A small Victorian shoe patten in the museum stores leads Dr Caroline Morris on a fascinating investigation to uncover the story of a Cirencester family
In the store, in a windowless room, on a metal shelf, in a cardboard box labelled 37, amongst tissue, lie a selection of pattens. They mostly have wooden soles with iron rings attached (and sometimes detached), and some still have their leather strap across the toe and a short lace. Pattens were protective overshoes designed to protect the wearer’s good shoes from the street. Although patten overshoes have been around since at least the Romans, they proved particularly useful as footwear became fashionable, more delicate and less practical, as they enabled the wearer to avoid damp feet and besmirching their shoes with the filth that lay in the streets. They became less popular once vulcanized rubber galoshes became more widely available in the 1850s.
While cars are polluting, horses left their own emissions on the streets of Cirencester, and on market days the deposits by the animals being sold would have meant crossing the market place would have been even more besmirching. While you might imagine that only the wealthy would have wished to protect their fashionable shoes, pattens were worn across classes.
Returning to box 37, amongst the tissue, lies a patten of particular interest. This one is small, quite well preserved. It has its leather strap, laces and iron ring. This one belonged to a child. This is clear from its size but more specifically from a handwritten label that has been pasted onto its footbed.
“Property of
Elizabeth Perring Smith
died at Cirencester
April 10, 1867 aged 5 years”
This patten had been kept as a keepsake to a lost child. I have shown this to tour groups at the stores a couple of times and each time someone has asked me if I know any more about Elizabeth – it was time to dig a little deeper.
What further can we tell about Elizabeth and her family. They were unlikely to be a wealthy family, or else by 1867 they were more likely to have had galoshes. Next step was census, birth, death and directory records. Luckily the Perring middle name was unusual as there were many Smiths in Cirencester in the 1860s. After much trial and error, I found a woman with the surname Perring who had married a Smith. The baptism records confirmed I was on the right track – Elizabeth Perring Smith’s parents were Thomas Smith and Charlotte (nee Perring). Our patten wearer was born in Cirencester in 1862 (sometime between October and December, the record didn’t tell me more than that). She was baptised in October 1864. The records list Thomas and Charlotte living in Thomas Street, Cirencester, and Thomas is listed as a grocer.
With that bit of information, I could get even closer to the family. Thomas was born in 1831. There was a Thomas Smith & Son Grocer in Castle Street according to Kelly’s Directory of 1861. Although the family are shown as living in Thomas Street at Elizabeth’s baptism, by the 1871 census they had moved to 9 Gosditch Street.
Charlotte Perring was born in 1836 and married Thomas in 1855. She had at least seven children with Thomas and all but Elizabeth were sons (three of whom were born after 1867). Charlotte’s mother had been called Elizabeth so she clearly named her daughter after her mother.
I traced the family after Elizabeth’s untimely death through the census and Kelly’s directory. Thomas Smith continues to be listed as a grocer until 1879, when Charlotte is listed as the grocer. In the 1891 census, Charlotte is recorded as the head of the household, so we can deduce that perhaps Thomas developed ill health and Charlotte had to take over. By 1891 he had died. The 1897 Kelly’s directory lists the grocers as being Smith C & Son, 9 Gosditch Street.
A search of findagrave.com provided the last piece of the jigsaw. There is a gravestone in Chesterton cemetery that commemorates both Thomas and Charlotte Smith. Thomas died aged 54 in 1885, and Charlotte died aged 81 in 1916 and, although I lose track of the grocery business into the 20th century, I can imagine the sons taking it on. I have not found Elizabeth’s grave as yet.
