clothing for the working class for 1700-1800

gillyflower

gillyflower

Always caring about others
I am hoping someone can help in this matter. It might seem a stupid question - but every website i find related to clothing & hair for the working class person simply show fashionable people who are obviously not your average working man & his family. I am sure Joe Bloggs who was perhaps an ag lab didn't wear these sort of clothes. If anyone knows of a good book or website that I could try - I would be very grateful
 
There's an excellent book by John Styles: The dress of the people: everyday fashion in eighteenth-century England (Yale University Press, 2007). For a little taster see:

http://www.
johnstyles.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/dressofpeople.htm

Also try Shire books, e.g. Occupational Costume by Avril Lansdell. I am sure there must be lots of good websites too . . . will go and see if I can find any.
 
Also, there is English Costume, the write-up of which says,
"Fabulous descriptions of English styles of dress dating from the 11th century until 1830, with lots of beautiful illustrations. Essential reading for all family historians as it helps us all to imagine how our ancestors will have dressed on a day to day basis"

I like the "on a day to day basis" :)

Have a look here.
 
Huncamunca. Jan, and Ann many thanks. I have bookmarked all of them to look at later. They certainly look more promising than the sites I found.
 
Another possibility is "Costume of Yorkshire" from 1814, available on CD - see here.

The people selling via Parish Chest have it on their own site too, where you can see the CD insert with a sample image from the book/CD - http://www.
yorkshireancestors.co.uk/costume-of-yorkshire-1814---cd-18-p.asp
 
There is also a series of books which go by the title of A History of Everyday Things in England" written by Marjorie and Charles Quennell. They were written primarily for children (I remember them from my schooldays) but are full of illustrations of all sorts of things, including costumes. Certainly one of them is available on-line at http://
archive.org/details/historyofeveryda00queniala

Ann
 
A French traveller, I think it was Alexis de Tocqueville, was much impressed by the fact that, as far as he could judge, British and American working men wore the same types of clothes as the middle and upper classes; he regarded this as a symbol of democracy. If one looks, for example, as navvies working on the railway, they are wearing shirts, waistcoats and neck ties. just like their bosses. Work clothes were of course older and shabbier, but on Sundays the workers would wear their "Sunday best"!
 
That is very true euryalus - sunday best was always worn on sundays and important days. I do however disagree with the french traveller about the navvies working on the railway. I do find it hard to get my head around them working in shirts, neckties and waistcoats!
 
gillyflower said:
That is very true euryalus - sunday best was always worn on sundays and important days. I do however disagree with the french traveller about the navvies working on the railway. I do find it hard to get my head around them working in shirts, neckties and waistcoats!
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If you google photographs of navvies, one of the websites that comes up is that by Roger Worsley: http://
rogerworsleyarchive.org/index.php?p=1_36_Navvies

Take a peek. ;)
 
gillyflower said:
I do find it hard to get my head around them working in shirts, neckties and waistcoats!
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The "neckties" would have been worn as sweat rags, particularly during the great days of railway construction during the 1840s and 1850s. However, the waistcoats seem to have been universal. They normally wore mole-skin trousers and "donkey jacket"- style short coats, which I think were known as "pea jackets" or "pilot jackets" in those days.
 
gillyflower said:
Thanks Jan . I am amazed. euryalus I have heard of pea jackets but not pilot jackets
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I think there is confusion between what the Victorians meant by "pilot jacket" (ie a sort of heavy woollen nautical jacket) and flying jackets. When I searched Google images for "pilot jacket" all I got was flying gear.
 
Pilot coats or pilot-cloth coats were made from a heavy woollen cloth, usually dark blue. Some of the Witney blanket manufacturers made pilot cloth in the nineteenth century: only a couple of days ago I was looking at a tiny sample of 'pilot' made in Witney at Charles Early's mill (in the 1870s I think). It was thick and felty, and very dark blue, almost black.
 
Thank you Huncamunca and euryalus for the information on pilot jackets. They seem like they must have been warm.
 
I have just been looking through a circa-1933 dictionary, and it is interesting to note that "Donkey Jacket" does not appear - jackets of that type were still generally known as pilot jackets, pea jackets or sometimes "monkey jackets" - though I would have thought that a monkey jacket was usually a sleeved waistcoat (?). I think the tunics worn by American Civil War soldiers were also known as pea jackets, although these were of different design, being single-breasted, with high collars.
 
euryalus said:
I have just been looking through a circa-1933 dictionary, and it is interesting to note that "Donkey Jacket" does not appear
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The OED quotes the earliest known usage, from the Morning Post of 4 October 1929: 'Members of the City Corporation wanted to know at yesterday's meeting at the Guildhall what a donkey jacket is... Mr. Gower explained that the jacket was one with leather shoulders and back.'
 
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