A UNIFORM APPEARANCE: WHAT DID OUR ANCESTORS WEAR IN INSTITUTIONS?
Dress historian Jayne Shrimpton considers the clothes worn by our forebears in institutions and reveals what these garments can tell us about the past
Dress historian Jayne Shrimpton considers the clothing in prisons, workhouses & schools
Many of our poorer ancestors wore prescribed clothes or uniforms provided by institutions such as charity schools, asylums, workhouses and prisons – garments sometimes more hygienic than those in which they arrived, but often basic and illfitting. Institutional dress served many functions, including controlling and classifying inmates: reforms occurred over time but practices varied widely, right up to the 20th century.
Charity school uniforms
By the late-1700s around 1,300 charity schools run chiefly by religiously-motivated concerns educated well over 23,000 scholars. Most clothed their pupils: indeed, provision of garments was one of the main reasons why parents from the ‘lower orders’ sought charity school places for their offspring. The uniform appearance of children in their prescribed dress – commonly (but not always) blue for boys, and grey for girls – prompted many to be named ‘Bluecoat’/‘blue Coat’ and ‘Grey Coat’ schools.
Before 1900, most charity schools retained a style of uniform reflecting the era of their foundation (generally 1500s to 1700s): hence boys in several Bluecoat Schools wore a form of Tudor dress comprising long coat or gown, white neckband, breeches, stockings and Holbein cap, other school uniforms emulating traditional clerical garb. Inevitably, by the 19th century pupils’ quaint charity school costumes appeared decidedly antiquated, yet were celebrated by the schools’ benefactors and local worthies, their display appealing to wealthy Victorians. Reporting in 1870 on the annual street procession and church service in St Paul’s Cathedral for pupils of all London and Westminster charity schools, The Graphic commented: ‘A prettier or
more touching spectacle can hardly be imagined…the effect of the differently-coloured costumes [was] most striking and picturesque’.
Typically charity school children received a new set of clothes annually, the girls, who learned needlework and garment-making, usually sewing their own uniforms. The unostentatious grey or blue clothes and modest accessories favoured in such schools produced a neat, standardised appearance, their fabrics plain, in economical colours. Grey woollen cloth was often a blend of the natural black/grey/off-white yarns used in its weaving, blue dye cheap and easily sourced from the common cabbagelike woad plant. One historian suggests that blue, associated with the Virgin Mary, represented Christian charity, but essentially grey/beige and blue garments were worn for centuries by servants and poorer working people.
The pupils’ distinctively-styled uniforms of humble quality reminded them that they were the recipients of charity: this must have been humiliating, yet perhaps some appreciated having decent clothes to wear and a useful education, unlike many other poor children. Some early charity schools survive today, including Christ’s Hospital, West Sussex (founded 1552), whose pupils recently voted overwhelmingly to keep their unique Tudor-style uniforms.
Lunatic asylums
In Georgian ‘madhouses’, neglected inmates, especially the incontinent, were often denied the basic dignity of clothes. Most early establishments, privately-run for profit, took little responsibility for clothing the ‘insane’, although ultimately lack of decent garments was due to inadequate parish provision of clothing for their pauper ‘lunatics.’ Any dress items that they did receive were usually second-hand, of inferior quality.
Some exceptions existed, like Lancaster and Wakefield asylums and the York Retreat, a Quaker asylum founded in 1796: these practiced ‘moral treatment’, a new concept focusing on the emotional and rational aspects of insanity. In such pioneering
institutions patients were encouraged wherever possible to lead ‘normal’ lives, keeping occupied and wearing ordinary clothes. Moral therapy also involved abandoning primitive restraints like straightjackets, leg irons and restraint-chairs and introducing more humane clothing that did not restrict natural movement. At Hanwell Asylum from 1839 resident physician John Conolly devised ‘strong dresses’ for patients who repeatedly destroyed their garments: clothes of sturdy fabric difficult to tear, with ‘teethproof ’ leather collars and cuffs. He also introduced secure warm boots to protect the feet of patients refusing to lie down. His reforms influenced the eventual cessation of mechanical restraints in the treatment of the insane.
