Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain Read online

  These machines had been developed piecemeal, by several different inventors. After the initial crude chain-stitch machine had been invented to sew army uniforms in France in 1829, most of the innovations and improvements occurred in the United States in the 1840s and ‘50s. In England, Elias Howe Jr had produced a lock-stitch machine in 1846, but, seeing little prospect of financial return, had sold the patent on. In the USA Isaac Singer had seen a similar lock-stitch machine in 1850. It was so complicated that it required special training and then some skill to operate it, and even more technological know-how to service and maintain it. In 1851 Singer’s improvements were patented: the new machine now held the needle vertically, was made of iron not wood, and had toothed gears that didn’t jam, a spring that permitted variations in the thickness of the fabric without manual adjustment, and a presser foot to hold the fabric in place, which meant the operator could use both hands to control the cloth. The new machine could also, most importantly, sew in curves as well as the straight lines, which had been all the earlier machines had managed. Now an operative could produce 900 stitches a minute, instead of the 40 stitches a quick hand-sewer could make.30*

  Further improvements followed, but in England any improved machines were blocked by the patent for the earlier—and much inferior—machine. Finally in 1856 Singer opened an agency in Glasgow, to avoid paying English patent fees. Barran swiftly saw how this machine would solve his problem of the imbalance between the speed with which his mechanized bandsaws cut and the appreciably longer time it took his tailors to sew. He had the machines installed in his works, linked to steam-driven shafts instead of the machines’ original foot-powered treadle.32 Soon every Leeds clothing factory was using bandsaws, steamdriven sewing machines, and steam presses and button-holing machines. By the 1880s fifteen sewing-machine-manufacturing firms had set up in the city, and even more engineering works specialized in developing new machinery for this now enormously successful trade.33

  Technology and technological innovation were changing the entire face of fashion. Waterproof coats and shoes are two examples of this revolution. Before the nineteenth century, when it rained people either stayed inside or they got wet. There was no other possibility. Oiled-silk umbrellas were carried by some, but they were at best water-resistant, not waterproof. In 1823 Charles Macintosh, a Scottish chemist, patented a fabric which had a layer of rubber sealed between two layers of cloth, creating a waterproof material. He was not the first to use rubber to make fabrics waterproof, but his method, which used cheap coal oil, was better suited to large-scale, economical manufacturing than earlier versions had been. Macintosh joined together with a cotton manufacturer, and Charles Macintosh and Co. was set up the following year in Manchester, an ideal location. The city had shipping links with South America for rubber imports; it had a gasworks, for the supply of naphtha, used in softening the rubber; it was the cotton centre of the country, producing an endless supply of material suitable for waterproofing; and, like Leeds, it was also filled with engineering firms eager to work on adapting machinery for this new industry.34

  At first, waterproofed material found limited numbers of customers, although Captain Parry’s expeditionary team heading to the North Pole in 1827 carried waterproof bags. The problem was that the fabric turned brittle in cold weather, sticky in hot; it didn’t breathe, and therefore caused the wearer to sweat heavily; and, even worse, the rubberizing process saturated the fabric with a smell that was said to be easily detectable across the road from the coat’s wearer. In 1843 the process of vulcanizing rubber was developed: this led to the fabric being treated with sulphur, which kept it stable whatever the weather. Further developments throughout the decade continued to produce improvements, and by the Great Exhibition Bax and Co. showed its ‘Aquascutum’ cloth, which soon afterwards the army ordered in bulk for its Crimea-bound soldiers. Others benefited too: the India Rubber Waterproof Works in east London was ideally suited to gear up production quickly. By 1844 it already had a site covering 24,000 square metres, and when war was declared it managed to produce 50,000 waterproof suits for the departing soldiers in only forty days.35

