I'm asking this question here because it's bothered me for about 40 years, and there's a lot of experience in different things here, so someone may know.

There was a period of time in the world when women rode sidesaddle. The first time in America that people saw a woman riding astride was in 1852, and everyone thought it scandalous.

When I saw a woman wearing a long riding habit mount a horse wearing a sidesaddle, she used a stepped mounting box to get aboard. She used the same box to dismount.

The question: How does a woman in a long dress mount a horse wearing a sidesaddle with no box, no wagon tongue, no nearby rock of a suitable size, and no man to give her a leg up?

The only way I can visualize it is that she raises her left leg and puts it in the stirrup, jumps up, and somehow swings her right leg either over the saddle or between the horse's ribs and her other leg (that is in the stirrup). Swinging her leg over the saddle doesn't seem likely, as the skirts I've seen looked too narrow for that. And trying to get her right leg between the horse and her left leg while balancing in midair beside the horse would seem like a good way to fall off. And neither way sound very safe if the horse was moving around or fussing at all.

Any ideas?

Sue