Volume 1

A complete view of the dress and habits of the people of England. From the establishment of the Saxons in Britain to the present time ... To which is prefixed an introduction, containing a general description of the ancient habits in use among mankind, from the earliest period of time to the conclusion of the seventh century / By Joseph Strutt.

Joseph Strutt

Date:: 1842

Credit: A complete view of the dress and habits of the people of England. From the establishment of the Saxons in Britain to the present time ... To which is prefixed an introduction, containing a general description of the ancient habits in use among mankind, from the earliest period of time to the conclusion of the seventh century / By Joseph Strutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Cover
Title Page
Table of Contents
Cover

18/404

K the causes to which it owed its origin: like most other useful inventions, it is probable that those of spinning and weaving might have arisen from some accidental circumstances; but, as they depended upon the complication of many different operations, we may reasonably conclude that they were not hastily brought to any great degree of perfection. The laborious productions of the loom must of course have been very expensive, and the use of them confined to persons of superior rank and opulence ; which may account in some measure for the little progress made in the clothing arts among mankind in general for several generations posterior to the deluge. The ancient Greek authors, speaking of the first ages of the world, assure us, that men killed the beasts of the field for their food, and clothed themselves with their skins ; which Diodorus Siculus expressly declares was the custom among the primitive Egyptians.1 It is abundantly evident that many useful arts, and probably those on which the manufacturing of cloth depended among the rest, were invented by the Antedilu¬ vians, and the knowledge of them preserved by Noah and his family: it may therefore appear extraordinary to us, that, when the descendants of that patriarch dispersed themselves upon the face of the earth, they should so generally have lost sight of them all, and by a retrograde disposition of the mind, have dwindled into a state of total ignorance : —such, however, undoubtedly is the fact. I am indeed inclined to believe that the clothing arts were known to the Antediluvian world; for, garments of various kinds, thread, and even the ornamental parts of dress, are particularized by Moses as being in use soon after the deluge ;2 and he speaks of them without the least indication of their novelty, or the most distant hint that the manufacturing of them was a recent invention, and first introduced after the resto¬ ration of mankind. Linen and woollen garments were in use among the Egyptians at a very remote 1 Diodorus Siculus, lib. I. cap. ii. and iv. 5 A hyJce, or mantle, is spoken of, Genesis, chap. ix. ver. 23, as used by two of the sons of Noah to cover him when he lay exposed in his tent, the Hebrew name appropriated to this garment, used in several subsequent passages in Scripture, is unequivocally expressive of a garment manufactured in the loom ; so that there is little reason to conceive, that it should in this place alone be put for a vestment of leather, tin or thread, occurs, Gen. chap. xiv. ver. 23. For the various ornaments see Gen. chap. xxiv. ver. 22, &c. [The “golden earring of half a shekel weight,” as it has been rendered by the old English translators, seems to have been a ring or jewel for the nose. It is so given in the Persian and Arabic Versions. —Ed.]

Licence and re-use

Contents

Volumes