It was not difficult work as the process was like a production line; each button travelled many hands before completion. In the 1800s, a twelve-year-old girl’s job was to ‘put in shanks’ with working hours of 8am to 7.45pm. Boys aged nine to twelve cracked corozo nuts in an outhouse and children could earn ten pence to eight shillings a week. Corozo palm tree nuts were similar in texture to ivory.
Factory work was unpleasant and dangerous; health and safety was minimal. Machines were powered by steam and the Birmingham Gazette reported several unpleasant accidents at Hammond Turner & Sons, which employed over 200 workers in the Snow Hill area. A nineteen-year-old youth died after his arm was mangled by a circular saw; another boy’s clothes were caught in a flywheel.
Birmingham also specialised in mother-of-pearl buttons, a cottage industry operating outside the factory system. At the end of the eighteenth century, the government banned the import of pearl buttons to protect the home industry. Because of the fragile nature of nacre, the shell from which mother-of-pearl buttons were made, the technique was less mechanised than for other buttons. The only equipment required was a foot lathe.
The shells were imported from the East Indies and the Pacific Ocean, often by large manufacturers who distributed them to outworkers to make the buttons. The shells were sorted, cut into buttons, holes drilled for the thread and finally polished. These men were highly skilled and could earn £2 to £4 a week; a fortune compared to women in the factories earning seven to nine shillings a week. It was often a family-run operation in squalid conditions, with members taking on different roles. Once completed, the buttons were sewn on to cards to sell at the haberdasher. A factory girl could sew 3,600 buttons on a card a day!
The Dorset shirt button industry was established near Shaftesbury and Blandford, although stitched buttons had been produced in Dorset since the sixteenth century. In 1622 Abraham Case organised home workers in the area. In 1731, Robert Fisher opened a button depot in Blandford Forum where outworkers brought their work for him to sell. Originally, the button base was made of Dorset sheep horn covered in cloth and overworked with thread. Later, metal rings from Birmingham were used. By 1793, nearly 4,000 women and children as young as six were employed around Dorset. The children ‘cast’ the buttons by covering the base with wire, at which point the more experienced adult ‘filled’ the button by winding thread around it into different styles and patterns. A skilled woman produced twelve dozen a day, although the average was seven dozen, and in 1812 she could earn between six shillings and twelve shillings a week. A woman working in the fields earned no more than nine pence a day – about four shillings and six pence a week. Making buttons, she was earning more and indoors where conditions were better.
Again, fashions change and by mid-Victorian England button makers’ income was reduced to under three shillings a week. When a button-making machine was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in 1851, the effect was immediate. By 1860, the button industry had collapsed, leaving many destitute.
Records for homeworking button makers, like lacemakers, are sparse and difficult to locate simply because records weren’t kept. First stop is the local record office such as Dorset www.dorsetforyou.com/dorsethistorycentre, which has relevant books and some archives. For additional information on button making in this area see www.thedorsetpage.com/history/Button_Making/button_making.htm. Some towns and villages have websites outlining local occupations, occasionally including information on families and names of people involved. A Google search should reveal them. The British Button Society for collectors has a website www.chezfred.org.uk/bbs, which may be of general interest and links to an eclectic mix of buttonalia sites.
In medieval times, gloves, a significant symbol of social class, were given as a present, especially to a lover. A few years later and we meet perhaps the most famous glover and whittawer (leather worker) in history, John Shakespeare (1531–1601) and, by association, his son William. Because they were essentially leather workers, cordwainers also made gloves (see Chapter 8).
The industry was concentrated where there was a plentiful supply of cattle and sheep, with most gloves made from calf or sheepskin. Deer was occasionally used and kid gloves, highly prized and expensive, came from goat. The leather grain was inside and fur lining added for warmth; the outside was stained. Depending on fashion, gloves could be made from satin, silk and velvet and were often extremely elaborate with lace, beads and fringing.
