There were no sewing machines until towards the end of the Victorian era; no mass-production techniques, no way at all of making cheap clothes. If you were rich, you had a tailor make you a suit, or a frock, or whatever; and this you wore until it was beginning to show the dirt, at which stage it would be discarded because, of course, fine outer garments could not be washed without spoiling them.
Shirts and shifts and chemises and other unmentionables, of course, could be washed, and were; so they could be worn until they showed signs of wear, and then discarded.
The discarded clothes were usually given to the servants, who would wear them until they reached the next stage of decay and then - this is the important bit - sell them. Good second-hand clothes commanded quite high prices - remember Fagin's boys picking pockets and risking the gallows just for handkerchieves - and would be worn with a certain amount of pride by the better-off of the working class. Then they would go back to the old-clothes shop and gradually work their way down the social scale. A street urchin would wear clothes which had got to the stage of possessing no value at all.
Old trousers, then; an old coat, usually too big, because clothes made expressly for children would be passed down within families rather than placed on the open market; some sort of shirt. If shoes )which were rare), then certainly no socks; in winter the feet would be wrapped in rags, which also served to make the ninth-hand shoes fit small feet. No underwear. The clothes not washed except by the rain, and worn until they literally fell to pieces, when they were - not discarded, but made up into bundles to be sold to the shoddy-merchant. The shoddy mill would turn old woollens into felt, old cotton and linen into paper
Our modern ideas of recycling are pitiful compared to Victorian p;ractices!
Shirts and shifts and chemises and other unmentionables, of course, could be washed, and were; so they could be worn until they showed signs of wear, and then discarded.
The discarded clothes were usually given to the servants, who would wear them until they reached the next stage of decay and then - this is the important bit - sell them. Good second-hand clothes commanded quite high prices - remember Fagin's boys picking pockets and risking the gallows just for handkerchieves - and would be worn with a certain amount of pride by the better-off of the working class. Then they would go back to the old-clothes shop and gradually work their way down the social scale. A street urchin would wear clothes which had got to the stage of possessing no value at all.
Old trousers, then; an old coat, usually too big, because clothes made expressly for children would be passed down within families rather than placed on the open market; some sort of shirt. If shoes )which were rare), then certainly no socks; in winter the feet would be wrapped in rags, which also served to make the ninth-hand shoes fit small feet. No underwear. The clothes not washed except by the rain, and worn until they literally fell to pieces, when they were - not discarded, but made up into bundles to be sold to the shoddy-merchant. The shoddy mill would turn old woollens into felt, old cotton and linen into paper
Our modern ideas of recycling are pitiful compared to Victorian p;ractices!
