In recent times Leicester had a reputation for cheap cotton hose and “side-springs.” All the “Jemimas” in the kingdom came from Leicester, and the prototypes of Arthur Sketchley’s porky “Mrs. Brown at the Seaside,” and at half a hundred other places, and the fat old women pictured in the comic prints of 1860-1870, with their legs encased in white cotton stockings bulging over their “side-spring” boots, were fully furnished, as to coverings of legs and feet, from here. “Jemimas”—that is to say, “side-spring” boots—are no longer worn, but elastic webbing for other purposes continues to be a staple product.
Leicester became a boot and shoe manufacturing town in 1859. The trade began in a small way, but now employs close upon 40,000 people. Boots and shoes for women and children, and canvas shoes, are the kinds specially made. Fancy hosiery also is an important trade, and when jerseys were the fashion, about 1879, Leicester did very well. The blouse has probably come to stay, and Leicester rejoices in the prospect, for it has busy factories engaged in the production of them. In addition to these, and a host of minor industries, the stout tapestry fabrics used in upholstery, and particularly in the cushions of railway carriages, are made almost exclusively here.
And lastly, it was at Leicester in 1841 that the idea of railway excursions first occurred to Thomas Cook; and from Leicester to Loughborough, a distance of 10¾ miles, the first excursion train and the first Cook’s tourists set out, on July 15, 1841. The double journey cost a shilling and 670 excursionists took tickets.
CARDINAL WOLSEY
The site of the great Abbey of Leicester, the place where Cardinal Wolsey died in 1530, on his way from York to London, where he would undoubtedly have been executed had he survived the journey, lies beside the river Soar—own brother to the Saar in Alsace, and the Suir in Ireland—which skirts the western and north-western sides of the town, and has always rendered it subject to floods.
You come to the site of Leicester Abbey by way of many hosiery factories, whence emerge the warm oily smells of wools and worsteds and the click-clack of machinery; and thence by Frog Island. The Abbey of St. Mary de Pratis, i.e. “St. Mary of the Meadows,” stood, as its name indicates, by the water-meadows of this sluggish river. The site, with merely the old surrounding precinct wall, is alone left, and even the first secular mansion built there stands a roofless ruin.
Wolsey was under arrest, and worn with illness and misfortune, when he came here. In the words of Shakespeare:
At last with easy roads he came to Leicester,
Lodged in the abbey; where the reverend abbot,