ABSTRACT
Mechanisation virtually wiped out the profession of the shoemaker, and thus the phenomenon of the ‘learned cobbler’. By the late 1850s the closing machine, which took over the skilled task of sewing the sole to the upper shoe, had become widespread. According to Pliny the Elder, a lowly shoemaker once pointed out that the famous painter, Apelles, had inaccurately rendered a sandal. Classically educated writers across the English-speaking globe often quoted these words to police boundaries of expertise, usually in order to expose another’s ignorance. The ‘ultracrepidating’ Gifford seized the most rigorous classical education available, and rose to a position from which he sniped at almost everything that moved. Cobblers’ customers came from every social class, made wide-ranging conversations and helped produce the stereotype of the British cobbler as a working-class radical intellectual, even if in practice some, such as William Gifford, embraced conservative politics.
