Conclusion

This book has looked at an important, but overlooked, aspect of trades history. While there are several excellent studies of tailors written from various perspectives, there are none which take a detailed look at the work they did, how they did it, and how this impacted upon their lives, and their working relationships. There are none on staymaking tailors in particular. This study of male and female staymakers offers several important clarifications to our understanding of eighteenth-century staymaking. Firstly, the book has teased out the relationship between tailoring and staymaking, deducing the historical separation of the two trades to have occurred in the 1680s. What we have not before been able to deduce from the literature is that gradually, staymaking tailors became known as staymakers, and operated businesses very separate from those of tailors. ¹ Those plying the trade of staymaking deserve to be known and discussed as ‘staymakers’, as opposed to the, until now, more commonly used term ‘tailors’, or ‘staymaking tailors’. Secondly, the writing of this study draws attention to the gender differentiation of staymaking tailors as the eighteenth century drew to a close. The general understanding has been that males designed and created stays throughout the century, but this study has identified females beginning to become creators in their own right during the last two decades.