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Tailors, Outfitters and Drapers
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Most towns had a large number of tailors who were engaged in making clothes, especially in Bradford where the woollen cloth industry was such a major part of life for centuries.
Tailors often worked from a workshop, rather than a shop because they were making individual clothes to measure. Outfitters supplied ready-made clothes and required a shop to display their wares. Drapers sold cloth by the length for making into clothing, curtains and other household needs. Silk mercers (merchants) sold silk as cloth, by the yard and as fancy trimmings, ribbons and bows. Related to these trades were haberdashers who sold accessories for clothing, such as buttons, thread and ribbon and milliners who made ladies’ hats.
Eventually the distinctions between the trades became blurred, with tailors making things in a workroom and having a shop at the front for displaying and outfitting and selling items of haberdashery.
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William Howard Gale was typical of individuals working as tailors, with his premises in St Margaret’s Street.
Alexander was an example of the tailor turned gents’ outfitter, selling bought-in clothes and making garments to measure, but to patterns supplied to him. He was even making socks in-house on a newly-invented knitting machine. The advertisement is from the 1887 town directory.
Caines & Son were men’s tailors, outfitters and hatters, with a branch in Trowbridge too. They were advertising in the Queen’s jubilee celebration programme in 1897.
William Roger & Sons were silk mercers, selling silk by length and ready-made trimmings, as well as being funeral undertakers in the 1870s and 1880s. The photograph shows the shop window in 1879.
Rogers’ shop had become that of J.F. Goodall by about 1890 and changed to a general draper-outfitter. It continued in business, under different ownerships but retaining the name, until 2003. Some items from the shop are on display in the Museum.