Conolly championed new, comfortable clothes for patients that were appropriate for the season, kept tidily and neatly worn. By contrast, elsewhere, to cut costs, female lunatics were denied respectable headcoverings and men received ill-fitting, worn clothes, old-fashioned leather breeches and dyed army-issue jackets. Many asylums remained private, unregulated concerns and conditions varied enormously until in 1845 the Lunatics Asylums and Pauper Lunatics Act enforced the construction of facilities throughout England and Wales that would also accommodate all the pauper lunatics from local workhouses. Over 100 public asylums were built, their inmate populations reaching almost 91,000 in 1901: they were monitored, regulated and inspected annually by teams of Lunacy Commissioners.
Initially most new Victorian asylums introduced patient uniforms – homogeneous, recognisable outfits in plain, serviceable fabrics. Even when an ‘official’ uniform was unintentional, the economical bulk purchase of fabrics effectively created a mass-produced, ‘uniform’ appearance. At Hanwell Asylum, for example, men wore grey broadcloth suits, the women gowns of grey linsey (stout linen cloth). Conolly believed that Hanwell’s male pauper lunatics benefited from a smart, standardised appearance, although each could choose his own hat and neckerchief. However, evidently many women preferred selecting their own clothes: exercising personal taste and taking pride in their appearance had a soothing effect on many female patients.
Inevitably, conditions and dress
continued to differ between and even within Victorian asylums. In 1870 inspectors at Derby County Asylum found the women ‘remarkably clean and well dressed’, but men untidy, too many wearing the ‘strong dresses’ reserved for refractory patients. Elsewhere too commissioners noted the disarray of men’s old, buttonless clothes, indicating neglect by male attendants. Some wards within an asylum provided better quality garments than others and in asylums for both pauper and private patients, superior clothes, or permission to wear their own, was a privilege paid for by the wealthy.
Gradually, medical opposition to uniforms increased: some detractors considered them depressing, implying a long stay, contrary to the purpose of asylums – to equip patients for return to regular life; others found the insistence on strict asylum uniforms in certain asylums as overly disciplinarian. Physician J. Mortimer Granville recognised that while some patients habitually tore their clothing because it felt uncomfortable, others simply ‘do not like their costume’. He advocated raising standards of dress, to help in the treatment of lunacy by encouraging pride in appearance and greater self-respect.
He also suggested reserving superior apparel as a reward for good conduct, using clothes to aid patient recovery. Gradually improvements were made in many asylums, late-victorian and Edwardian commissioners applauding the cheerfulness and variety of (chiefly female) dress. Strong dresses were completely discontinued, although uniform-like dress persisted in some institutions, like Severalls Hospital, Essex, until c.1960.
Workhouses
Under the Old Poor Law theoretically each parish clothed its paupers. Some early poorhouses and workhouses supplied only the most needy, while others routinely removed inmates’ own clothes and issued house dress, to avoid ‘infectious distempers’ or as a punitive measure. In some districts the poor received generous supplies of bonnets, caps, all necessary apparel, fresh linen and even wigs, but managers like George Nicholls of Southwell, Nottinghamshire in the 1820s, believed the poorhouse should be viewed with dread, its conditions and clothing ‘strict and repulsive’.
In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act restricted the issue of clothing as outdoor relief and attempted to make the workhouse the only recourse available to able-bodied paupers, effectively compelling many to don prescribed dress. But both before and after the Act, the extent to which residents wore workhouse dress, and whether it constituted a recognisable ‘uniform’ depended on various factors. Officially the Act stated that in the new Union workhouses inmates should surrender their clothes and adopt ‘the workhouse dress’, which ‘shall, as far as may be practicable, be made by the paupers in the workhouse’. The regulations did not stipulate that clothes must be uniform, but, as ever, economies of scale meant bulk purchases of identical materials and items; additionally, much clothing was issued from existing stock, so the same garments were worn repeatedly by different inmates.
Victorian workhouse inmates were classified by age, sex, health, marital status, work capability and behaviour. Like other institutions, workhouses aimed at moral reform and dress, especially uniforms, was integral to their smooth functioning. In some, rough clothes purposely symbolised harsh conditions: for instance, in Kent workhouse boys received torn, stained trousers, jacket or smock and wooden clogs – cheap footwear otherwise scarcely known in southern England. Sometimes inmates were in fact better clad than the rags they wore upon admission, but presumably the stigma of debasing workhouse dress usually outweighed any material benefits.
