Top Tweets for #NotQuantum

Before the invention of ready-made footwear, men of a certain social class all had their shoes made. Below is a sketch from one of the client books owned by Peal, one of Britain's largest and most esteemed bespoke shoemaking firms. The page here says the order is for "Mr. Marx of Berlin." A notation on the order says the finished shoes should be delivered to Dr. W. Smith in the intellectual Hampstead area. Notably, when this order was made (1870), Karl Marx had come into some money and was living in London. He was known to picnic and ride donkeys in the Hampstead area. According to Henry Mayhew's book London Labour and the London Poor (1851), London had 28,574 boot and shoemakers in the mid-19th century, making it the third most popular profession in the city (after "domestic servants" and "general laborers"). About 2,000 of these workers were described as master bootmakers, a title we can assume meant they were cordwainers working in the prestigious West End. There were two ways to make shoes at this time: you could have things made from scratch, using a custom wooden last that a shoemaker (or cordwainer) would produce based on measurements and tracings of your feet. The uppers of the shoe would be shaped on this wooden form, ensuring the perfect fit. Most men of a certain social class—such as members of Parliament, judges and barristers, city bankers and stockbrokers, and well-heeled rakes—bought their shoes from cordwainers. Those sitting a few rungs lower on the social and professional ladder—such as clerks, administrators, laborers, rapscallions and ruffians, costermongers and mudlarks, and the general ne’er do wells—went to cobblers. Cobblers repaired shoes, but they also had stock of old shoes worn by other people. If you could not afford bespoke shoes from a cordwainer, you could get one "custom" made from a cobbler, who would rip apart old shoes to "cobble" together "new" ones for you. Hence the term "cobbler." In the historic London guild system, these trades were so kept apart that, by the mayor’s order in 1395, cobblers were restricted from working with new leather, and cordwainers were similarly forbidden from meddling with old footwear. That’s why bespoke shoemakers today take umbrage at being called cobblers, a historically less respected position. Whether cordwainer or cobbler, people who dealt with shoes were part of the working class, and thus were at the forefront of many pro-labor movements. Thomas Hardy was a shoemaker and founding member of the London Corresponding Society (1792), a federation of debate clubs following the French Revolution that agitated for democratic reform in the British Parliament. Hardy was such a thorn in the Crown’s side that he was eventually tried and convicted of high treason, after which he was sent to prison, where he died. Thomas Preston, a shoemaker who advocated for common ownership of land and democratic equality between the sexes, was one of the main organizers of the Spa Fields Riots (1816). Motivated by the misery and unemployment following the Napoleonic Wars, Preston and his co-conspirators designed an unconvincing scheme that was supposed to end with them taking control of the government (they, too, were tried for high treason). Perhaps the most notable of these attempted revolutions is the Cato Street Conspiracy (1820), where a band of Englishmen, most of whom were boot and shoemakers, plotted to murder the Prime Minister and the entire British cabinet. That ended with five conspirators at the gallows, and another five deported to Australia. Roughly fifty years after Karl Marx ordered his bespoke shoes, the Industrial Revolution mostly swept away bespoke shoemaking. Most people today buy cheap, glued footwear produced in factories by people who conduct the same movement along an assembly line. The distinction between cordwainer and cobbler is almost academic, as most people will never encounter a cordwainer. Among the bespoke shoemaking firms that exist, many are terrible, as they can't find the skilled labor necessary to produce their orders. IMO, all the good bespoke shoemaking nowadays is done by independent cordwainers who conduct their crafts as a matter of pride.