‘Shoes and the Georgian Man’ by Matthew McCormack review

Shoes and the Georgian Man by Matthew McCormack follows the footprints left by changing fashions across late 18th-century and early 19th-century Britain.

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell | Published in History Today Volume 75 Issue 5 May 2025

‘Monstrosities of 1821,’ by George Cruikshank. Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery. Public Domain.

Clothes may make the man, but shoes reveal him. ‘Perhaps more than any item of clothing, shoes are synonymous with their wearers’, writes Matthew McCormack: ‘they are identified with the body rather than merely being an adjunct to it.’ In the 18th century, men’s shoes and boots were made of leather and functioned as a second skin. With use, they would take on the shape of their wearer’s body, and even the contours of his soul, as numerous footwear-related superstitions suggest.

Flexible, sturdy, and waterproof, leather was a by-product of the British beef industry, and men’s shoes carried a suggestion of nationalism. Shoemakers congregated in regions rich in cattle and oak forests, which provided the bark used in tanning. Nottingham and Northampton, where McCormack teaches, emerged as shoemaking centres. ‘Visitors from abroad typically remarked on the good quality of footwear worn even by poorer Britons’, McCormack notes. The English considered crude wooden shoes a sign of extreme poverty or, worse, Frenchness.

The construction of men’s shoes remained fairly standard throughout the Georgian period, consisting of a vamp and two quarters fastened by a detachable buckle (not included). The quality varied depending on price. Wealthy men had their shoes custom-made, yet a ‘perfect fit’ remained elusive: 18th-century shoes were ‘straight lasted’, meaning they did not have distinct left and right feet. Ready-made or secondhand footwear was not only cheaper but easier to obtain, as letters bemoaning the difficulties and delays of ordering custom-made shoes suggest. Contrary to the stereotypical narrative of 18th-century female consumerism, men put great effort into shoe shopping. At a time when gentlemen wore breeches rather than trousers, the male foot was on full display, and an essential adjunct to the shapely leg so highly prized at the time.

The high, brocaded heels of the 1600s may have advertised that a man did not need to walk or work, but changing concepts of masculinity transformed him from head to toe over the course of the 18th century. The enlightened Georgian man dressed for action, whether marching, riding, or dancing. Heels quickly became a gendered sign of effeminacy, worn only by fops and macaronis. Modern manhood now demanded energetic participation in the public sphere rather than luxurious display.

This book serves as a useful male corollary to Kimberly Alexander’s female-focused study Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (2018). Men’s shoes of the period have received less attention, partly because they are not as likely to survive in museum collections. Not only are they less decorative, but – because they were more utilitarian and not as beholden to the whims of fashion – they typically wore out before they went out of style. McCormack notes that they were also routinely recycled, the precious leather being salvaged to repair other shoes. Humble cobblers performed those repairs, but only skilled cordwainers were allowed to work with new leather. There is evidence that they took pride in their work: shoes were labelled long before clothes were. Shoemakers, being both skilled and self-employed, ‘have historically had a reputation for political radicalism’, McCormack writes, giving rise to the admonishing proverb: ‘Shoemaker stick to your last.’

The immense challenge of outfitting an entire army with suitable footwear in a range of sizes would give any cordwainer pause. From ‘foot soldiers’ to ‘boot camp’, soldiers are synonymous with their feet. Hardwearing boots were prohibitively expensive – only officers, who rode horses, wore them – so soldiers reinforced their shoes with hobnails and metal plates, and wore buttoned linen gaiters blackened with shoe polish in imitation of boots. McCormack cites several accounts of soldiers marching barefoot rather than suffering in threadbare or uncomfortable shoes – and stealing superior shoes from the corpses of their enemies.

McCormack sometimes struggles to chart subtle changes that occurred slowly but steadily over the course of a century or more. Boots, in particular, progressed from military and equestrian gear to occupational clothing and even fashion. The Wellington was a soft, close-cut leather boot originally made by George Hoby of St James’s Street, not the rubber rainboot familiar today. In the afterglow of Waterloo, Wellingtons became a ‘virtual national costume’ combining patriotism, practicality, and panache. Dancing shoes diverged from everyday wear around 1790, when men began carrying soft, flat slippers to balls. Dancing was an important aspect of male sociability, especially in the military. British soldiers were known for their gallantry as well as their bravery; the redcoats of Pride and Prejudice spend more time in the ballroom than on the battlefield. Horace Walpole boasted of his masculine prowess on the dance floor in 1781, when he ‘danced three country-dances with a whole set forty years younger than myself’.

McCormack also explores the medical aspects of footwear, beyond chiropodists and corn doctors. Gout was known as a ‘gentleman’s disorder’, the result of too much rich food and wine, exacerbated by cold, wet weather. The 19th-century essayist Reverend Sydney Smith compared it to ‘walking on my eyeballs’. Gout-swollen legs and feet clad in roomy ‘gout shoes’ and flannel ‘Bootikins’ were both an affliction and a perverse status symbol. Corns, too, were more likely to afflict the rich, since the poor tended to wear more forgiving (though less fashionable) wide, flat shoes.

For an academic book, Shoes and the Georgian Man is accessibly written, even if the prose is a bit flat-footed at times and prone to repetition. It is impressively illustrated with rare surviving objects, such as a sailor’s shoe from the 1750s salvaged from a shipwreck and a 19th-century riding boot that has been cut down into a jaunty ankle boot. While these rugged artefacts may not be as swoon-worthy as women’s shoes, in McCormack’s hands, they are no less compelling.