Workhouses accommodated increasing numbers of elderly and infirm long-term inmates, prompting growing concern for these vulnerable residents. In 1892, the Bristol Mercury reported how Islington Union had made a ‘distinctly revolutionary change’, providing ‘ordinary clothes’ instead of the ‘hideous and degrading’ workhouse uniform for those aged over 60 to wear in public. In 1893 the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor recommended a generous clothing allowance including regular and Sunday suits, several shirts, underwear, neckwear and cap or hat for men; full sets of both winter and summer apparel for women. Uniforms persisted in some workhouses, but generally dress received more consideration, for instance at East Chiltington Union Workhouse, where in 1913 the authorities lengthily debated the merits of overcoats versus smocks for their elderly male residents.
Prisons
When prison reformer John Howard inspected English prisons in 1777, only three used uniforms: Nottingham, Warwick and Reading, where they were issued mainly to curb the spread of gaol fever. Two years later he admired the green
striped uniforms worn by men in the new Horsham gaol – pristine outfits superior to those typically worn upon admission: they also prevented prisoners from using clothes to bribe warders and immediately identified escapees. However, until after the mid1800s, clothing practices varied widely throughout the prison system.
The basic goals of prisons were incarceration and punishment but during the 1800s the introduction of new concepts of repentance and reform elevated the role of uniforms. Initially, their issue was patchy, reflecting the conflict between local authorities under pressure to house offenders economically, and government officials and penal reformers. The Gaol Act of 1823, aimed at regulating local prisons, stipulated that uniforms could be imposed if ‘expedient’. In practice, most county gaols and houses of correction issued inmates clothes, but generally town and borough gaols and debtors’ prisons did not.
Essentially early-victorian prisoners’ dress depended on how far each prison’s governors followed government guidelines. Predictably, in 1842 Millbank Penitentiary, built in 1816 and managed by central government, was generous in its allowance to female prisoners: 1 bonnet, 1 shawl, 2 night and 2 day caps, 3 pairs of stockings, 7 handkerchiefs, 2 pairs of shoes, a gown, 2 petticoats, 3 shifts and 3 aprons. Conversely, women at Colchester County House of Correction, Essex received just 1 day cap, 1 pair of stockings, 2 handkerchiefs, 1 pair of shoes, 1 gown, 1 petticoat and 1 shift.
Prison dress also reflected the regime under which they were confined. The opening of the ‘model prison’ at Pentonville in 1842 and launch of the ‘separate system’ prohibiting all communication between offenders saw its male inmates wearing what Henry Mayhew described as ‘a peculiar brown cloth cap [whose peak] hangs down so low down as to cover the face like a mask, the eyes alone of the individual appearing through two holes…’ Female inmates under the separate system wore black alpaca veils.
Most prison inspectors favoured uniforms, partly because if a man wore out his own clothes he stood less chance of gaining respectable employment upon release, becoming more likely to reoffend. New regulations in 1865 made it compulsory for all convicted criminals to wear uniform and, notwithstanding variations, these continued when the 1877 Prison Act brought all prisons under central government control. Prison officers also effected systems of classification, placing prisoners in different classes, like first-time offenders designated ‘Star Class’ who wore the Red Star on their uniform. Various badge systems were used, and/or different coloured garment facings, collars and linings. Modelled on military uniforms (aimed broadly at both ‘general uniformity and distinctive variety’), prison uniforms became even more complicated after 1898 when prisoners were organised into three Divisions, each symbolised by different uniform details. Arrows also characterised many uniforms, including women’s prison dress: in the 1880s at Woking women wore graded brown, green and navy uniforms, all stamped with broad arrows.
Gaol dress was, by nature, repressive and de-humanising, yet could be used to express resistance. Prisoners often made prison clothes and in the early-20th century Suffragettes communicated by stitching messages on fabric scraps circulated inside cotton reels and embroidered VOTES FOR WOMEN on the tails of male prisoners’ shirts.