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The ‘Despised Trade’ in Textiles: H. G. Wells, William Paine, Charles Cavers and the Male Draper’s Life, 1870–1914

Abstract This paper examines the situation of the male draper in terms of his relationships to textiles and female customers between the 1870s and the outbreak of the First World War. Drawing on accounts of shop work produced by men employed as drapers and drapers’ assistants, the essay highlights the ridicule levelled against men who sold textiles, their work with fabrics and clothing, as well as the service they provided for an almost exclusively female clientele, being widely derided as unsuitable labour for a man. Analysing three first-hand accounts of the draper’s lot — H. G. Wells’s discussion of his years as a draper’s apprentice in his Experiment in Autobiography (1934); William Paine’s Shop Slavery and Emancipation (1912), based on the injustices experienced by drapers’ assistants; and the diary of a Bond Street draper, Charles Cavers, posthumously published as Hades! The Ladies! Being Extracts from the Diary of a Draper (1933) — the essay shows how social constructions of masculinity framed the draper’s work, particularly the handling of fabrics.