Gloves, Past and Present

by Willard M. Smith

In France, glove-making as an industry, independent of the monasteries, was certainly well established in the twelfth century. In 1190 we find the Glovers of Paris organized under a settled code of statutes received from the king. Across the channel, gloves are first mentioned, as an incorporated trade, in Scotland, where the glovers formed a company called “The Glovers of Perth” during the reign of Robert III., who figures in Scott’s Fair Maid of Perth, and ruled between 1390 and 1406. This company was principally employed in making buck and doeskin gloves. Thence the trade spread over Scotland, but it did not long hold its importance. “Dundee” gloves enjoyed a picturesque fame; but Hull remarks, in 1834, that “they had little more than the term to recommend them.” Indeed, the greater part of them were made in Worcester, England, and were sewn cheaply, with cotton, instead of silk. A few gloves were also turned out in Montrose, Scotland; the leather for these, however, was sent from London.

In London, the glove trade had existed for many centuries, and originally was carried on in connection with the making of leather doublets and breeches. Deer and sheep skins were used chiefly; but after the introduction of kid gloves into England from France, the former country began to make kid gloves also, under the name of “London town-made gloves,” and thus to follow the more fastidious fashions of the French. The glovers of London were incorporated in the fourteenth year of the reign of Charles I., who, on the sixth of September, 1638, granted them a charter, in which they were styled: “The Masters, Wardens and Fellowship of the Worshipful Company of Glovers of the City of London.” As early as 1464, however, they had received their coat-of-arms. Even so, the Paris glovers must be acceded priority in importance, as their statutes date from 1190. Moreover, it has justly been said that gloves “came over with the Conqueror,” and were really introduced into England from France. Previous to 1066, the glove produced by the Saxons was a rude and shapeless thing, while the Normans brought with them the clever prototype on which the future glove of England was destined to be modelled.

Very early in their history the English began to experience commercial rivalry with the French, and one of the first products to be strongly affected, to England’s detriment, was gloves. As far back as the reign of Edward IV., in 1462, we find the English glove trade protected by prohibitory laws. These laws, in later years, must have become obsolete, as they do not appear ever to have been repealed, and foreign gloves were imported into the country soon after the Reformation. In 1564, however, England forbade any gloves from abroad to enter her ports. Nothing was said about the raw materials being brought from other lands; but France saw fit to curtail the shipment of kid skins outside her boundaries, and thus the English were thrown entirely upon their own resources. French kid gloves—whose quality, after all, it has been impossible to equal in other countries—continued to be smuggled into the British realm to a greater extent, we may believe, than the authorities then realized. The titled people, accustomed to having the best of everything, infinitely preferred the French luxury to the homemade article; and so, it was secretly procured. But, generally speaking, after 1564, the English manufactured their own gloves from native skins, and the trade increased and became prosperous.

On the occasion of the granting of the charter in 1638, certain abuses had crept into the industry, and it was to obviate these conditions that the document was demanded and granted by the king. It reads:

“Whereas, by an humble petition presented unto us by our loveing subjects, living in and about our Cities of London and Westminster, using the arte, trade or mistery of Glovers,

“We have been informed that their families are about four hundred in number, and upon them depending about three thousand of our subjects, who are much decayed and impoverished by reason of the great confluence of persons of the same arte, trade or mistery into our said Cities of London and Westminster, from all parts of our kingdome and dominion of Wales, that, for the most parte, have scarcely served any time thereunto, working of gloves in chambers and corners, and taking apprentices under them, many in number, as well women as men, that become burdensome to the parishes wherein they inhabit, and are a disordered multitude, living without proper government, and making naughtie and deceitful gloves: And that our subjects aforesaid, that lawfully and honestly use the said arte, trade or mistery, are, by these means, not only prejudiced at home, but the reputation the English had in foreign parts, where they were a great commoditie and held in goode esteeme, is much impaired. And also, that by the engrossing of leather into a few men’s hands, our said subjects are forced to buye bad leather at excessive rates, to their further impoverishment....” etc. ... etc.

In view of such abuses as these, the London Company was given very exclusive powers, one of which was “to search for and destroy bad or defective skins, leather or gloves.”

The name of the first Master of the Glovers’ Company has come down to us in certain parish registers of the seventeenth century, in which he is mentioned as “William Smart, of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, Glover.” In his parish the trade seems to have been especially flourishing.

Perhaps the London industry labored under greater difficulties, on the whole, than glove-making elsewhere. It had constantly to contend against the secret importation of French gloves into the capital city, and also to maintain its superiority over the imitations of the country manufacturers; for, in England, as in France, competition between the various glove centres was intense. Many London manufacturers, because they could not make their ventures pay, actually became importers and dealers in French gloves—either underhandedly, or openly, as the laws of the land would permit. Invariably they found this greatly to their advantage, since the price of French gloves was low, and the manner in which the duty could be evaded, at that date, ridiculously simple.

Despite the feelings and the best efforts of those Englishmen who sought to foster and strengthen the home glove trade, the prohibitory laws remained always more or less lax—chiefly because the aristocracy and gentry preferred the French glove, and, for the most part, were not interested in the welfare of English glovers and artisans—until, in 1825, the ban on imported gloves was officially removed. The effect upon France was electrical. The British ports were flung open to her at a time when Grenoble, Paris and her other glove cities were swinging back on the crest of the new wave of industrial prosperity and progress which had received its momentum in the days of the Empire—a period which witnessed the revival of much of the former elegance of France, so lately eclipsed by the Revolution. In 1832, the legal importation of French gloves into England was 1,516,663 pairs. As many more, in that same year, we may believe, were also smuggled into the country by the old methods. To France—and particularly to Grenoble—the English change of policy was one of the greatest boons which could have befallen a commercially ambitious people.