Much to the dismay of historians studying the material culture of early modern childhood, few examples of children’s clothing survive from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While textiles degraded or were reworked over time, shoes provide a tantalising glimpse into the clothing and lifestyles of children in early modern England. A collection of four sixteenth-century leather children’s shoes of varying sizes, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a gateway to considering the function and significance of these simple, but necessary, objects in the lives of early modern children.
Like today, children went through their shoes at a rapid pace. Indeed, writing to her daughter in the late seventeenth century, the country gentlewoman Elizabeth Jervoise requested that she bring her granddaughter Betty “a pare of shows the same sizes the last was on these are worne out.” (Hampshire Archive, Jervoise Papers) Whether worn out from play or growth, Betty Jervoise’s need for new shoes alludes to the material needs of seventeenth-century children and perhaps even their level of physical activity. The request helps contextualise the array of sizes and shapes of the leather children’s shoes in the Met collection, while the material examples help demonstrate why children’s shoes needed replacement so quickly.
One can speculate why more examples of early modern children’s shoes survive than other types of clothing. Though it’s possible that the higher survival rate of children’s shoes was due to the speed at which they were outgrown and discarded, their small size and portability also rendered them obvious mementoes. Shoes were also highly emotive and evocative objects to early modern families. As physical signifiers of children’s growth and development, shoes were inherently sentimental, reflecting the strong bonds of affection between parent and child. Indeed, children’s shoes have been found across England, concealed within walls, chimneys and other hidden spaces within the home (read more about this here). Often resembling the leather examples in the Met collection, the practice of concealing shoes was closely linked to early modern folk magic, protecting a home’s inhabitants from harmful spirits. This trend reaffirms the emotional significance of children’s shoes and highlights their additional function within the household.
While it is impossible to wholly access experiences of childhood in early modern England, written and material examples help scholars gain valuable insight into many aspects of their lives. Ultimately, by studying these surviving objects and documents together, we come closer to walking in the shoes of the early modern child.
Marlo Avidon (she/her) is a third-year PhD candidate in History at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on fashion and elite femininity in the late seventeenth-century, and she is particularly interested in the significance of clothing across the lifecycle. You can contact via email at mea47@cam.ac.uk, or on social media via her BlueSky @marloavidon.bsky.social.
