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The Birmingham Button Trade
by John P Turner
BEFORE the closing years of the
reign of Elizabeth, we find no trace of button making being
an established trade, employing any important number of people.
Buttons, in fact, are considered by Jos. Strutt, in his erudite
work on the “Habits of the English,” to have been
used down to that time almost solely for ornament. He says:—
“In the paintings of the 14th and succeeding centuries
these ornaments frequently appear on the garments of both
sexes, but in a variety of instances they are drawn without
the button-holes, and placed in such situations as preclude
the idea of their usefulness. Generally speaking, they were
made of gold or silver, or are so depicted with very few exceptions.
There is no reason to believe that the making of buttons was
considered a business until near the 17th century, when the
makers of the article formed a very considerable body. Their
whole trade seems to have been confined to the making of buttons
worked with the needle.
“In the fourth year of William and Mary, a new Act was
made in favour of the button-makers, which prohibited the
importation of all foreign buttons made with hair. This again
was followed by another six years afterwards, imposing a penalty
of 40s. for every dozen of covered buttons sold or set in
garments, it having been represented to Parliament that many
thousands of men, women, and children, within this kingdom,
did depend upon the making of silk, mohair, gimp, and thread-buttons
with the needle, and that great numbers of throwsters, spinners,
winders, and others, were employed in preparing the material
for such buttons.”
Whatever may have been the results of the Acts just referred
to, buttons seem to have maintained a progressive ascendancy
during the reigns that followed that of William III., and
became at times an extravagance, as in a comedy of the period,
quoted by Fairholt, wherein an imitation of French foppery
is thus satirized:—
“Next, then, the slouching sleeve, and our large
button,
And now our coats, flank broad, like shoulder-mutton;
Faced with fine colours—scarlet, green, and sky,
With sleeves so large, they’ll give us wings to fly
Next year I hope they’ll cover nails and all,
And every button like a tennis ball.” |
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Probably, soon after the reign of George
III. began, the fashion, which our forefathers can well
remember, for the wearing of cloth coats, with extensive
gilt buttons, commenced. In St. James’ Chronicle
of 1763 a writer, in describing the display of tradesmen
aping their betters, speaks of “the myriads of gold
buttons, and loops, high garteres {sic}, shoes, overgrown
hats,” &c., &c.; and in speaking of a certain
smith, with whom he came in contact, says he had “a
coat loaded with innumerable gilt buttons.”
At the end of the last century the fashion for gentlemen
was for “an exceedingly long tail-coat, having very
large buttons; tight buckskin breeches, buttoned at the
knee, and tied with bunches of ribbons;” and when
gaiters were added, those were buttoned all down, and
this fashion continued, with some variations, until about
twenty-five years ago, and included what may be called
the Augustan age of button-making in Birmingham. |
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