During medieval manufacture, leather was treated with alum, making it pale but not particularly supple; the skill was to make gloves fit the hands but supple enough to provide movement. Several processes were involved, from preparing skins to staining and cutting. By 1862, it was somewhat of a production line with both men and women working at different stages; an explanation of the processes in glove making is in the chapter ‘Mr Ashley’s Manufactory’ in Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles by Mrs Henry Wood, 1862, found free online.
In order to preserve employment, imported gloves were prohibited during the reigns of Richard I, Edward IV and Elizabeth I. The penalty for importing, selling or owning imported gloves during the reign of George III was the enormous sum of £200, with the contraband sold by auction under the peculiar terms of ‘the candle’ – the sale lasted as long as it took for an inch-long candle to burn. Whoever was bidding when the light went out got the goods! Predictably, gloves were smuggled alongside brandy, lace and tea. In 1766, anyone owning imported goods could be fined £20 plus three times the value of the gloves. In 1785, gloves were taxed on a sliding scale starting at one penny per pair of gloves selling at between four and ten pence a pair, with revenue collected at the point of sale. Nine years later, the tax was repealed for bringing in too little revenue.
All trade restrictions for the import of leather and material were removed in 1826 resulting in catastrophe for English glove makers. At first, everyone flocked to glove making centres and for a while a lot of money was made – £1 to £1 ten shillings a week was common – until it was realised more gloves were made than sold. Working hours were slashed alongside wages; women earned four pence a day and men eight pence a day. Unemployed glovers packed the workhouses and by 1831 there were only 1,615 male glovers over the age of twenty working in the UK www.histpop.org. The situation improved slightly by 1841 with 9,000 (including silk glove makers), virtually half of them – 4,295 – were women. Ten years later, this had increased to 29,882 but fell each decade to 16,811 by 1871. The rot was irreversible. Machines were cutting and sewing gloves from the mid-nineteenth century and in the 1880s could perform most processes apart from hemming the welt on the opening of the gloves. In the 1881 census for England, Wales and Scotland (FindMyPast) there were a mere 5,661 glovers.
Worcester and its surrounding villages formed a major glove making centre from at least 1571. Between 1790 and 1820, half the glovers in Britain were based around Worcester with 30,000 people working for 150 manufacturers. Perhaps the most famous glove company was Dent, Allcroft and Co., which employed thousands of glove sewers, sending transport fifty miles around to collect finished articles from workers in their own homes. Their records for 1781–1853 are held privately at Gloucester Archives; contact them for access. Founded in London in 1877, the Fownes Glove Company relocated to Worcester in 1887, employing more than 1,000 people.
The Worshipful Company of Glovers www.thegloverscompany.org, founded in London in 1349, is sixty-second in the order of preference. To ensure their customers weren’t swindled, a glove seller had to sell their wares by daylight, not candlelight, so the quality could be more easily inspected. Reflecting their plight, there were 120 in the Company in the first half of the eighteenth century, but only fourteen by the end. Their archives are at Guildhall Library. Their historic glove collection is on permanent loan to Bath Fashion Museum and viewable online at www.glovecollectioncatalogue.org.
Another guild involved in the glove trade was the Company of Fellmongers, originally the Glovers and Skinners Companies. A fell was the sheep’s pelt and the fellmonger separated the wool from the hide, selling it to the glove-making trade. The website of the Fellmongers Company, Richmond, Yorkshire www.fellmongers.org.uk has relevant photographs for their trade. Their minute books have been rediscovered; one in a university in New York and the other at a Sotheby’s auction in 1980, and the archives can be visited at York.
For glovers outside London, try the local records centre; for instance the Shropshire Record Office has a register book of the Glovers’ Company with records for 1638–1817. The Northampton Shoe and Boot Museum has leather craft information, although generally not genealogical. Be prepared for disappointment.
According to legend, lace was brought to England by Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), although few believe this to be true. Lace was popular from the late Tudor period (one of Queen Elizabeth I’s ruffs reputedly cost £3,000), but its favour depended on fashion. Queen Victoria’s wedding dress and her son’s christening gown, later worn by princes William and Harry, was made of Honiton lace, making it chic in the mid-1800s.