"That sash will hang you": Political Clothing and Adornment in England, 1780—1840

Author(s): Katrina Navickas

Source: Journal of British Studies , JULY 2010, Vol. 49, No. 3 (JULY 2010), pp. 540-565
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The North American
Conference on British Studies

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 "That sash will hang you": Political Clothing
and Adornment in England, 1780-1840

Katrina Navickas

group of "Swing" rioters approaching his property near Salisbury.

On 25 November 1830,
Though their threat to breakJohn Benett,
his agricultural Tory MP for Wiltshire, met a
machinery obviously
disturbed him, Benett was also struck by their appearance. The leaders of the
group were wearing what he described as "party-coloured sashes." Benett warned
one leader: "I am sorry to see you with that sash on. . . . Young man, that sash
will hang you." The rioters blankly refused to take off their adornments and
continued toward his land. Benett called out the yeomanry but was unable to
prevent his threshing machines from being destroyed.1
The sashes carried potent layers of symbolism. The rioters may have worn "party
coloured sashes" in order to connect their campaign against the agrarian capitalist
economy with the wider political agitation of the time. The incident took place
only a week after Lord Grey became prime minister, a situation that encouraged
renewed pressure for parliamentary reform.2 Benett assumed that the leaders were
expressing a radical political point through their attire. He later told Parliament
that "the mob had been excited by the writings of Mr Cobbett and by the speeches
of Mr Hunt" (the nationally prominent campaigners for parliamentary reform).
Conversely, the leaders may have used parti-color, or pied, sashes merely as a means
of identification. This was a bold gesture in itself, as previous forms of plebeian
collective activity had often been enacted in disguise or at night. The rioters
asserted their aims through a vestimentary symbolism usually seen at holidays and

Katrina Navickas is lecturer in history at the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. This
research was undertaken during a temporary lectureship at the University of Edinburgh. She would
like to thank Stana Nenadic, Joanna Innes, and the editor and reviewers of the Journal of British Studies.
1 Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature of the Tear 1831, no. 73 (London,
1832), 462; William Cobbett, ed., Cohbett's Weekly Political Register, 89 vols. (London, 1828-35), 70:
4 December 1830; George Rude, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France
and England, 1730-1848 (New York, 1964), 154; Ian Dyck, William Cobbett and Rural Popular
Culture (Cambridge, 1992), 67.
2 Roger Wells, "Rural Rebels in Southern England in the 1830s," in Artisans, Peasants, and Prole
tarians, 1760-1860, ed. Clive Emsley and James Walvin (London, 1985), 134.

Journal of British Studies 49 (July 2010): 540-565

© 2010 by The North American Conference on British Studies.
All rights reserved. 0021-9371/2010/4903-0005$10.00

540

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 541

fairs: wearing carnivalesque adornments, they enacted their own interpreta

justice in a "world-turned-upside down."3 The law took a different view
man of the grand jury for the special assizes, Benett ensured that justice w
though the sashes led the Swing rioters not to hanging but to seven ye
portation.4
The Swing sashes were just one demonstration of the contested fabric
lar politics in England during the later Hanoverian era. Recent studies o
movements in this period have emphasized the role of myriad means of
expression, including broadsides, music, and drinking toasts.5 This artic
that clothing and material adornments were a prominent part of this
participatory culture. Political clothing existed in numerous types that enab
classes to voice their opinions about their place within the constitution
more, symbolic clothing evolved in its uses and meanings during thi
Though many forms of dress shared a long history of political symbo
French Revolution and renewed debates about parliamentary reform
"rights of man" gave new meanings to traditional emblems and colors. A
and opportunities to display, forms of political clothing expanded in th
especially at the "mass platform" reform meetings from 1815 onward.
The first part of this article demonstrates how the middle and working c
appropriated well-established ways of political dressing from the elite.
clothing manifested a popular desire to "fit in" with the body politic. These
extended from the cheap and easily accomplished (ribbons at election
specialized and more difficult to produce (uniforms). Despite the sharin
ions and emblems among classes, however, dress was still the most ob
dicator of one's social position and gender, and this affected how politi
ments were used and perceived. The second part argues that the workin
could covertly express their own symbolism in customary activities, as a m
"stand out" or to subvert everyday norms as a means of protest. The
coloured sashes," for example, were threatening in the context of Swing bu
also a celebratory emblem of community in the context of festival customs
Clothing was an optimum means of public communication. Colors, sha
styles of dress were more instantly recognizable to the illiterate or to mass
than the rhetoric of textual and oral propaganda was, although text, s
and symbolism were usually employed simultaneously to reinforce one
Visual symbols were what Paul Pickering terms "class without words"
emblems of popular discourse that encapsulated the principles and iden
social groups.6 As Lynn Hunt identifies, emblematic clothing made "a
position manifest" and, in so doing, "made adherence, opposition, and indiff
possible."7 Material adornments could serve as visual reminders to prove a p

3 Peter Jones, "Swing, Speenhamland and Rural Social Relations: The 'Moral Economy' of
Crowd in the Nineteenth Century," Social History (London) 32, no. 3 (August 2007): 27
4 "United Parliament," Examiner, 13 February 1831; "Special Commission for Wiltshire,"
Telegraph, 10 January 1831.
5 James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England
(Oxford, 1994), 147-66.
6 Paul A. Pickering, "Class without Words: Symbolic Communication in the Chartist M
Past and Present, no. 112 (February 1986): 155.
7 Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984), 53.

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 542 ■ NAVICKAS

point or reinforce collective memory. Furthermore, such sym

ings that political leaders could manipulate according to t
circumstances.8
Historians of the French Revolution would see nothing
political clothing. Richard Wrigley, for example, has argu
and inescapable politicization of dress beyond the institut
litical life" in revolutionary France. This extended far beyond
of tricolor cockades, the "sans-culottes," and the "Cap of
colors, and positioning of dress and adornments were und
as successive revolutionary regimes attempted to refashion th
society and government. Dress in France shifted from a sump
social status to a contested body of political identities.9
This prominent role of vestimentary symbols in France mad
of the Revolution acutely sensitive to the wearing of poli
such items were well established or seemingly benign. Stu
in England have therefore focused on particular items of
ernment regarded as significant and politically dangerous. Ja
Pickering have highlighted three iconic items used in extrapa
for reform: the Cap of Liberty, the white hat, and the fustian
from John Wilkes in the 1760s to the mass platform orators
the red Phrygian cap as a symbol of defiance against the unr
white hat, sported by "Orator" Henry Hunt from 1816 o
be taken up by his supporters as a mark of their comm
reform. Fustian is a rough, piled cotton that formed an integ
class clothing. In the 1840s, Chartist leader Feargus O'Co
jacket to identify with his audience, who embodied their
collective identity of "fustian jackets and unshorn chins."
the politicization of adornment in this period has concentr
item: the powdered wig. John Barrell's account of William Pi
on hair powder in 1795 reveals how the French war inten
that Pitt's opponents made between wigs, the economic
powder them, and wider corruption in the body politic.12
While not denying the importance of these specific symbols
that these items should be seen as just one part of a wh
clothing. Although not as iconic as the Cap of Liberty, other,
items formed a communicative code that both popular pol
in the wider crowd understood. Participants in demonstra
of collective action drew from a long tradition of symbolism
these emblems originated in popular festival customs; the

8 Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northe

6.

