ABSTRACT
Company and craft by now had no relationship, though there were significant developments in the manufacture of clothing, with ready-made apparel increasingly available from the late seventeenth century onwards. By the beginning of the nineteenth, sizing and cutting systems began to be developed, and methods of pattern construction were explored in print, thereby becoming more easily available. In the early decades of the century, those admitted to the Company included a corn merchant, an insurance broker, a hop merchant, a silk merchant, a pawnbroker, a coal merchant, a hatter, a vintner, a miller, a dyer, an engraver and several gentlemen. The Company has always been distinguished for its humane and supportive conduct towards the elderly; the original almshouses, built in 1413 beside the Hall in Threadneedle Street, are believed to have been the earliest such provision in London.