  Civilians were no less slow to adopt the trend. The khaki colour the army used quickly caught on: Bax and Co. was pleased that ‘the officers of the guards began to wear light drab cambric capes on their way to field exercises, and the other young men as usual following their example, our material (especially of this drab colour) began to take with the public generally, and more and more as the value of it, and its really waterproof quality, became known.’36 Then the popular harlequin notion of a garment that performed two jobs at once, was adapted: in 1851 J. Smith advertised a ‘reversible waterproof Janus coat…two perfect coats in a pocket book’37—a coat, a waterproof and, as an extra, so lightweight that the whole thing could be folded up and put into a pocket. This was a popular idea: an advertisement in the Manchester Post Office Directory of 1854 promised a ‘5 oz.’ coat that ‘can be carried in a coat sleeve or pocket and folded up in the space of a cigar case!’; while an 1855 directory offered a ‘pocket siphonia’,* which could be put in the said pocket, or even in a hat.39

  Rubber affected shoe- and boot-making as much as it had overcoats, as did standardization. Shoes went from being personally measured and made to order to being produced in standard sizes fairly early on. From 1848 C. and J. Clark advertised that its lines were available in three widths it called ‘fittings’, and in seven sizes. In 1875 the company advertising boasted:

  We used to have only three fittings, the N narrow, M medium and S scotch. The narrow were seldom called for and we found that our range of fittings was not large enough to suit our customers and that…there was a demand for a fitting wider than N but not so extreme as S. We spent a great deal of pains and labour during two whole years in fixing on the best shape of soles, to cover all parts of the three kingdoms…and we flattered ourselves at having arrived as nearly at perfection as we could reasonably expect in all three points.40

  From the 1830s rubber had been used as a cheaper alternative to leather for soles, and from 1837 some boots incorporated another new rubber product—elasticated webbing—as inserts down the sides to replace laces.* Technology then raced ahead, which was welcome for shoe-making, an enormously labour-intensive task: in 1738 one shoemaster in London employed 162 people, each performing a different task.42 Sewing machines were in use in shoe and boot production by the 1850s; by 1858 American machines were imported to cut out soles in bulk; only a few years later, machine-sewn uppers, and soles attached by a new method of machine riveting, first appeared. By 1883 just 39 per cent of C. and J. Clark’s shoes were still hand-sewn.43

  The new technology changed methods of production, and it also changed what was produced. Once machines for mechanically riveting soles appeared, men’s shoes, with their heavier soles, became easier to produce. In 1863 Clark’s had had 334 men’s lines; in 1896 there were 720. In 1870 the company sold 235 types of boot for women and children; 124 types of slipper, and 36 types of shoe.† By 1883 the price of lighter footwear had been substantially reduced by the introduction of machine-welt sewing. Now there were 246 types of boot, 111 types of slipper, but 153 types of shoe; in 1896 the types of boot were reduced to 223 styles, slippers had only gone up to 144 types, but there were 353 types of shoe listed: ten times as many as twenty-five years before.44

  While these innovations in production brought new goods to market, an equally important change was occurring at the retail end of things. With mass-produced goods readily available, promotions via the kind of marketing and publicity wizardry seen in the previous century with Wedgwood became more frequent. Innovatory products filled the newly transformed shops and were being sold through the power of the emergent mass-circulation newspapers and periodicals. A leader in the field was Eleazer (later Elias) Moses (1783—1868), the son of a Jewish immigrant from Colmar. With his son Isaac (1809—84) he formed E. Moses and Son, in 1832 setting up a shop in the East End, on the Ratcliff High
way, and then moving into the City, to Aldgate. In their early days they specialized in supplying complete outfits for emigrants, a sadly large market in the hungry forties and for some time afterwards.* In 1845 Moses’s Wholesale Clothing Warehouse opened a shop around the corner from the Aldgate shop, in Minories; this increased the selling space fourfold; then the company took over neighbouring premises until the two shops had swallowed all the properties in between, and the Aldgate shop was rebuilt to give a seven-times increase on its original floor space.

