Shoddy and Mungo
A firm of Victorian solicitors? A couple of baddies in a pantomime? Two loveable characters in a children’s television series?
On my way back from Huddersfield on the train on Friday I passed a huge old mill with Shoddy and Mungo Mfrs in large letters on the outside. I love things like that.
I knew what shoddy was – it is “a fibrous material made by shredding unfelted rags or waste.” It was an early form of recycling, invented by Benjamin Law in 1813. Most poor people in those days bought their clothes third-hand and wore them until they literally fell to pieces. The rags could then be made into shoddy and remade into poor-quality material.
Mungo I had not heard of – but it’s similar to shoddy, though made with felted rags.
In 1860 the town of Batley was producing over 7000 tonnes of shoddy. That’s a lot of old clothes.
Nowadays, as this interesting article tells us, many old clothes end up in the Third World.
One phrase in this article that interested me was “The average lifetime of a garment is probably about three years.”
Hmm. Not in my wardrobe. I know I was never much of a fashion victim, but in my wardrobe anything three years old would be termed “new”.
In previous centuries, when fashions were slower to change, even rich people kept their clothes much longer – I remember years ago reading some eighteenth-century noblewoman’s diary in which, amongst other things, she kept a note of what she wore and her yellow silk dress cropped up year after year after year.
Fashion may be good for the economy: I’m not sure it’s good for the planet.
And that was going to be my neat ending to this piece - but, guess what, I'm not sure, reading all that about how clothes are recycled, that it's bad for the planet either, though I suspect that it probably is. On the other hand, perhaps my disapproval of fashion is just because I haven't much interest in it.
On my way back from Huddersfield on the train on Friday I passed a huge old mill with Shoddy and Mungo Mfrs in large letters on the outside. I love things like that.
I knew what shoddy was – it is “a fibrous material made by shredding unfelted rags or waste.” It was an early form of recycling, invented by Benjamin Law in 1813. Most poor people in those days bought their clothes third-hand and wore them until they literally fell to pieces. The rags could then be made into shoddy and remade into poor-quality material.
Mungo I had not heard of – but it’s similar to shoddy, though made with felted rags.
In 1860 the town of Batley was producing over 7000 tonnes of shoddy. That’s a lot of old clothes.
Nowadays, as this interesting article tells us, many old clothes end up in the Third World.
One phrase in this article that interested me was “The average lifetime of a garment is probably about three years.”
Hmm. Not in my wardrobe. I know I was never much of a fashion victim, but in my wardrobe anything three years old would be termed “new”.
In previous centuries, when fashions were slower to change, even rich people kept their clothes much longer – I remember years ago reading some eighteenth-century noblewoman’s diary in which, amongst other things, she kept a note of what she wore and her yellow silk dress cropped up year after year after year.
Fashion may be good for the economy: I’m not sure it’s good for the planet.
And that was going to be my neat ending to this piece - but, guess what, I'm not sure, reading all that about how clothes are recycled, that it's bad for the planet either, though I suspect that it probably is. On the other hand, perhaps my disapproval of fashion is just because I haven't much interest in it.
posted by Daphne at 11:00 pm
3 Comments:
Colours being the tricky fellowws that they are, most material made out of shoddy and mungo tended to be dark blue or grey and had a particualr flatness about it.
As it was cheap it was used for clothes in the Poorhouse and the Workhouse. Others who could not afford good cloth would often attract the derogatory comment "That looks like shoddy" Hence todays expression...
Old Batley back in '87
Were many a shoddy merchant's heaven,
A place where some wi' sense and luck
Might mak' their fortunes out of muck,
A place where heads were screwed on reight
And t'ome of Thomas Arthur Speight.
If you want to know more about how Thomas Arthur met the Devil one Hallowe'en and what became of him - ask the Communist.
Or his daughter.
Three years? Good lord. I feel far too guilty about some of my wardrobe adjustments then - I have sent stuff only seven years old to the charity shop and castigated myself for frivolity!
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