9 Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France

(Oxford, 2002), 259; Michael Sonescher, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French
Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 2008); Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and the French Revolution (London, 1988).
10 James Epstein, "Understanding the Cap of Liberty: Symbolic Practice and Social Conflict in Early
Nineteenth-Century England," Past and Present, no. 122 (February 1989): 75-118.
11 Pickering, "Class without Words," 154.
12 John Barrell, The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s (Oxford, 2006), 159.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 543

function of temporarily overturning established modes of behavior. In o

types of clothing could be subtly displayed without the risk of violence
that came with sporting something as obvious as a white hat or a sas
This article furthermore calls for historians of clothing to engage with
of popular politics. Textile historians usually focus on the economi
aspects of fashion. Beverley Lemire, for example, has argued that ty
filtered down the social scale more quickly in the later eighteenth ce
wider availability of cheaper cotton cloth enabled the lower classes t
drab, unremarkable background" of dark woollens and to follow th
clean dress of the rich.13 This shift is relevant to political clothing. As w
shared forms of vestimentary emblems enabled the middle and working
venture further into a political foreground previously dominated by the
examining the potent and often critical role of clothing and adornment
politics, both textile and political historians can (re)discover "the ma
the sign."14
Symbolic clothing also offers a way of conceptualizing the nature
engagement among social classes, especially before the enlargement of th
franchise in 1832. The predominant framework to describe political
and debate outside Parliament remains Jiirgen Habermas's idea of
sphere." The term has widened to mean a space, as well as a flow of i
through print media, and has expanded its social makeup beyond th
intelligentsia. Historians now search for a "plebeian public sphere"
"multiple public spheres." The concept arguably has become so ubiqu
encompass almost everything and thereby denote nothing.15 It is difficu
the construct to forms of politics that were not bourgeois, textual, or "r
Indeed, clothing is the most common form of expression that does n
within the latter three categories.
The "body politic," a concept conceived by Richard Sennett and Jud
provides a useful alternative model.16 Whereas the public sphere rel
dividual's engagement with debate in text or discussion, the body pol
the formation of a group identity through collective expressions of self.
clothing was an articulation of both individual self and collective identit
the performance of wearing symbolic items, individuals used their bodie

13 Beverly Lemire, "Second-Hand Beaux and 'Red-Armed Belles': Conflict and th

Fashions in England, c. 1660-1800," Continuity and Change 15, no. 3 (December 200
Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (N
2007); Jennie Batchelor, Dress, Distress and Desire: Clothing and the Female Body in Eight
Literature (Basingstoke, 2005); Miles Lambert, "'Cast-off Wearing Apparell': The Con
Distribution of Second-Hand Clothing in Northern England during the Long Eighteen
Textile History 35, no. 1 (May 2004): 1-26.
14 Nicholas Blomley, "Making Private Property: Enclosure, Common Right and the Wor
Rural History 18, no. 1 (April 2007): 4. See the special issue on material culture, Jou
Studies 48, no. 2 (April 2009).
15 James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 18
bridge, 1993), 105.
16 Harold Mah, "Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historia
of Modern History 72, no. 1 (March 2000): 153-82; Peter Lake and Steven Pincus, "R
Public Sphere in Early Modern England," Journal of British Studies 45, no. 2 (April

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544 ■ NAVICKAS

a part in the wider body politic.17 Rousseau notably disc

Contrat Social (1762), though he warned of the damagin
external presentation and inner moral self. Dress could be
political identity when under threat of suppression. This was
with radicals in both France and Britain, who were under
surveillance from the 1790s onward.18
Caution must be raised about the limitations of surviving sources. Contemporary
descriptions of the appearance of crowds could, of course, be as unreliable as
misheard speeches or biased underestimations of attendance. Many newspaper
reports of political activity made no mention of clothing but rather concentrated
on the banners visible at events. The eyes of authorities (like those of later his
torians) therefore gravitated toward distinctive or unusual emblems. Admittedly,
working men and women found it more convenient to attend demonstrations in
their everyday wear than to purchase costly items purely for the occasion. This
article draws on a wider range of pictorial sources and records of folk traditions
to show that even the ordinary could become spectacular in particular contexts.
Colored ribbons or "Sunday best," otherwise unremarkable, could carry potent
connotations when worn at political demonstrations.19

Electoral adornment was the most obvious form of political clothing in the
eighteenth century. "Orange Jumper," a print by James Gillray, caricatures a prom
inent Whig supporter during the Yorkshire election of 1807 (fig. 1). The corpulent
figure wears a red coat and orange breeches and waves a hat adorned with orange
ribbons in honor of his chosen candidate, Lord Milton.20 The symbolism of orange
had remained unchanged since the Whigs adopted the color in honor of William
of Orange and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Gillray's depiction of electoral
symbolism hardly differs from the items in William Hogarth's 1754 series of elec
tion paintings, where Whigs and Tories are distinguishable by their orange and
blue ribbons and banners, respectively.21 The Tories were associated with "true"
blue, although they did not have hegemony over the color. Whig-radical Charles
James Fox wore a blue frock coat and buff waistcoat in Parliament from 1782

17 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York, 1993), 95; Richard
Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (Cambridge, 1977); Wendy Parkins, "Introduction," in Fashioning
the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship, ed. Wendy Parkins (Oxford, 2002), 2; Paul A. Custer,
"Refiguring Jemima: Gender, Work, and Politics in Lancashire, 1770-1820," Past and Present, no.
195 (February 2007): 131-32. Again, this concept is common in French historiography: see Dorinda
Outram, The Body and the French Revolution (New Haven, CT, 1989).
18 Wrigley, Politics of Appearances, 230-32.
19 The political agendas behind clothing in Scotland and Ireland during this period are too large to
explore here. See Sally Tuckett, "Weaving the Nation: Scottish Clothing and Textile Cultures in the
Long Eighteenth Century" (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, forthcoming). I am indebted to
Tuckett for raising this idea.
20 James Gillray, "Orange Jumper," 1809, Prints and Drawings 1851,0901.1269, British Museum
(BM); M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of
Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (London, 1947), vol. 8. See the British Museum's collection
database search site at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database.aspx.
21 Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: Art and Politics, 1750-1764 (London, 1993), 152-84.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 545

orange Jumper.

Figure 1—James Gillray, "Orange Jumper" (1809). © Trustees of the British M

onward, allegedly in emulation of the uniform of George Washing

in the American Revolution.22 Local party colors, determined by
trons, complemented the preponderance of orange and blue. For
Francis Burdett's electoral color was purple, perhaps to differentiate h
his plebeian followers during his contests for Middlesex and Westm
and 1807. Hence his "beautiful, well-dressed women" supporters
handkerchiefs and ribbons from the windows of houses in "respec

22 "Stanhope Miscellanies," Quarterly Review 113 (1863): 250-51. The color ofthe
Whig earls of Lonsdale, was blue. They shifted to Pittite Toryism in the 1810s, but,
color of their old Tory opposition was orange. Westmorland election papers, 181
11, box 1144, Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle.

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546 ■ NAVICKAS

Figure 2—Anon., "The Queen of Clubs" (1786), caricaturing the D

"blue-and-buff." © Trustees of the British Museum.