  Moses and Son represented many of the trends that were to emerge throughout the century: low margins, high turnover and cash sales only were the obvious, and by no means insubstantial, ones. The Book of Economy: or, How to Live Well in London on £100 per annum, by ‘A Gentleman’, said in 1832 that two suits could be bought for 13 guineas; a City tailor advertised two suits in ‘extra superfine’ wool at £13. Moses and Son, with a less prosperous clientele, arranged ‘contracts’ with its customers, whereby the purchaser agreed to take two new suits a year, at £8 for two in broadcloth, or £6 10s. for a lesser-quality fabric. This was an extraordinary price, and one Moses and Son made profitable through bulk buying and low margins. But the ‘contract’ part was a sign of Moses and Son’s innovative approach, and shows how it managed to squeeze the last drop of profit out of such small sums. When the customer returned for his second suit, he handed the first, worn-out, one back to Moses and Son, which then sold it on to the secondhand trade.46

  The company’s marketing genius was every bit as crucial as its prices: the Aldgate shop was designed to reflect the most up-to-date luxury of the expensive shops in the West End, despite prices that were often more than 60 per cent lower. The shop had a three-storey-high classical portico, four-metre display windows, mahogany fittings throughout, and gas lighting (plus royal arms above the door, for which it held no warrant). The not-so-subliminal message was that cheapness did not mean loss of quality. Soon there were branches in Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, sitting comfortably beside the new department stores. Moses and Son also produced pamphlets extolling its wares, with titles like ‘Habiliment Hall’, ‘The Pride of London’, ‘The Dressing-room Companion or Guide to the Looking Glass’, ‘The Paragon of Excellence’ and ‘The Exhibition for All Nations’.47 Many had texts written in rumptytump jingles (probably by Isaac Moses), as, for example,

  CHRISTMAS EXHIBITIONS

  Once more the glad season of Christmas is here, And folks from the country in London appear, Some have come to a relative, some to a friend—To pass a few days ere the season shall end, And visit the fam’d ‘exhibitions’ of Town, Which have ever enjoy’d such a matchless renown, Some view the Museum—and others, St Paul’s—But there’s ONE ‘Exhibition’ where ev’ry one calls ‘Tis a place to which thousands with eagerness run—And that is the warehouse of MOSES and SON…48

  Others were produced in the style of magazine articles:

  Having been given to understand that the Establishment of E. Moses and Son was open to the public for inspection, I thought proper to avail myself of the opportunity, and having arrived at the premises, I entered the private Waiting Hall, where a youth in livery was waiting to attend the door…

  I…was much struck with the beauty and accommodation of the place…The Hall has an elegant staircase fronting the street…The principal Show Room is certainly an Exhibition. I consider that it has no equal; and if there were ‘really and truly’ such a person as Queen Fashion, I think her Majesty could not do better than select this splendid and spacious apartment for the holding of her levees and councils…

  The Ready-made Clothing department is undoubtedly the most spacious ever before witnessed; and on my asking whether so much room were absolutely necessary I was informed that the business could not be carried on with any less space…49

  This kind of cod-educational prose, designed to mimic magazines like the Penny Weekly and others that were read as much for selfimprovement as for entertainment, was in marked contrast to the style of other ready-made-clothing retailers, whose advertising was for the less upwardly earnest. A tailor in Chelsea advertised his shop in 1880 in a mixture of cockney, theatre and sporting slang:

  Pay a visit to C. Greenburg, the noted working men’s tailor, well known by everybody to be the only genuine clothing manufacturer in Chelsea for flash toggery. The above champion builder begs to thank his customers for their liberal support, and wishes to put them awake to the fact that he has dabbed his fins [put his hands] on a nobby swag of stuff [high-class bag of goods] for his ready brass, consisting of cords, moleskins, doeskin plushes, velveteens, box cloths, pilots, tweeds, &c.…A pair of ikey cords, cut slap up with the artful dodge and fakement [trimming] down the sides, from 10 bob. Proper cut togs, lick all comers, for pleasure or business wear, turned out up to the knocker [in fashion, stylishly], from a quid. A pair of kerseymere or fancy doeskin or any other skin kicksies [trousers], any colour, cut peg top, half tights, or to drop down over the trotters [feet], from 10 and a tanner to 25 bob, fit to toe it with any swell. Lavenders [perhaps gaiters or spats], built spanky, with a double fakement down the sides, and artful buttons at the bottom, any price you name, straight. Fancy sleeve vest, cut very saucy, tight cut round the scrag [neck] or made to flash the dicky [show the shirt front], from 9 bob. A discount made to prize fighters, shop lifters, quill drivers [clerks], counter jumpers, bruisers, snobs, scavengers, sparrow starvers [dung-sweepers], and lardy dardy blades on the high fly [foppish swells on a spree]…50*

