The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

By the 1800s Paris also had spaces where pedestrians could walk.' 86 These urban
improvements had a twofold action on shoes. On the one hand they allowed
easier 'mobility' in town. Patterns disappeared relatively quickly. On the other
hand they boosted two different types of reactions. Before 1790 these
improvements allowed the use of unpractical heels, especially for Ofl•S7
After 1790, they allowed the spread of the new Greek fashion accompanied by
galoshes, instead of the impractical patte
Another important concept publicised in the medical treaties on feet
deformities was the need to protect the feet from the wet climate. Rubber, at the
time called Gutta Percha, seemed to be the method. Rubber was applied for the
first time to shoes by a certain Mr de La Condaminerée in the 1730s who
publicised his discovery at the Academie de France, but did not have any
commercial success.' 89 Thomas Handcock, a London shoemaker, began in the
1820s sewing rubber strips inside the shoe, but found several difficulties. Rubber
had an unpleasant smell and was vulnerable to temperature! 9° In the 1830s in
France rubber began to be applied to waterproof cloaks, travelling cushions, etc.
However, these early experiments did not carry to immediate applications on
shoes.' 9' Only in the 1840s Charles Goodyear discovered the vulcanisation
process (heating rubber with sulphur). This invention was patented in 1843 by
Hancock for England.' 92 These improvements in the quality of rubber did not
solve the problems related to its use for shoes. Mainly applied under leather
soles, the rubber part was coming out and required continucs repairing. At the
beginning of the 1 850s several customers did not seem completely satisfied by
the quality and aesthetic character of rubber shoes. It was still the medical image
' 86 F Bedarida and A. Sutcliffe, 'The streets in the structure and life of the city. Reflections on
nineteenth-century London and Paris', Journal of Urban History, VI - 3 (1980), pp. 385-6.
187 j Swann, Shoes, cit., p. 25.
188 M. Von Boehn, Modes and Manners, cit., pp. 2 14-5.
189 The innovator, March 1857, p. 21.
'° M. French, 'The growth and relative decline of the North British Rubber Co., 1856-1956',
Business History, XXX - 4 (1988), p. 396.
191 Dictionaire Universel Theorique et pratique du commerce et de Ia navigation (Paris, 1859),
vol. i, p. 844. Only in 1859 a certain M. Napoleon Gaillard patent for the application of rubber to
shoes led to the setting up of a vast business with more than 2,000 franchisees all over France.
192 In 1856 the American inventor established a rubber footwear business in Edinburgh, named
Norris & Co., patenting the invention for Scotland only and waiting for the two remaining years
of Hancock's patent for England.
151
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