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Overview
This dress was intended to be part of Mary Burnett's 'going away' outfit - an outfit worn by a bride as she leaves her wedding with her new husband. However, when Mary immigrated to New Zealand with her family in 1852 she was still single, having left behind a broken engagement to a clergyman in Northumberland, North East England.
The Burnett Family sailed from London, England, on 24 May 1852 on the Clipper Barque 'Joseph Fletcher', arriving in Auckland, New Zealand, three months later.
Mary Burnett's outfit
The outfit comprises a silk taffeta dress recycled from the 1820s, and a matching bonnet very similar to the one Queen Victoria of England wore in 1840 for her own 'going away'.
It became very fashionable for women’s clothing to borrow regimental trimmings as can be seen in the decorative looping on the bodice of the dress. Even though the 1820s were a largely peaceful decade for
Mary Burnett also wore a pair of matching shoes.
The ensemble is part of a collection of nineteenth-century clothing that the Burnett Family donated to the National Museum in 1982.