Horrible History: Brace yourself

National Geographic has broadcast a series on UK television titled “Witches: the Truth behind the Trials”. Each episode explores the events in a particular country regarding the trials and punishment of suspected witches. Cinematic reconstructions, new analysis and expert interviews are used to shed fresh light on the most famous witch trials in Europe and North America.

Subtitled “Salem's Hunts and Hysteria”, the episode is a good introduction into the events of 1692. That said, there are a couple of discrepancies that detract from the production. The first is confusing references to the ethnicity of one of the accused, Tituba. Depending on which expert is speaking or whether it is the narrator talking, she is inconsistently described as South American or native American. Moreover, the actress chosen for the reconstructed scenes would appear to be of African American descent. Similarly, she is termed a servant rather than the more accurate description as an enslaved woman. For the sake of clarity, Tituba was an enslaved South American Kalina woman. The Kalina, also known as the Caribs or mainland Caribs and by several other names, are an indigenous Amerindian people native to the northern coastal areas of South America. Today, the Kalina live largely in villages on the rivers and coasts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and Brazil. All very interesting, but not the focus of this article. Rather it centres on the portrayal of another of the accused, Giles Corey.

The uncredited actor hired for the reconstructed scenes was clearly a bit younger than the 81-year-old Corey, but it was his wearing of braces that caught our eye. The events in Salem occurred in the late 17th-century. The English-born farmer, Corey was accused of witchcraft along with his wife Martha in April 1692. He was arrested but refused to enter a guilty or not guilty plea which was problematic for Salem’s authorities. At the time the common law courts of England [1] thought they lacked authority over a defendant until he or she had voluntarily submitted to it by entering a plea seeking judgment from the court. Evidently, a criminal justice system that could only punish those who had volunteered for possible punishment was unworkable, so a means was needed to coerce defendants into entering a plea. The practice of being “pressed” (known in French as “Peine forte et dure” or “forceful and hard punishment”) was just such a method of torture used on those accused who refused to plead guilty or not guilty to a crime. Those who “stood mute” would have a plank or board placed on their chest to which heavier and heavier weights or stones would be added until a plea was entered. Understandably as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great, the condemned would be unable to breathe and would likely suffocate. So it was for Giles Corey who endured pressing for three days before dying on 19th September 1692.

All of this has been a preamble to discovering the history of braces (“suspenders” in the US). We, at Tastes Of History, were fairly certain that braces of the type shown were not a 17th-century fashion accessory whether in Britain or across the Atlantic in the Colonies. For most of the Mediæval period men wore two separate stockings known as “hose” [2] that went from toe to hip and created a general look similar to tight trousers. They were tied at the waist to either lacing on their “braies” (underwear) [3] or to a separate cloth belt worn beneath their clothing. By the 15th-century conjoined “hose” became popular but these too were still laced with points to a doublet. However, the fashion in 1692 would have been breeches, which were more likely to be held up by a belt, the ages old nemesis of braces.

Jump forward in time to the first half of the 18th-century and on their retail website “www. mensbraces4him.co.uk”, EL Cravatte claims that braces appear for the first time in 1736. Furthermore, they were being worn by none other than Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, an early version of the accessory had emerged in France in the 1700s. Known as Bretelles, these were ribbons or straps of silk that were looped in the buttonholes of breeches to support them. It is far more likely that it was these bretelles that Benjamin Franklin wore concealed beneath his waistcoat (as did Napoleon Bonaparte, apparently).

Gradually, after centuries of hose, close-fitting stockings and breeches, it was the adoption of high-waisted trousers during the 1820s in Europe that rendered belts uncomfortable and impractical for the fashionable gentlemen. Bretelles, the strips of decorative fabric attached to the buttonholes of men's trousers, remained the only means of suspension. The original men’s fashion icon and Regency influencer, Beau Brummell, brought them into vogue. But the sheer popularity of trouser-wearing led to the first commercial production of modern braces, or “galluses” as they were sometimes called in the 19th-century. In 1820 London haberdasher Albert Thurston saw an opportunity and started manufacturing the very first modern style braces. Two years later Thurston brought them to public attention, marketing them as “braces”. His design of 1822 with straps of boxcloth, a tightly woven wool, and leather loops attached to buttons sewn inside the waistband of trousers proved exceptionally popular. Thurston’s straps had an “H back” with both straps running over the shoulders from front to back where an extra piece held the parallel straps together thus resembling an uppercase H. Two further designs soon followed. The first were “X back” braces where the two straps crossed behind the back. Next came “Y back” braces still popular today that introduced two frontal straps merging into one back strap. Finally, with the invention of the metal clasp in 1894 and its subsequent adoption in the manufacturing of braces, trousers no longer required interior waistband buttons.

Interestingly, Thurston was not the sole promoter of modern braces. One of the first patents for men’s braces was issued in 1871 to one Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain. His patent was for “adjustable and detachable straps for clothing” that could be attached to a variety of men’s and women’s garments such as underwear, corsets and regular trousers.

Throughout the 18th- and 19th-centuries it was neither fashionable nor acceptable for a gentleman’s braces to be visible. Braces worn openly were symbolic of the working-class manual labourers. So, when the hot summer of 1893 led many London office workers to remove their jackets due to the heat, social norms of decency were broken. To avoid accusations of impropriety many men temporarily adopted belt use to allow them to remove their suit jackets while retaining respectability.

A year later, in 1894, saw the invention of metal clips removing the need to attach braces by means of buttons; simply opening and closing the clips sufficed. Many clips have a serrated edge, however, and this can cause damage to the trouser waistband with frequent use. Whether using clips or buttons, braces remained regular attire throughout the 1920s but they were still considered “underwear”. Thus, as waistcoats (vests in the US and Canada), which had effectively concealed braces from view, were worn less often in the 1930s, the switch to belts began in earnest. In 1938 Life magazine reported that 60% of American men had chosen belts over braces. The shift happened earlier in America, but England soon followed when the Duke of Windsor [4] popularised belt wearing. Even when the return of fuller-cut trousers in the 1940s revived braces, they had effectively lost out to belts. Yet braces remain a component of men’s formal attire or out of personal preference and have made a comeback since the mid-20th-century trending as statement pieces.

Bon appétit!

References:

Cravatte, E.L. (2024) “The History of Mens Braces”, www. mensbraces4him.co.uk, available online (accessed 24th November 2024).

Shackelford, C. (2022), “Brace Yourself: A Complete History of Suspenders”, , available online (accessed 24th November 2024).

Endnotes:

1. In 1692 Salem was a colony subject to the English crown.

2. “Hose” refers various styles of men's clothing for the legs and lower body, worn from the Middle Ages through the 17th-century when hose fell out of fashion and were superseded by breeches and stockings. The old plural form of “hose” was “hosen”, words that remain the generic terms for trousers in modern German (Hose, singular, and Hosen, plural). The French equivalent was chausses. Some hose had a foot, some did not. Early hose were single-legged and were held up by being tied to the belt of man’s braies (underwear; see Note 3). They can be worn rolled down to knee or ankle in hot weather, while some poor people just wore simple leg wrappings. In the later part of the Mediæval period, from the 13th-century onward, some hose were attached to the doublet using points (laces) tied through small holes.

3. “Braies”, from Latin bracae meaning trousers or breeches (cf. britches), were worn by Iron Age tribesmen in antiquity and by Europeans subsequently into the Mediæval period. In the later Middle Ages they were used exclusively as undergarments. Braies generally hung to the knees or mid-calf in resemblance of today’s shorts.

4. When King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, he and his wife, Wallis Simpson, were thereafter known as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.