London while distancing themselves from the rabble processing in the stree
below.23
Electoral ribbons and cockades were easily made, displayed, and recognizable
as symbols of political adherence. Once they adorned themselves with a ribbon,
nonvoters as well as voters instantly participated in the extraparliamentary political
process. Elite women went further by creating whole fashions from political colors
(fig. 2). A Whig account of the tumultuous Westminster election of 1784 com
mented that "the ladies, in their rage for Mr Fox, have adopted a dress in com

23 "Close of the Middlesex Election," Caledonian Mercury, 2 August 1802; Peter Spence, The Birth
of Romantic Radicalism: War, Popular Politics and English Radical Reformism, 1800-1815 (Aldershot,
1996), 180.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 547

pliment to him; it is to consist of a mixture of garter-blue and buff."24 In

the same colors—though diversified through the filters of gender, court f
and personal taste—these aristocratic women were able to partake in a
body politic. This was not simply window dressing. As Elaine Chalus h
female participation could consist of direct political influence through
and persuasion rather than mere display.25
The working classes wore colors on a smaller, cheaper scale, but with
sense of purpose. The "Old Chartist" and Halifax weaver, Benjamin W
called that during the Reform Bill agitation of 1831, his friend "determ
'I should have a new cap with a yellow (the 'Liberal' colour) girdle arou
which I was proud and wore it a long time."26 Local elites had no dou
the necessity for such symbolism to be promoted as widely as possible, and
emblems distributed indiscriminately contributed to the enormous cost
elections prior to the 1832 Reform Act. During the Chester election of
example, the Tory Grosvenor party alone spent up to £1,500 on colors,
and cockades. Furthermore, the wearing of colors often sparked partisan v
An 1827 act of Parliament forbade the distribution of ribbons, cockades, an
emblems of partisanship at elections in order to prevent such disturba
custom was so entrenched, however, that the act remained unenforceab
Similar adornments were displayed at patriotic events, a central featu
reign of George III. Government and loyalists promoted patriotism as
able (though not untroubled) means of allowing all classes some part in
political expression.28 As was the case with electoral symbolism, elites
selves as harbingers of fashion, though practices were quickly adapted by i
lower down the social scale. A caricature from April 1789, "Restoration
depicts fashions during the celebrations for George Ill's recovery from his
(fig. 3). Four ladies wear elaborate headdresses decorated with ribbons,
and sashes bearing such loyal mottoes as "The King Restored" and "Lo
the King G. R."29 Although the print was satirical, contemporary accounts
Hanoverian Court suggest the ubiquity of such adornment. The London
reported: "the ladies wore nearly the same kind of uniform caps. ... In
dresses were bandeaus of embroidered velvet with the motto of 'God save the
King.'" The emblems succeeded the "Regency caps" previously worn by the Pri
of Wales's party during the Regency crisis of 1788.30 Aristocratic funerary fashi

24 J. Hartley, History of the Westminster Election (London, 1784), 327; Anon., "The Queen of Clu
1786, Prints and Drawings 1868,0808.5564, BM.
25 Elaine Chalus, "Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late Eighteenth-Centur
England," Historical Journal 43, no. 3 (September 2000): 669-97, and "'Ladies Are Often Very G
Scaffoldings': Women and Politics in the Age of Anne," Parliamentary History 28, no. 1 (Febru
2009): 150-65.
26 Benjamin Wilson, The Struggles of an Old Chartist (1887), cited in Pickering, "Class with
Words," 155-56.
27 Frank O'Gorman, "Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The Social Meaning of Elections in
gland, 1780-1860," Past and Present, no. 135 (February 1992): 95, 104; 8 Geo. IV, c. 27, 21 J
1827.
28 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992).
29 Henry Kingsbury, "Restoration Dresses," 1789, Prints and Drawings 1851,0901.456, BM.
30 London Chronicle, 27 March 1789; M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires
Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (London, 1938), vol. 6.

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548 ■ NAVICKAS

Figure 3—Henry Kingsbury, "Restoration Dresses" (1789). © Truste

spread out to provincial society, encouraged by newspape

correspondence transmitting the exact details of current
court.31 After the death of George III in 1820, Elizabeth
woman from Halifax, Yorkshire, noted in her diary: "som
the King." A few days later, a seamstress arrived to make
with crape [sic] for mourning for our lamented King."32
of mourning the death of a monarch was fostered by a p
join in its public symbolism, although the working classe
black ribbon to spare the expense of full mourning dress.
The definitive mode of collective clothing was the unifo
complementary purposes: to unite and to distinguish. This du
evident during wartime, when patriotic propaganda fos
sition to "the other." British military uniforms were arg
miotically potent during the Napoleonic Wars. Demand fo
and home defense during the American and French wars
portion of Britons either wore uniform or regularly saw
the American War of Independence, English caricaturist M

31 Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings, Death in England: An Illustrated

222.

32 Elizabeth Wadsworth of Holden House, Ovenden, diaries and accounts 1787-1838, vol. 1, RMP:
1063, West Yorkshire Archives, Calderdale.
33 Colley, Britons, 183-84,186; Scott Hughes Myerley, British Military Spectacle: From the Napoleonic
Wars through the Crimea (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 15.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 549

the recruits at Coxheath camp in London as sporting increasingly ela

and blue cockades in their hats.34 Female fashion during wartime em
material emblems as a way of displaying patriotism; dresses were shaped
styles and colors, and cockades featured prominently on ladies' hats
unteer regiments had their uniforms provided either by their benevolen
officers or by public subscription. Their variations in color and ador
alized a very British kind of patriotism, representing both civic pride an
of freedom from government compulsion.36 In France, by contrast
tionary governments conducted serial debates about enforcing standard
for the National Guard and officials. Their explicit aim was a homogeneo
identity. This was, however, difficult to achieve in practice, partly
uniforms had contested meanings but also owing to practical difficu
and supply.37 Whereas the French revolutionaries attempted to erase the
pletely through decrees on dress, the British government relied o
efforts to display what in effect became a patriotism variegated by
Whig fear of a standing army no doubt contributed to this permissiven
Uniformed clothing in Britain and France also conveyed differing
of class. During the early stages of the French Revolution, the sumptuar
the ancien regime were suppressed in an attempt to inaugurate the
social equality. In Britain, by contrast, sumptuary laws had long sinc
his novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), Tobias Smollett
about the social confusion caused by female servants wearing their
expensive castoffs.39 Yet plenty of other displays of hierarchical identif
sisted, especially at ceremonial events such as parades of judges at th
assizes.40 Elite rank was marked more clearly than ever by the showy an
attire of the officers of the new volunteer regiments. Prints and newsp
quently parodied the volunteers for an effeminate concern for the finer
uniforms, especially when the costs of war began to bear down on t
subject.41 All classes remained acutely sensitive to the social distinctions
by silk, as opposed to woollen or worsted, clothing. Loyalist elites f
stratifying trend, often serving as officers in their local volunteer
1790s, some antiradical clubs designed their own uniforms to be wo
occasions. The privileged members of the central "Church and Kin
Manchester wore uniforms with buttons engraved with a picture
Church." The emblem was inspired by the high Anglican Collegiate C
the society's headquarters.42
Elite practices influenced the symbolism of dress, but political fashion

34 "Lady Gorget Raising Recruits for Cox-Heath," 1781, Prints and Drawings 1935,
35 See the portrait of Lady Worsley by Joshua Reynolds, 1776, Harewood House.
36 Austin Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 1794-1814 (Oxford, 2003), 69, 193
37 Wrigley, Politics of Appearances, 231; Philip Mansel, "Monarchy, Uniform and the R
1760-1830," Past and Present, no. 96 (August 1982): 103-32.
38 Katrina Navickas, Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815 (Oxford, 20
39 Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771; repr., London, 1993)
40 "Yorkshire Spring Assizes," Hull Packet, 13 March 1840.
41 Gee, British Volunteer Movement, 193-94; "Loyal London Volunteers Preparing for
1803, Curzon b.20(45), Bodleian Library (Bodl.), Oxford.
42 Archibald Prentice, Historical Sketches and Recollections of Manchester (London, 1