  Unlike Moses and Son, Greenburg was appealing to the flash Harrys, the music-hall loungers, the street-smart spivs.* Yet Moses and Son’s market of upwardly mobile clerks was huge: in 1855 it was estimated that the firm was spending £10,000 a year on advertising (compared to the furniture shop Heal and Son’s, which spent £6,000, or Nichol’s—later Harvey Nichol’s—which had a budget of £4,500).53

  These figures show how important the retail trade had become to the economy. This was recognized at the time: good, elegant, modern shops were seen as an indicator of national prosperity, of plenty, and of general civilization. Good shops were modern shops: many books of the period made this assumption automatically. Tallis’s Street View in 1837 praised the completion of Nash’s new Regent Street: ‘The buildings of this noble street chiefly consist of palace-like shops, in whose broad, shewy windows are displayed articles of the most splendid description, such as the neighbouring world of wealth and fashion are daily in want of.’ Even the sweep of Oxford Circus was approved for being ‘as elegant in form as useful in application’.54 (It was ‘useful’ because carriages could turn easily around its broad curves.) Lincoln in the 1840s was commended for ‘several splendid shops, equal to anything of the kind to be found in far larger towns’, but condemned for its ‘unsightly masses of old buildings which disfigure the principal streets [which, it was hoped, would soon] be supplanted by erections unique with those which modern enterprize has produced’. Chester was similarly approved a decade later for the conversion of its shops ‘filled with plate-glass, and with all the brilliancy of the most modern art and taste’.55

  Stores were developing at the rate they were for a number of reasons: increased demand, new goods from new markets abroad, mass production. But one more immediate reason stands out: it was easier for people to get to and from the shops that held the goods they desired. It is hard to remember just how small most cities were, even in the nineteenth century, well after urbanization had created cities larger than had ever before been known. Central London in the 1830s was 6.5 kilometres across, north to south, and 10 kilometres east to west—its 2 million inhabitants were never more than an hour’s walk from the beginnings of more rural countryside. Manchester and Salford taken together were only 1.5 kilometres north to south, and the same east to west. Those who lived in the suburbs walked in to work if they could not afford their own carriage (and most could not), but would not think of coming into the centre specifically to shop. They bought locally,
and from itinerant sellers. From the 1760s some of the outer suburbs of London, like Islington or Kensington, had stagecoach services; by 1825 there were 418 routes across London, making 1,190 journeys to the City every day. Their destination shows that these were primarily used to transport people to and from work. It was the omnibus, arriving from Paris in 1829, that made the shopping journey a possibility for many. Within a decade, there were 620 omnibuses and 225 short-stagecoaches licensed in London.

  Omnibuses were not cheap to operate—each bus had a driver and a conductor, and was pulled by two horses. To run an omnibus 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, required a complement of 11 horses per bus. A horse cost £20 and the omnibus itself £100, so the start-up fixed capital cost was already £320. Then operating costs included feed, at 15s. per horse per week (or £429 per bus per year); and the costs of stabling, veterinarian bills and shoeing, as well as the maintenance and repair costs for the bus. There was a tax of 3d. per mile per passenger, which on an average route mounted up to 15s. per day, or over £270 a year. The wages of the driver and conductor were another £60 a year each; and, furthermore, many routes from the suburbs were along turnpike roads where tolls were still charged. The original omnibus design had had space for just fifteen passengers in the interior, with another three outside passengers beside the driver. The seemingly extortionate 1s. single fare to the suburbs, or the half-price 6d. fare in the centre of town, no longer looks so unreasonable. Not unreasonable, but affordable only by the prosperous middle classes.