The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660–1900 by Barbara
Burman and Ariane Fennetaux. Yale University Press, 2019, £35. ISBN
9780300239072, 264 pages, 200 colour illustrations.
Back in 2006 Barbara Burman and Seth Denbo published a
little 40 page pamphlet entitled Pockets of History: the secret life of an
everyday object, this was to accompany an exhibition at the Bath Museum, and
was the result of a research project which examined 300 surviving pockets. The online
resource resulting from that project is still available at https://vads.ac.uk/collections/POCKETS.html.
This book starts with the work done then and expands it.
This book by Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux looks beyond
the object itself to who owned pockets, what they put in them, and how they
regarded them. They have gathered information given in trials, mainly at the
Old Bailey for the theft of pockets, in letters, diaries, and wide range of
other written sources. As well as photographs of originals, there are satirical
prints, and paintings of pockets being worn, and the array of items they
contained.
In the chapter “work’d pockets to my intire satisfaction”
the authors examine who made pockets, what materials they used, and how they
decorated them. Several other chapters examine what was kept in the pockets,
and how they might reflect the owner’s interests and work. Examples of
this include Dorothy Wordsworth who
loved to go on “botanical walks” and in 1800 purchased two botanical pocket
microscopes, while lower down the social scale a farmer’s wife who traded in
cheese and butter at Bristol market was knocked from her horse in 1736 and her
pocket containing the 9s 8d she had earned was cut off.
The book is full of tit bits, and has pages and pages of
references at the back for those who would like to explore further.