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550 ■ NAVICKAS

driven from below and were facilitated by an expanding co

torians of consumption single out the late eighteenth cent
the specialization of production and aggressive modes of m
lower classes to access types of fashion on a previously uns
of fashion was further promoted by an expanding print m
packed calendars of national celebrations of royal and civic
was aided by improved technology, especially transfer prin
ribbon weaving on narrow looms, which could generate app
images and text.44 Such trends shaped the spread of many f
paganda, from John Wilkes pin badges to political banners.45 T
still had the most impact when sponsored by elite buying p
"principal inhabitants" of towns and villages across England
cockades to demonstrate their loyalism at the burning of e
writer Thomas Paine.46 At a Paine burning at Failsworth near
participants displayed colors and ribbons "stamped in gild
King—the Church—the Constitution."47 Though some Pain
ularly inspired, many were sanctioned by local elites and su
organization that must have included coordinating the ador
of specific loyalist mottoes, furthermore, was no localized idio
mottoes were embossed on blue and orange ribbons, sashes
at Paine burnings in Halifax and Heptonstall in Yorkshire
Bristol.48 This commonality suggests, if not a national netw
then at least a shared knowledge and emulation of material
The national commemorations of the death of Admiral Lord Nelson at the

battle of Trafalgar in late 1805 illustrates the impact of the market on the visu
expression of patriotism. James Weatherley, a Manchester bookseller, recorded in
his autobiography: "I recollect the day of his funeral all the Mills and worksho
stopt you could scarcly [sic\ see that day a lad without a ribbon round his hat
with a verse or something relating to the brave Nelson some of the ribbons we
Paper and some Silk the one I bought was a blue Silk one I gave sixpence for it
the letters on it gold Printed verse was May Nelson's Death and Britons Glor
be Repeated in Future [hiJStory."49 Weatherley's recollections indicate an element
of individual choice involved in the wearing of patriotic emblems. Nevertheles

43 Vernon, Politics and the People, 116; Nicholas Mansfield, "Radical Banners as Sites of Memor
The National Banner Survey," in Contested Sites: Commemoration, Memorials, and Popular Politics in
Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrell (Aldershot, 2004), 92.
44 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2007), 109.
45 Styles, Dress of the People, 304; T. Kusamitsu, "'Novelty, Give Us Novelty': London Agents an
Northern Manufacturers," in Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe, ed. Maxine Be
(London, 1991), 117; Lemire, "Second-Hand Beaux and 'Red-Armed Belles,'" 391; "45" silver p
badge, 1763, OA.377, BM.
46 William Rowbottom, "Annals of Oldham," vol. 1 (1787-99), transcript, Oldham Local Studie
Library.
47 Manchester Mercury, 8 January 1793.
48 Leeds Mercury, 12 January 1793; Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain
(Oxford, 1998), 202; Frank O'Gorman, "The Paine Burnings of 1792-3," Past and Present, no. 193
(February 2006): 111-56.
49 Autobiography of James Weatherley (1794-1860), transcript, n.d., A.6.30, Chetham's Library,
Manchester.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 551

it was a choice that was dictated by the market, by the expectation that
should join in a collective and public commemoration, and by the ide
facilitated social aspiration. Ribbons were an entirely familiar part of wo
dress, sold cheaply in chandler's shops and general stores. Yet however
material still offered a nod to the clothes of the rich, and ribbons w
significance and special meaning by these occasions and mottoes. The
aspect was perhaps more common in large urban centers that had the
capability and the population to support a market for such goods. An
chester diarist, Absalom Watkin, noted the local celebrations for the
of the French monarchy in April 1814: "The street crowded with peo
wearing the blue and white cockade. Business, except the selling of
transparencies, etc, at a stand."50
The same material emblems could conversely enable expression of a
definitions of patriotism. During celebrations in 1820 for Queen Ca
radicals' "heroine," the market was able to respond rapidly to deman
classes for appropriate symbols. The very means for expressing patr
ironically been set in place by previous royal events. In Liverpool, "Th
shops were adorned with white ribbons, rosettes, mottoes and device
suitable description, for sale, which were bought up by an eager public w
avidity. In short, all classes provided themselves with ornaments of m
values, according to their means: and the richness of gold and satin
were intermixed with the simple white rose and unadorned inscripti
Save the Queen.'"51 The crowd was able to subvert the meanings of
rituals by using the same material symbols. Wrigley has found similar de
in revolutionary France, where "the misuse of what had become stand
of signalling patriotism" merely reflected a more "general phenomen
the currency of vestimentary norms, whether informally practised or of
stituted, actually had the effect of encouraging deviance and infringemen
Political clothing could therefore act as a unifier in support of the cons
yet in other forms and contexts it had dangerous political uses. Gover
the law recognized and codified this distinction during this period. C
determined that a person who encouraged riots by "wearing any particula
dress, or uniform" was equivalent to those committing violence and
liable to arrest.53 This was applicable to the case of the Wiltshire Swing r
also explains why, during the trial of Lord Gordon for treason in 1781, p
meticulously questioned witnesses about whether certain individual
wearing blue cockades. The presence of the symbol was seen as proof e
Gordon and members of his Protestant Association had fomented the anti-Catholic
riots in London in 1780. The cockade was not merely a symbol of attachment to
a cause: it determined the difference between life and death. Furthermore, death
for the cockade retained conflicting interpretations right to the scaffold. Upon
leaving Newgate prison, William Pateman was ordered to remove the blue cockade

50 Magdalen Goffin, ed., Diaries of Absalom Watkin, Manchester Man (Stroud, 1993), 11.
51 "Grand Procession," Liverpool Mercury, 24 November 1820.
52 Wrigley, Politics of Appearances, 239.
53 Joseph Gabbett, A Digested Abridgment, and Comparative View, of the Statute Law of England
and Ireland (Dublin, 1812), 629.

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552 ■ NAVICKAS

from his hat in order to avoid provoking a disturbance amon

his execution. He refused, "declaring that he died a mar
cause."54
Later statute laws highlighted the political potency of mate
alist elites and the government were increasingly anxious abo
France and the growth of mass platform meetings as a
channeled their anxiety onto what they saw as the revolution
emblems. Loyalist propagandists satirically portrayed radicals
revolutionary tricolor cockade in order to equate reform
Seditious Meetings Act of October 1819 (part of the legisl
"Peterloo Massacre" in Manchester that August) prohibited att
"with any flag, banner or ensign, or displaying a device, badg
government clearly regarded such items not just as politic
instruments of power. In November 1819, during the Hou
on the prince regent's speech, Sir Francis Burdett defended t
at Peterloo as benign. For the Pittite George Canning, by
inflammatory as the symbols of Orangemen on 12 July: "W
banners, ribbons and other such devices, might be as clear
as words? . . . Such things had great signification."57 Des
emblems, radicals, especially in northern England, continu
bols as a means of political defiance into the 1820s and be
Green was the established color of political dissent in Englan
associated with the Levellers and then with the Jacobites
eighteenth century employed the color rather to connote
in classical history and to denote political independence.59
parade to celebrate Burdett's election for Middlesex in 180
the procession carried large bunches of laurel as emblems
were also clearly identifiable symbols of leadership, displayed
heading trade union parades and political processions, most
Green favors and colors reiterated these associations in elections and reform meet

54 «"frial of George Gordon," in Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedingsfor High
Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanours from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, ed. William
Cobbett and T. B. Howell, 21 vols. (London, 1811-26), 19:536-38; Edward Wise, The Law Relating
to Riots and Unlawful Assemblies (London, 1848), 15; "The Monthly Chronologer," London Magazine
49 (July 1780): 338; David Gover, "Protestants and Vagabonds in the London Gordon Riots of 1780"
(MA diss., University of Edinburgh, 2009), 23.
55 Robert Cruickshank, "Modern Reformers in Council," 1818, Curzon b.6(42), Bodl.
56 60 Geo. Ill, c. 6, 1819; Robert Poole, "The March to Peterloo: Politics and Festivity in Late
Georgian England," Past and Present, no. 192 (February 2006): 141.
57 George Canning, "On the Prince Regent's Speech," in Speeches of the Right Honorable George
Canning, ed. Roger Thierry, 6 vols. (London, 1836), 4:182-83.
58 Epstein, "Understanding the Cap of Liberty," 114-15.
59 Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Tear in Britain (Oxford, 1996),
285; Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (London, 1993), 204, 209.
60 "Close of the Middlesex Election," Caledonian Mercury, 2 August 1802.
61 Poole, "March to Peterloo," 117; Samuel Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (London,
1840), 150. See the 1793 Banbury shag manufacturers' strike: Arthur Aspinall, Early English Trade
Unions: Documents from the Home Office Papers (London, 1949), 19.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 553

