ABSTRACT
ALTHOUGH 1789 is known to history as the year in which the French Revolution began, that event, so pregnant with good and ill, was remote from the Midlands of England and the city of Leicester, where in one household at least the important happening of the year was the birth of a boy, Isaac, to a family named Brampton. This child grew up to establish a glove and hosiery business in the Leicester tradition. Isaac must have possessed an aptitude for invention, for he seems to have been the originator of elastic webbing, once very popular as a part of men's and women's boots, and still a commodity of importance. Isaac's discovery and its subsequent development by another man went far to mitigate the evil effect on Leicester's trade and employment caused by the stoppage of payment in 1843 by one of the old private banks in the town.
