it back in the 1980s. On occasion a theater group would come by and buy something, but really nobody was giving it any due so I bought it,” she said.
She paid $35 for that first of many dresses.
It wasn’t long after her dress encounter that people started asking her all sorts of questions about her purchases and requesting her to present what she knew to their various clubs and organizations. Over the years, she dove into fashion history and subsequently what life would have been like, especially for the women who wore the dresses, in the 1800s and 1900s.
“I started doing little miniature fashion shows. Oftentimes I wouldn’t have people for my fashion shows, I’d just have a dress form or two. And then I was wearing the outfits as well so that I would have several different examples of clothing to show. I understood then how you can get people interested in history by dressing in the period and recreating Victorian events. It really was my focus to get people interested in history,” she said.
A Schenectady native, McLane lived in New Hampshire until 1993 and then returned to the Capital District. She settled near Scotia where she opened an antique shop called Something Old, though it closed in 2000. She now lives in Johnstown and still does antique shows, however.
Over the years, her fashion shows developed into historical programs. Starting around 1991 she would give talks about 100 Years of Hats, for instance, to garden clubs and historical organizations. Her presentations were becoming popular and she was becoming well known as a dress collector. She has given presentations throughout the state and developed the walking tour for Ballston Spa in 2005, where she lived for five years.
“Nobody asked me to do it, I just came up with the idea,” she said.
McLane founded The Victorian Social Club in 1995. The club aims to get people involved with history, and some of the social etiquettes that surrounded the Victorian Era. She even teaches a 12-week course for children and uses tea parties as a teaching tool to provide a “hands on” experience.
“We’re losing the ability to be social and retain social skills,” she said of her motivation for teaching the course.
Another program is The Language of Flowers.
“I really focus on the secret meanings of flowers and how they were used in the Victorian Age,” she said.
McLane got interested in and ocean travel after she was contacted by costume designers in Hollywood who heard about her collection of dresses. She wound up sending many outfits and dresses to designers associated with the film “The Titanic.”
“I was contacted for some clothing for them to use in the movie which I’ve done for years. I sent out about 26 different outfits to the c ostumer that I worked with,” said McLane.
Unfortunately, her name does not appear in the movie credits. She does not recall exactly how much she earned for selling the goods, but indicated she made a profit.
“I don’t get to know what she’s (the costume designer) using until I go and see the film. So I had to go see the film to see what they used and what they did with the clothing. As I’m watching the film I’m thinking ‘This is really a Hollywood story. This really has not a lot to do with the truth of the Titanic disaster.’… As a historian I thought somebody had to do something about that. I made up my mind right then and there to create a program on ocean traveling in the 19th century,” she said.
She then started researching ocean travel in earnest and recalls “being disgusted” by the movie.
About six months after seeing the movie, she started presenting her findings and says that every time she does, she finds somebody in the audience has a personal connection to somebody who was on the vessel.
McLane won’t have to wait until her April 18 presentation to find that out. Anne Clothier, Brookside’s education director, has already connected the dots and is in the midst of researching the possibility that a South Corinth man named John Thompson may have been on the ill fated ship – and survived.
Clothier has known McLane for years and was bitten by the history bug after seeing her at one of her events when she was a teenager. McLane says that Clothier’s mom would drive her to various events and eventually Clothier became a member of the Victorian Social Club.
“I heard about her Titanic Program, and with it being the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic…I thought there was an interesting tie with Saratoga and the local relevance. The whole mystery piqued my interest,” said Clothier.
According to Clothier, Thompson was recognized by some of his Corinthian neighbors in a May 7, 1912 clipping that appeared in The Saratogian about survivors of the Titanic with local ties.
Clothier estimates that Thompson was in his 30s or 40s at the time of the Titanic tragedy. She is still researching Thompson’s travels and hopes to reveal more about them in the near future.
McLane is the recipient of many awards for her work, including one from the Capital District Architectural Association, which drafted a proclamation in recognition of her research and educating the public. Since1990 she has also sold garments to Ralph Lauren’s people and other fashion designers who look to vintage clothing for inspiration.
For more information on the April 18 presentation and others at Brookside, visit brooksidemuseum.org
For more information on McLane and her programs, you can call 736-2855.
