shoes&pattens5

105

Sizes and wear patterns: social inferences

men’s wear are the late 14th-century buckled and side-latchet shoes (see above, pp. 32-3 and Table 9). These, it should be noted, generally have the longest ‘poulaines’ and are the most likely to be decorated. Normally, men and women appear to have worn the same styles - at least to judge by the evidence from Trig Lane (early/mid 15th century), where the adult size distribution of 20 side-laced boots or ankle-shoes shows the standard małe and female peaks, and mirrors the distribution of this and other groups as a whole (Table 12). Social factors could be held at least partially responsible for this: it may be that the London frnds are essentially utilitarian working-wear, and that it is only among the shoes of the higher grades of society - of which the ‘Baynards Castle’ group may be the sole representative -that distinctively małe and female fashions can be recognised.

Children’s shoes are a significant component of all the main assemblages except, surprisingly, that from Swan Lane. The smallest are very tiny indeed, corresponding to the modem children’s sizes 1-3 (Table 19). The smallest shoes commonly madę today are of children’s size 5 and fit children aged about 12 months (Clarks.Ltd. 1972, Fig. 14). This discrepancy of about 4 sizes between the medieval and modem statistics matches precisely that noted for the adult sizes, and so it seems reasonable to conclude that the smallest medieval shoes were similarly worn by infants not much morę than a year old. The re-maining children’s shoes are evenly distributed through all the children’s sizes and will probably have overlapped with the smallest adult sizes at a point when, to judge by modem statistics, the children were aged about eleven or twelve.¹ This accounts for the sharp rise in the number of shoes of adult sizes 1 or larger, but there are too many variables - the likelihood of shoes being handed down within the family, for example, or the antici-pated high ratę of mortality among infants - for it to be possible to deduce the proportion of all medieval children that wore shoes or the proportion that did not wear shoes until they were five or even ten.

But despite the problems of interpretation there can be no doubt that many medieval children did wear shoes. Of the 210 shoes from ‘Baynards Castle’ 19 per cent are in children’s sizes, as are 29 per cent of the 65 from Trig Lane (Table 19). This rise of 10 per cent from the late 14th to the early/mid 15th centuries may itself, if corrobor-ated by futurę fmdings, prove to be significant, for it was at this time that shoe styles particularly suitable for children were being developed. In the late 14th century nearly all children’s shoes were front-laced (Table 9), though some were low-cut and pointed in imitation of the contemporary adult styles. Others, however, were Iow ankle-shoes, correspondingly morę ‘sensible’ in style, and it was these which were to become common as children’s shoes - though now fastened with a buckie - in the early 15th century. Nearly all rangę between children’s sizes 3 and 9 (Table 12) and so would probably have been worn by children aged between about 2 and 6 years.

Pattens, whether of wood or leather, seem never to have been worn by the youngest infants. Even so, the smallest of the composite-soled pattens measures just 158 mm (roughly equiva-lent to the modem children’s size 8) and the example illustrated in Fig. 139 is no morę than 180 mm long (children’s size 11). Pattens such as these seem too smali to have been worn by adults or adolescents, but they might have been suitable for older children aged between six or seven and about eleven years. Otherwise, as Table 20 shows, there appears to have been an extensive rangę of sizes, very similar in overall distribution to that of ordinary shoes. Smali peaks can be seen near the modem adult sizes 3 and 4-5 {cf. Fig. 140, c.244 mm long, modern adult size 5), which may have been the sizes most often selected by adult men and women, but the sample (just 24 registered pattens with complete soles) is too smali to provide morę detailed statistical information.

Wear patterns and deformities of the feet

The possibility of learning about the health of London’s medieval population from the wear patterns on their shoes was first identified by Swallow (1975), who drew examples mainly from the late 14th-century ‘Baynards Castle’ assem-blage. The foliowing paragraphs draw heavily upon his main arguments and suggestions. Few of

1

Clarks Ltd. 1972, Fig. 14 (adult sizes 4 and 5 worn by eleven-year-old girls and boys respectively); Technicuir (1980-1), Tableaux 4-5 (similar sizes, but worn by girls and boys aged twelve or thirteen).