ings.62 The 1832 Reform Act attempted to reduce the excesses of we

toral festivities by cutting polling to a maximum of two days. Never
tradition of colors at processions and hustings persisted, and middle-
candidates continued to employ green ribbons and banners in their c
The green of the Irish complicated the color's political meanings. A wee
Peterloo, radicals paraded through the village of Lees, near Oldham
informer reported to the government that they wore green and pink
their hats and were singing "Green Upon the Cape": "Green is to be t
\_sic\. This Song was the instigation of the Irish Rebellion twenty-one y
Green could no longer serve as a simple visual aid to remind its wearers o
English past because Irish Catholic immigrants used the color to repr
own identity and history of rebellion. This was particularly evident duri
agitation. In August 1840, Chartists held a mass rally to welcome th
Peter McDouall and John Collins to Manchester after their release fr
Women wore green and white scarves and favors in the traditional ra
but the procession also included green flags showing the Irish harp.65 Th
of green in this case was therefore deliberately ambiguous, designed
both radical and Irish constituencies. By the late 1840s, green was pre
associated with the Irish, a product of the influx of immigrants and
sectarian parading in many industrial towns.66
Clothing could therefore be a powerful medium to unsettle as well as t
Radicals sported cockades and other items as deliberate and obvious w
dermining or reclaiming loyalist symbolism. They promoted venerat
own leaders instead of the "cult of Nelson" or George III: at the Ma
Radical Sunday School in 1819, for example, the monitors wore locke
of Henry Hunt around their necks.67 Yet clothing could also underm
norms in more subtle ways. The potential for subversion was also pre
wider culture of everyday life and folk customs.

Social historians are now familiar with a narrative of increasing el

over popular leisure from the eighteenth century. Local elites sought
sanitize the more vulgar aspects of plebeian customs.68 One way they
this was to encourage carnivalesque display within the seemingly cont
fines of civic or patriotic events. No doubt the populace enjoyed such

62 Michael L. Bush, "The Women at Peterloo: The Impact of Female Reform on th

Meeting of 16 August 1819," History 89, no. 294 (April 2004): 213.
63 Pickering, "Class without Words," 160; "Manchester: 29 July 1837," Manchester
Advertiser, 29 July 1837.
64 Epstein, "Understanding the Cap of Liberty," 75.
65 Dorothy Thompson, The Early Chartists (London, 1971), 139; "McDouall and Col
chester," Northern Star, 22 August 1840.
66 Donald MacRaild, Culture, Conflict and Migration: The Irish in Victorian Cumbr
1998), 114.
67 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1968), 689.
68 Bob Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony, and Community in England, 1700-1850 (London,
1982), 21-22; Robert Storch, ed., Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth Century England (Lon
don, 1982); Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978).

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554 ■ NAVICKAS

For example, the coronation of George III in September 1

a national carnival of fancy dress. The civic procession around
each trade exhibiting exaggerated emblems of their ident
their commerce. Two hatters paraded "with gigantick h
"two persons on horseback, dressed in Russian fur skins and
the early nineteenth century, Whit Monday processions
overt customary form patronized and regularized by local eli
and at which great shows of identifying costumes were displ
The potential for subversion within such civic events never
ing times of tension, workers could employ their own col
of identity and defiance against those in authority.71 Trade p
Guild Merchant in Preston, Lancashire, and the Bishop B
Bradford, Yorkshire, ostensibly demonstrated the civic pr
oughs.72 The Blaize procession of 1825 was regarded as the
Although such events were intended to give the impression o
in effect they served merely to mask underlying social tensi
clothing marked the class differences between the masters, w
inhabitants of Bradford: "The apprentices and masters' sons h
most showy part of the procession; their caps being richly or
feathers, flowers and knots of various coloured yarn: and
formed of the gayest colours. Some of these dresses were
profusion of their decorations."73 The artist George Walk
tation of the Bishop Blaize procession in his Costume of Y
Young suggests that Walker took the ostensible harmony of t
regarding it as a quaint custom. In fact, the event hid the
class malaise in the West Riding woollen industry, as testified
accounts of riotous proceedings occurring once the civic solem
A few months after the 1825 procession, the wool comber
a bitter, drawn-out strike against their masters. The conf
breakup of the wool combers' union and the effective de
tige.75 Rather than fostering class harmony, therefore, such
both local elites and trade groups the opportunity to assert th
as well as express their sense of self.

69 "A Particular Account of the Processions of the Different Trades, in

the Coronation of their Majesties, King George the Third and Queen C
22. 1761," broadside, F1761/1, Manchester Local Studies Library.
70 For example, at Preston and at Necton in Norfolk: "Preston," Prest
William Hone, The Everyday Book, or a Guide to the Tear (London, 182
71 Styles, Dress of the People, 195-96.
72 Thomas R. Flintoff, Preston Guild Merchant: Preston's Week of Pa
1328-1952 (Preston, 1973); Elizabeth Wadsworth, diary, 3 February 1790, R
Archives, Calderdale.
73 J. James, A History of the Worsted Manufacture in England (London
74 Richard Young, "George Walker's 'Costume of Yorkshire' (1814): T
gotiation of Class Difference and Social Unrest," Art History 19, no. 3
75 Martha Vicinus, The Industrial Muse (London, 1974), 12; John Tester,
ment, Progress, and Termination of the Bradford Contest (Bradford, 1826
Archives, Bradford; Theodore Koditschek, Class Formation and Urban-I
1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1990), 471.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 555

The tradition of guild members wearing uniforms to elaborate processi

freemasons with their aprons and sashes, was shared in more mundan
Sunday school children, friendly societies, and trade unions by the early
century.76 The organizers of processions to political events therefore
both established sources of adornments and the tradition of parading in
clothing. Although political processions were still illegal under the Sed
ings Act of 1819, meetings of corporate bodies were exempt. Incorpo
made the most of this loophole.77 Identifiable clothing formed an es
of the logistics of successful demonstrations, necessitated by their incre
and complexity. Instructions from trade unions became highly detailed, i
the exact form and position of material symbols.78 In 1834, the Gran
Consolidated Trade Union instructed each "brother in union" to wear "a crimson
riband, one inch wide, between the first and second button-hole, on the left side
of his coat" at a London march in support of the "Tolpuddle martyrs," the ag
ricultural laborers transported for swearing oaths to a union.79
Symbolic clothing and adornments made working men and women visible as
members of distinct associations rather than as anonymous members of the crowd.
They encouraged expression of group identities by referring to longer collective
histories. A strong sense of trade identity was expressed through clothing in pro
tests. Textiles and material goods provided the daily bread of textile workers in
industrializing England; an intense association with cloth was fostered by the
intricacies of making it daily. This could also be manifested by the choice of material
items given to national figures by the unenfranchised. Among the gifts received
by Queen Caroline in 1820 were a bonnet from the female straw plait weavers of
the Midlands and a dress from the Loughborough lace makers.80 These items
powerfully combined representations of their group identity with that of their
individual selves, their daily lives, bodies, skills, and incomes.
Clothing had an intimate relationship with the self; its wearing was simulta
neously a form of concealment, display, and representation. As John Styles argues
in his study of popular dress, "Issues of propriety, identity, and reputation were
therefore inextricably bound up with clothing."81 The middle and working classes
sought to elevate their situations, a desire that was reflected in their choice of such
clothing. The Methodist and Evangelical preachers who ministered to industri
alizing England, as well as Sir Frederick Eden in his influential survey, The State
of the Poor (1797), were among many contemporary commentators to make this
connection.82
These concepts can be applied to political clothing. Aileen Ribeiro notes the

. 76 Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 746-47.

