The warm hand-covering termed a muff probably evolved gradually from the winter fur sleeves first recorded in Roman times. Sheepskin hand coverings were issued to monks by the ninth century and during the Middle Ages the words muffulae (Medieval Latin), moufle (Old French: thick glove or mitten) and English muff were in circulation. Engravings of high-ranking Englishwomen dating to 1567 and 1588 each depict a small muff suspended on a chain from the girdle, although muffs did not become significant dress items until the 17th century.

In the early 1600s separate wrist muffs of fur, silk or worsted were used and after the Restoration single fur muffs attached by cord to a coat button or suspended from a neck ribbon became fashionable. In November 1666 the diarist Samuel Pepys wrote: “this Day I first did wear a muffe, being my wife’s last year’s muffe, and now I have bought her a new one this serves me very well”. Prosperous citizens might wear muffs of sable, ermine or otter, while humbler folk used rabbit, cat and dog skins. By the late-1600s enormous muffs were suspended from the waist and modish gentlemen and ladies carried tiny lapdogs inside their muffs as novelties.

Eventually muffs were mainly favoured by women, for walking and carriage driving. Between the 1780s and 1820s vast shaggy muffs were especially fashionable, for winter warmth and as year-round stylish accessories. Animal pelts became more widely available during the Victorian era and by the 1880s matching scarves and muffs of sealskin were admired throughout society. Fur hats and muffs proved essential for Edwardian motor-car passengers, along with goat’s-hair or fur-lined leather foot muffs. In the early 1910s militant suffragettes carrying large muffs were searched by the police, in case they concealed weapons, like the wooden clubs secreted in the muff of Edith Garrud, martial arts practitioner who trained the Bodyguard unit of the WSPU. During WW1 many working-class women bought themselves fur muffs, but in the later 1920s muffs became outmoded, partly due to increased travel in enclosed motor vehicles.