Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain. Judith Flanders

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 Highway, 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 СКАЧАТЬ