In English it means women's underwear or nightclothes. The unhappy emigrants were clad only in their nightclothes, so urgent was their escape. A "Night Camp" where slum children could wash and wear clean nightclothes followed. Seward's son, Frederick W. Seward, appeared at the top of the steps in his nightclothes. Many bodies came ashore in the following days and months, some still in their nightclothes.