77 Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics, 258. See the Taunton reform procession: Bristol Mercury,
21 July 1832.
78 Handbill forWibsey Ten Hours demonstration, 1833, Home Office (HO) 40/31, fol. 34, National
Archives (NA), Kew, London.
79 Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 (London, 1995), 57.
80 Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics, 266, 251; "Rejoicings in the Country," Morning Chronicle,
20 November 1820.
81 Styles, Dress of the People, 303.
82 Lemire, "Second-Hand Beaux and 'Red-Armed Belles,'" 395; Sir Frederick Morton Eden, The
State of the Poor, 3 vols. (London, 1797), 1:532, though he later modified his view.

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556 ■ NAVICKAS

irony that French revolutionaries had been inspired by the r

English country clothing to make the link between dress
England, the working classes wore clean white or black cl
to dramatic effect at demonstrations. Reform movements
demonstrate their worthiness to participate in the consti
themselves from the covert and seditious world of under
violence. The processions to the mass platform were infused
and trade traditions, which consciously expressed the dig
Samuel Bamford was anxious to stress his followers' respectab
of disorder in the procession he led to Peterloo: "I notic
did not exhibit a white Sundays' shirt, a neck-cloth, and othe
clean, though homely condition."84 This concern with decoru
in workers' agitation for the legalization of trade unions i
In organizing a mass parade in London in 1821, trade un
urged his supporters to make a "respectable appearance, w
the left: breast."85 Furthermore, the ways in which crowds u
from the mid-eighteenth century. White, as with green,
connotations. Sporting the white rose was essentially an
personal, rather than group, loyalty to the Stuart cause.8
white shirts or dresses—that is, essential coverings rather
ment—in the cause of radical reform was a much more c
collective identity.
White denoted purity and virtue, qualities that highlighted
characteristics of the color. Nicholas Rogers and Michael
the totemic significance of "women in white" at civic celeb
demonstrations. Young women had long been expected t
festivities. Hundreds of "young ladies, decorated with w
George III at Honiton in Devon during his tour celebrati
illness in 1789.87 White dresses alluded to the vestal virg
Female reform societies renewed this imagery in the new con
to demonstrate freedom from both moral and political co
reports spread about French revolutionary women wearin
ancient Greek style, decorated only by the tricolor.88 Evi
lation of this is rare, however; it is more likely that the main
in white" at mass demonstrations was to be seen, visually
united and respectable group. The turn-of-the-century fa
gowns, supplied at ever cheaper prices by the Lancashire
facilitated their popularity.89 Furthermore, radical wome
bolism to justify their unprecedented involvement in popu

83 Aileen Ribeiro, Dress and Morality (Oxford, 2003), 113, 120-22.

84Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical', 151.
85Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics, 267.
86Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 210, 219-20.
87Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics, 221.
88 Bush, "The Women at Peterloo," 212; E. Claire Cage, "The Sartoria
and Gender Identity in France, 1797-1804," Eighteenth-Century Studi
193-215.

89 Mary B. Rose, The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History since 1700 (Preston, 1996), 159.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 557

move that men, and indeed other women, could otherwise denigrat
coming of femininity.90 Wearing white was a performance of the purity
which combined collectively into a vision of an uncorrupted body
"martyrdom" of the "women in white" at Peterloo was an image tha
agated by newspaper reports and correspondence, and it resonated d
reformers across England.91 A month after Peterloo, reformers held a m
on Hunslet Moor, near Leeds, and "several of the younger Females w
in white, with green ribands round the wrist and bunches of white crape
dresses worn at reform meetings therefore bore this extra layer of assoc
collective memory and served to unite radical women in common symbol
though they had not been present at the original event.
Women's capacity to embody their political ideas through dress was
always more problematic than that of men.93 Fashionable dress represent
and social status but also sexuality and, conversely, moral probity. C
female clothing therefore provided a channel for wider arguments conce
evils of luxury, consumerism, and sexual mores.94 The antiradical pr
women's attempts to display their purity at political events. The caricatu
Wanted: A Reform Among Females!" (1819) satirized the "petticoat r
from female reform societies as using their newly found prominence on
stage for sexual advantage.95 Women could only go so far in political acti
transgressing the line of respectability, demonstrated even more sensatio
following year during the trial of Queen Caroline.96 The uniform of men
or trade union roles also had a long history of signifying women's exclus
such sources of power.97
Black was another indicator of a desire for respectability and reflec
fluence of religion on collective clothing. Black mourning clothes were an
part of political dress, particularly at commemorations of Peterloo.
mock funeral procession was an essential part of the repertoire of protes
procession to the Hunslet Moor meeting in September 1819, "every
some black crepe or ribband as a token of mourning for the recent c
Manchester."98 A demonstration on Skircoat Moor, Halifax, a fortnight l
similarly acutely ceremonial. "With the same solemnity as at a funer
cessions ascended the moor, led by "mutes" of such a striking appear
was noted in detail by the newspaper reporters: "Of the male mour
wore white hats, with a bow of black riband pinned to the side of t
others, who wore black hats, had either a piece of white riband tied r

90 Colley, Britons, 277.

91 Helena Whitbread, ed., The Diaries of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, 1806-39(West York
Service, 2003), 156, in "From History to Herstory: Yorkshire Women's Lives On-Lin
Present," http://www.historytoherstory.org.uk/index.phphargetid = 5 (accessed 3 Ma
92 "Leeds Reform Meeting Held on Hunslet Moor, September 20th 1819," handb
fol. 109, NA; "Provincial Intelligence," Examiner, 26 September 1819.
93 Parkins, "Introduction," 5-6.
94 Batchelor, Dress, Distress and Desire, 11.
95 Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics, 237, fig. 4.
96 Parkins, "Introduction," 5-6; T. Lane, "Grand Entrance to Bamboozl'em," 182
Drawings 1935,0522.12.183, BM.
97 Adrian Randall, Riotous Assemblies in Hanoverian England (Oxford, 2006), 276-7
98 "Provincial Intelligence," Examiner, 26 September 1819.

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558 ■ NAVICKAS

or a bow of the same colour attached to them. The female mourners were habited
in black gowns and had a white scarf tied round them like a belt."99 The rich
culture of symbolic dress displayed at these events must have required significant
prior arrangement by individuals and the local community. Though organizing
committees may have given broad instructions of how to dress in handbills ad
vertising the demonstrations, individuals may also have drawn from the funerary
rituals of their religions, in this case the "cottage communities" of northern Meth
odism.100
Such customs in political demonstrations were paralleled by the politicization
of funerals in this period. Friendly societies and trade unions wore their identifying
emblems to funerals of their members as gestures of trade solidarity. In 1828,
Canon Raines, of Saddleworth, Yorkshire, held "a funeral which was preceded by
a band of music, colours, &c, and several hundred men walked in costume, being
arrayed in the gay costume of'Forresters' by which name the club is known."101
Radicals took up the practice to remonstrate silently against local authorities who
they believed had unlawfully killed their compatriots. Samuel Flartley, a cropper
from Halifax, was shot during the attack on William Cartwright's mill at Rawfolds
near Huddersfield in 1812. The inquest returned a verdict of "justifiable homi
cide," and rumors arose that he had died from torture. Large numbers of the
aggrieved community wore mourning clothes in his funeral procession to the
Methodist chapel, and, more boldly, the members of the St. Crispin Democratic
Club wrapped "badges of white crepe" around their arms in protest.102 By the
1830s, the practices and symbolism of trade union and political funerals were
intertwined. The funeral of a linen weaver from Barnsley, organized by the Owenite
Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, boasted a procession of 1,500 lodge
brothers wearing rosettes.103 Visual symbolism was most overt in sectarian groups,
as among mourners wearing orange sashes processing to and from funerals of
lodge members in Liverpool and other centers of Protestant Irish immigration in
the 1830s.104
An emphasis on respectable dress was the most visual reflection of radicals'
conscious efforts to promote moderate aims and tactics, although they did not
always achieve these in practice. Attending public and mass platform locations
during the day, reformers were meant to be seen; this was a stark and deliberate
contrast to the inns' dirty and secret back rooms of the republican "underworld"
at night. Iain McCalman indicates that the Spencean republicans stood apart from
the moderate London artisan reformers of the 1810s because the former "made
no effort to mask roughness of speech, conduct, and appearance." Indeed, one
Spencean reported that anyone "finely dressed" who attended debates at the pub

