Boots, cleaning and blacking – another reminiscence from the nineteenth century by ‘S.H.E.’.
“ELASTIC-SIDED BOOTS FOR SUNDAYS.
Men, if course, wore heavy boots for work, but on Sundays they had lighter boots, laced, buttoned, or elastic sides. So did women. Elastic sides looked very smart when they were new, but were tiresome getting, on and off. Many a time I have had to pull off the elastic-sided boots of an elder. You took hold of the toe with one hand and the foot with the other and wriggled and pulled, until all at once you found yourself sitting on the floor, with the boot in your hand.
It was not very nice, especially when you had come home tired from a long walk, and we took long walks in those days. When I was quite small the whole family would walk from Stamford to Barnack and back on a Sunday.
Elastic sides were usually made of a soft dull kid, which could not be cleaned with blacking. You could buy kid reviver, but many people used milk or ink, but whatever you used, it was sponged on and left to dry dull.
For other kinds of leather there were none of the tins of boot-polish we use today. All boots were black and there were two kinds of blacking – liquid in stone bottles that was put on with a small sponge on the end of a stick or pats of blacking wrapped in oiled paper. This last was emptied into a saucer or tin and thinned down with water. It was applied with a small brush or rabbit’s foot, worked well into the leather with a medium brush and then polished with a soft one. People who were very particular kept and old silk handkerchief to give a finishing touch. It took a lot of time and hard brushing to make your boots look nice, but I think the old-fashioned blacking was a better preservative. Or perhaps it was that the leather of those days was of a superior quality.”
The Stamford Mercury, 8th April, 1938.