A Stolen Garment or a Reasonable Purchase? The Male Consumer and the Illicit Second-Hand Clothing Market in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The trade in second-hand clothing has been well documented, particularly during the eighteenth century.1 Second-Hand or ‘cast-off clothing allowed poorer consumers to participate in the expanding consumer market. Used clothes were not necessarily cheap, but at around a quarter of the price of new, were more affordable to less the well off.2 However, it has been suggested that as the price of new clothing fell, particularly during the second quarter of the nineteenth century,3 there was a corresponding decline in the importance of the second-hand clothes trade. Francis Place noted that by the 1830s people no longer wanted to wear second-hand clothes, leading to a noticeable decline in the number of ‘old clothes’ sellers in London.4 Second-Hand clothing became increasingly associated with poverty and destitution, especially as knowledge about the transmission of disease through clothing spread beyond medical circles, following the cholera epidemics of the 1830s.5 Thus it is generally supposed that the second-hand clothes trade was in decline by the second quarter of the nineteenth century. However, this narrative is largely based on studies of London and the larger northern cities; the second-hand clothing trade in smaller towns and the countryside has not been systematically documented.6 Moreover, much attention has focused on women’s involvement in trading second-hand clothing;7 the working man being largely overlooked.8