99 "Halifax," Manchester Observer, 9 October 1819; "Halifax Public Meeting," The Times, 7 October
1819; Whitbread, Diaries of Anne Lister, 156-57.
100 Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 388.
101 Roger Ivens, "Extracts from the Diary of Canon F. R Raines, Part 2," Saddleworth Historical
Society Bulletin 38, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 10.
102 Randall, Riotous Assemblies, 286; Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists, and Plug
Drawers (Brighouse, 1895), 102.
103 Eileen Yeo, "Robert Owen and Radical Culture," in Robert Owen, Prophet of the Poor, ed. Sidney
Pollard (London, 1971), 103.
10'' Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819-1914 (Manchester, 1988), 62.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHINC AND ADORNMENT ■ 559

was accused of being a spy.105 Radical leaders, conversely, were more ind
their choice of appearance. John Barrell notes that London radical Th
wore a powdered wig because he had to keep up appearances as a pr
shopkeeper in the West End. John Thelwall, who made his living by
other radicals, by contrast wore his hair cropped in the Roman style to
his preference for egalitarian principles.106 Nor was "Sunday best"
moderate radicalism: the Swing agitation of 1830-31 also featured
ceremonial" appearance when it occurred during the day. Hence at W
Dorset, the sister of a local justice described the Swing rioters "as being
very fine-looking young men, and particularly well dressed as if they h
their best do" for the occasion.107 The "fustian jackets and unshor
followers of Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor in the 1840s were th
interesting reclamation of a more "natural" appearance, suggesting
tempt to assert a "genuine" working-class identity or a subtle exploit
suggestion of physical over moral force in the Chartist movement. D
erate leaders' protestations to the contrary, however, respectable at
incompatible with the politics of intimidation or the threat of viole
meetings.

So far, this article has shown how all classes shared in a common politi
culture, although radicals and trade unions subverted the meanings
items by wearing them as symbols of opposition. Yet shared symbols did
replace a longer history of popular customs or their accompanying parti
ing and adornments. As E. P. Thompson emphasized, industrializatio
migration in the early nineteenth century did not obliterate older popul
though they were perhaps confined to certain spaces within a town o
at certain times of the year.108 Local elites (mis)read vestiges of pleb
as either antiquarian and essentially harmless (such as morris dancing) or
and disreputable (hence attempts to ban bullbaiting and other blood s
understanding of symbolic clothing at both traditional and political even
not be similarly blinded to subtle forms of social and political com
enacted in customary clothing.
Folklore historians have identified particular characteristics comm
popular custom and protests. Two elements involve dress: first, the
disguise, especially masks, blackened faces, and men dressed in wome
second, the clothing of adornment, special or unusual garb includi
handkerchiefs, and a miscellany of colorful attachments to dress. Th
in most popular customs and festivals, including mumming plays an

105 Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographe

1795-1840 (Cambridge, 1988), 121.
106 Barrell, Spirit of Despotism, 201.
107 Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude, Captain Swing (London, 1969), 211.
108 Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 291; Steve Poole, "'Till our Libert
Popular Sovereignty and Public Space in Bristol, 1750-1850," Urban History 26, no.
40.

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560 ■ NAVICKAS

May Day, Plough Monday, Whit Week, and wakes holiday

occurred across the country throughout the eighteenth c
Seal has argued in his study of folk customs, "we are no
eccentricities but . . . structural constants of traditional r
ever, mumming customs were found most commonly in
northern England in the early nineteenth century. It is p
that these same places appear to show a concentration of popu
involving such rituals and costumes. Mass meetings and po
rowed certain elements from popular culture: the time o
wakes, and rush-bearing), their composition (friendly soci
and their appearance (ribbons and scarves, morrismen "all in
decorated with ribbons").111 Robert Poole identifies signif
white clothing and ribbons worn in the processions to Pet
of rush-bearing and other popular festivals, as evidence
description of his community's detailed preparations for
chased, hats were trimmed with ribbons and fanciful devices
bleached snow-white, and neatly pleated; tassels and gar
coloured paper, tinsel, and ribbon were designed and cons
rioters mirrored the well-known tradition of chimney sweep
ribbons on May Day.113
The fact that popular protests shared a costume culture wit
seem unremarkable. Yet clothing was just one sign of the
significance of both protest and carnival.114 First, proces
exhibited a combination of customary holiday celebration
memoration in their form and appearance because politica
technically illegal. Carnival customs were therefore neithe
litical "release" from the "business" of political conflict bu
to it. Popular politics included the whole range of work
identities, from work to leisure and the life cycle, even
dicated, "these did not seem directly relevant to their p
jects."115 Friendly club nights, ceremonies, and anniversar
the holidays of Christmas, Good Friday, and Whit Week,
political calendar. Hence clothing was not reserved for sp
strations but could be used across these varied contexts.
Second, E. P. Thompson most famously demonstrated that protests shared a
common culture of charivari, community justice or "moral economy" against the
removal of common rights.116 Festive clothing was part of a performance of the

109 Hutton, Stations of the Sun, 200.

110 Graham Seal, "Tradition and Agrarian Protest in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales," Folklore
99, no. 2 (September 1988): 150, 152. Again, there are French parallels: see Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites:
The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA, 1994).
111 Hutton, Stations of the Sun, 269. See W. Thompson to Earl Harewood, 29 April 1834, Lieutenancy
Papers, WYA 250/6/2, box 2, West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds; "Demonstration of Tee-Totallers,"
Charter, 26 May 1839.
112 Poole, "March to Peterloo," 137; Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical, 132.
113 Hone, Everyday Book, 584.
114 Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics, 263.
115 Yeo, "Robert Owen and Radical Culture," 103.
116 E. P. Thompson, "Rough Music Reconsidered," Folklore 103, no. 1 (April 1992): 3-26.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 561

"world turned upside-down" in carnival; it suggested an alternative w

alternative rules.117 This tradition not only extended to food rioting but
particularly prominent in other assertions of community justice, especial
breaking and attacks on toll bars and the enclosure of common land
outbreaks shared common tactics, including the transvestitism of m
leaders ("General Ludd's wife," "Captain Swing," and "Rebecca"),
faces, and other features of popular custom.119 Yorkshire journalist
recounted how, in the major Luddite attack on William Cartwright's m
folds in 1812, the men "were nearly all disguised, some having their f
blackened, others wearing masks . . . and a few had actually dressed
partly in women's apparel."120 The similarities between the masks, ri
transvestitism of mumming plays and the dress of machine breaker
rioters therefore could hold deeper significance.121
The adoption of symbolic clothing and ritual was a way of coping w
and political disruption. Protesters dealt with rapid change and external t
their common rights by drawing on traditional symbols and rituals of co
Symbols offer a sense of continuity with the norms of everyday life wh
is changing rapidly or is threatened by external forces. Often, such symb
qualities of opposition and reversal; in this case, black contrasted with wh
subverted into female, especially during nighttime and violent protests.1
against turnpikes and the enclosure of commons in Gloucestershire
fordshire in the mid-eighteenth century had the same appearance as the
file cutters at a riot during their strike in 1820, when "the men were all
with Masks and some of them in Smock Frocks." These disguises had
political: the infamous "Black Act" of 1723 legislated against poachers and
"with their faces blacked, or in disguised habits."123 In one sense, blacken
and dresses were designed to conceal an "authentic self." The actors
"Ludd's wife" or "Rebecca" abandoned their individuality and the acco
constraints of action over self. The dress allowed them to transform themselves
into "an instrument of the communal will," enacting violence that was not normally
acceptable in daily life but became legitimate within the bounds of the ritual
framework of the moral economy.124 In another sense, the clothing and blackened
faces were masks, meant to represent. They could therefore be quite minimal or

