Ancestors At Work
Fur coats were once common winter wear. Melody AmselArieli looks at the lives of the people who made them
Did your relative work in the fur trade?
At this time of year, we’re all grateful for the coats that protect us from the cold. Fur coats have largely fallen out of fashion, but they were commonplace for our ancestors – and there was a thriving industry that made them.
During the 35-year reign of Henry II (1154–1189), fur workers were described as skinners. After obtaining skins through trapping or garrotting, they softened, cleaned, tanned and curried each piece, before fashioning them into garments.
In due course, well-to- do skinners dressed and sold skins in shops of their own. Some of these were located in specific areas, like Skinners’ Row in Lincoln and the area around Spital at the Shoreditch end of Bishopsgate Without.
In the 13th century, as demand grew, master furriers employed apprentices to prepare their skins. The Worshipful Company of Skinners, a Great Livery
Company of the City of London that developed from an earlier trade guild, received the royal charter in 1327. Its traders, manufacturers and merchants enjoyed not only high occupational status, but also the right to control their craft and trade.
Even then, fur garments followed fashion. Through the 1300s, stylish winter robes were often lined with tiny, soft, subtly hued squirrel skins imported from Russia and the Baltic region. A century later,
damask, velvet and crimsoncloth ones were furred with darker, fuller, imported sable, beaver, pine marten, fox and black lambskin linings.
Because of their cost, furs also designated social status. Under Henry VIII, for example, a sumptuary statute reserved lustrous, luxurious sable for members of the royal family, leaving lighter, less prestigious cat-like genet and lynx for dukes, earls and barons. Lower classes trimmed their robes and gowns with modest swathes of mink or marten, or made do with inexpensive squirrel or rabbit. However, the fashion for fur faded as more efficient interior heating solutions developed during the late 1500s.
Nevertheless in winter many of our forebears still braved freezing temperatures in fur-lined greatcoats and furred scarves, shawls, tippets, cloaks and capes, while travellers in carriages, carts and sleighs tucked bearskin robes around their feet.
A Dirty Job
Through the mid1800s, many furriers purchased preprocessed pelts directly from importers or traders. Others processed pieces themselves. After softening, washing and ‘drumming’ them with sawdust to remove oil and dirt, they scraped as much flesh and fat from their skin-sides as possible. Then they ‘fleshed’ them further with extra-sharp knives. Finally, the skins were tanned, dried and dyed.
After furriers sorted their pelts according to grain, grade, size, type, hair depth, texture and colour, they matched enough small pieces, if need be, to fashion single garments. According to The Complete Book of Trades (1842), “The even surface of muffs… is greater than the animal could pride itself upon during life; the skin being first cut up and assorted… [is] brought to match… Expert sempstresses [sic] join them together, so that when turned up and dressed all in the same direction, the whole fur assumes an even and regular appearance, as if it had grown originally in that form.” Though each garment required weeks of work, there was no need for speed except during the high season: mid- September through to the New Year. Then men, women and children sat stitching among a confusion of finished tippets, boas, fur caps and trimmings. A million hairs of fine, fluffy fur flew everywhere, wrote Londonborn Jewish novelist Israel Zangwill in The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies (1894), “covering everything, insinuating themselves everywhere, getting down the backs of the workers and tickling them… getting into their food and drink and sickening them… The irritating filaments gathered on their clothes, on their faces, on the crockery, on the sofa, on the mirrors… an impalpable down overlaying everything.” During the Victorian era, the expanding international fur trade and popularity of fur apparel demanded speedier production. As a result, this craft separated into two manual skillsets – processing pelts, and finishing fur garments. These eventually became even more specialised.
Fur blenders tinted, bleached or dyed furs, each according to its characteristics and purpose, accentuating certain shades and producing fine, lustrous results. Fur cutters selected, matched and cut pelts for making new pieces, repairs or alterations. After removing unusable portions, like rumps, tails, heads and necks, they sorted then sliced them into diagonal strips. Next they patterned them symmetrically, while showing the finest pieces to their best advantage. Fur trimmers laid out, dampened, stretched, pounded then blocked pelts on boards with nails. Next, following chalk-marked paper patterns, they roughly trimmed
‘A statute reserved lustrous, luxurious sable for members of the royal family’
them. Once dry and released, these were trimmed more closely, then moistened, brushed, steamed, pressed or combed to restore their nap and lustre.
Women’s Work
Fur-pulling, performed by girls and women, was the most unpleasant manual skill of all. It entailed plucking long, coarse hairs from sickly smelling rabbits, then laboriously scraping off the fine fur found close to their skin. “The fur-puller sits in a small barn, or out-house, on a low stool,” noted Toilers in London in 1889. “She has a trough in front of her, into which she drops the down as she pulls it off the rabbit-skins with her knife. Occasionally she stops to rub the knife with whiting, for the skins are greasy. The down gets into her nose and mouth. Her hair and clothes are white with it. She generally suffers from what she calls ‘breathlessness’, for her lungs are filled with the fine down, and she is always more or less choked.” This soft, silky down lined capes and cloaks, and stuffed mattresses, sofas and pillows. These were especially favoured by rheumatics, whose pain was aggravated by cold air. Yet fur-pulling paid poorly, usually 1s 1d for 60 skins.
As market demand increased, pelts were often fleshed, tramped, stretched and dyed in bulk in factories. Some floor workers managed beating machines that removed foreign matter, insect larvae and loose hairs. Others fed machines that disentangled them. Drummers tended tumblers filled with cleansing sawdust. Greasers lubricated the skin sides of pelts to restore oils lost in dyeing and tanning. Others snipped off tails, ears and other bits that might impede shearing machines.
By the late 19th century, the country’s fur trade was largely concentrated in London’s East End. Jewish immigrants, who had learned the trade in their fatherlands, were the best of the best. Many families worked endless hours in front-room workshops, inhaling countless stray animal hairs. Thankfully, in the early 20th century the Government enacted legislation to improve health-and-safety and general working conditions, and regulate the employment of women and children.