117 Efrat Tseelon, "Reflections on Mask and Carnival," in Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender,
Sexuality, and Marginality, ed. Efrat Tseelon (Abingdon, 2001), 27; Peter Stallybrass and Allon White,
Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London, 1986), 14.
118 Randall, Riotous Assemblies, 175.
119 Seal, "Tradition and Agrarian Protest," 161; David J. V. Jones, Rebecca's Children: A Study of
Rural Society, Crime, and Protest (Oxford, 1989); Katrina Navickas, "The Search for 'General Ludd':
The Mythology of Luddism," Social History (London) 30, no. 3 (August 2005): 282-95.
120 Peel, Risings of the Luddites, 245-46.
121 Seal, "Tradition and Agrarian Protest," 157; Young, "George Walker's 'Costume ofYorkshire,'"
414; Norman Simms, "Ned Ludd's Mummers Play," Folklore 89, no. 2 (April 1978): 167.
122 Anthony Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community {Abingdon, 1993), 102.
123 Alun Howkins and Linda Merricks, "'Wee be Black as Hell': Ritual, Disguise, and Rebellion,"
Rural History 4, no. 1 (April 1993): 41-42, highlights how face blacking was used to hide blasphemy
during the early modern era. Examination of Isaac Woodhead, 5 February 1820, HO 64/1, fols.
129-30, NA; E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (Harmondsworth, 1977), 270.
124 Seal, "Tradition and Agrarian Protest," 163.

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562 ■ NAVICKAS

Figure 4—Anon., "The Leader of the Luddites" (1812). © Trustees of

token because they were interpreted symbolically. Such m

native but equally "true" self normally hidden.125 Thus whil
the imperatives of disguise, however thinly veiled, the Sw
politics of display, offering open defiance with little fear of
Customary clothing enabled groups to communicate wit
by elites. Young highlights the similarities between a con
"The Leader of the Luddites," and the central figure in th
Plough" in George Walker's Costume of Yorkshire (figs. 4
man conspicuously wearing a dress and bonnet jumps ov
enacted on Plough Monday at the start of the agricultur

125 Tseelon, Masquerade and Identities, 4.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 563

Figure 5—"The Fool Plough," in George Walker, The Costume of Yorkshire (London
11. © The British Library Board. Shelfmark: 143.g.l.

antiquarian portrayal of Bishop Blaize, Young claims that the artist had "m
the 'costume of dissent' for the 'costume of folklore.'"126 Historians should there
fore be wary of taking the external appearance of costume at face value. Judith
Butler has argued that the most potent forms of collective action combine estab
lished repertoires of protest with more subtle means of communication—"the
ones that . . . make us think that we have to renegotiate the way in which we
read public signs."127 Nor should we focus solely on public forms of protest: recent
studies have illustrated the importance of secrecy and folk violence in agrarian
disturbances well into the nineteenth century.128 The trades' clothing worn at
funerals of radicals, for example, was only the outer sign of a "matrix of'mysterious'
brotherliness." Clive Behagg has suggested that trade union initiation ceremonies
and the taking of oaths (again indicated in secret by ceremonial clothing or em
blems) "expressed visually the separate and distinct nature of the values that char
acterized the working community."129 Although they were not unfamiliar with

126 Young, "George Walker's 'Costume of Yorkshire,'" 415; Anon., "The Leader of the Luddites,"
May 1812, caricature, Working Class Movement Library, Salford.
127 Judith Butler, "Gender as Performance," in A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals, ed.
Peter Osborne (Basingstoke, 1996), 122.
128 Carl Griffin, "'Cut down by some cowardly miscreants': Plant Maiming, or the Malicious Cutting
of Flora, as an Act of Protest in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rural England," Rural History
19, no. 1 (April 2008): 29-54.
129 Clive Behagg, "Secrecy, Ritual, and Folk Violence," in Storch, Popular Culture and Custom, 155,
161.

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564 ■ NAVICKAS

secretive forms of organization and communication (in freema

drinking clubs), local elites and magistrates misunderstood the
evolving in industrializing communities. This was one reason w
it difficult to penetrate private meetings.130 Transmitted visu
signs have been lost or remain inaccessible to the historian
forms, such as men in dresses, indicate that the working
repertoires of protest that were layered with rich and complex

Visual and material symbolism was integral to popular po

England. Certain symbolic items and colors became nationa
aided by an expanding commercial market and media. Sharing i
unrepresented groups to feel they were participating to so
body politic. Other forms of clothing were based in seemingly
traditions but paralleled those in other towns across the c
individuals to act collectively to subvert social norms. Unlike o
and propaganda, however, clothing was not a language. Cl
capable than words of sustaining tightly defined meanings
fact that words were sometimes stamped on ribbons sold at
text and the law determined whether an orange sash was merel
hustings), sectarian (Protestant Irish), or potentially felonio
The mutable semiotics of clothing allowed different group
to their own needs, arguably more immediately than language.
example, contends that radicals constructed the Cap of Li
ecdoche of their legitimacy, using a "process of formalizat
characterized by reference to the past."131 Some historians
denigrated this conscious manipulation of symbols as the "inve
which reduced "the perception of community to an expres
dience."132 The everyday and customary forms of political
long-established practices: protesters wore vestimentary sy
pression of both individual self and collective identity rathe
expediency for purely political ends.
We must also be wary of assuming that political clothing s
homogeneous and dichotomous cultures of rich and poor. Rathe
has argued in her review of the historiography of folk traditio
"age, gender, religion, and locality fractured the unity of c
Clothing particularly vividly reflected gender divisions among

130 In April 1812, government spies wearing white caps attempted to atte
Dean Moor, Lancashire, but were quickly identified. Prentice, Historical Rec
56.

131 Epstein, "Understanding the Cap of Liberty," 116.

132 Eric J. Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in The Invent
J. Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), 1-14; David Hopk
Province: The Folklorists of Lorraine, 1860-1960," French Historical Stud
642; Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community, 99.
133 Emma Griffin, "Popular Culture in Industrializing England," Histori
tember 2002): 628.

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 POLITICAL CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT ■ 565

carried out Luddism, Swing, and other forms of collective action that
clothes and disguise from mumming and morris.134 This exclusion mirro
union culture, which was designed in part to restrict the inclusion of wo
a skilled workers' hierarchy. Gender divisions also translated into mor
political activities. Both the working-class "women in white" and the
Foxite ladies could not escape the mockery of the (male) press, no m
hard they tried to prove their purity. Political clothing cultures, tho
across the country, also illustrated differences of locality. Young and Eps
that overt symbolic clothing and the rituals of the moral economy survi
in the industrial communities of northern England.135 Indeed, many
amples of subversive clothing found in this study originated in the n
political culture was by no means directed from or by London fashio
After Chartism in the 1840s, opportunities to display such a vibrant an
material symbolism ratified. Mass agitation was channeled into trade unio
and, in some areas, sectarianism, which is where collective emblems c
The meanings of the ribbons and dresses of mumming may have bee
but the potential for subversion nevertheless remained in certain parts o
England. Symbolic clothing enabled the unrepresented to perform if
ticipate in the body politic, an ideal composed of many, though uneq

134 Seal, "Tradition and Agrarian Protest," 163.

135 Young, "George Walker's 'Costume of Yorkshire,'" 414; Epstein, Radical Expressi

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