Most of us today consider the wearing of animal fur unethical: we also have many choices when it comes to effective cold weather clothing. But in the past fur was a prominent aspect of dress and the animal skin processing industries employed many of our ancestors.

Early craftsmen
Animal pelts were worn from prehistoric times, for warmth and protection, hide being widely used for clothing, footwear, saddlery, various vessels and other useful items. Over time, all communities gained – or could access – artisans experienced in producing essential leather goods and there was early division of labour among tanners, glovers, cordwainers, saddlers and so on. It isn’t known exactly when a separate group of craftsmen began to specialise in preparing fur skins (with the hair intact), as distinct from leather (with hair removed), but those involved in dressing and making up fur skins were first recorded in England as pelliparii or peleters (‘skinners’) during the reign of King Henry II (1154–89).

Successful skinners – skilled craftsmen preparing expensive fur skins – were smaller in number than leather workers, but eventually those who prospered not only processed skins, but also sold the finished articles in their own shops, congregating in certain districts like Bishopsgate Without in East London and Skinner’s Row, Lincoln. The industry progressed significantly in 1327 when, evolving from an earlier trade guild, the Worshipful Company of Skinners was incorporated by Royal Charter. As one of the City of London’s great medieval livery companies, the Skinners enjoyed high occupational status and were entitled to organise their own craft and trade.

Fashionable furs
Just as the medieval fur trade was developing, fashion was advancing rapidly in burgeoning towns and cities, the costliest furs admired for gown and cloak linings and trimmings becoming potent symbols of social rank. This is evidenced by English sumptuary laws of the 1300s to 1500s that aimed to reserve luxury species like ermine, lynx and miniver for the ruling classes, while restricting the working masses to common lambskin, coney (rabbit) and cat. Fur was also prominent in Tudor dress, but by Queen Elizabeth I’s reign already many European furs were growing scarce and prohibitively expensive, due to advances in agriculture and depletion of British and continental forests by the relentless hunting of wild animals, early victims of fashion’s whims.

Revived interest in fur during the 1600s followed the opening up of the vast resources of North America and Canada. Marten, elk, deer and seal were all admired, but the greatest demand was for beaver, used to make men’s formal hats, called castors. Through all the stylistic changes, from Georgian tricornes to Victorian top hats, beaver skin was commonly used for men’s (and some ladies’) headwear between the 17th and 19th centuries; some 500,000 beavers were being slaughtered annually for this purpose by the mid-1800s. During the 1700s and early 1800s other furs gained popularity too, from sable and ermine to squirrel and fox – popular for cloak and coat edgings, stoles and wraps – while pillow-sized muffs of bearskin or shaggy goat hair were key fashion accessories.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London showcased the enormous range of furs available from Russia, North America and other cold-climate countries, as well as closer to home, from lambskin and chinchilla to wolf and racoon. By around 1860, complete fur coats and jackets, initially of silky sealskin, entered British fashion, perhaps partly expressing rising middle-class wealth. Soon afterwards, during the 1880s, the wearing of whole animal skins including the head, paws and tail, heralded a new trend. Throughout the Edwardian era fur became increasingly integrated into high fashion: luxurious Russian or Siberian sable, ermine and sealskin fur coats, stoles and wraps were worn conspicuously by wealthy women, while prosperous gents favoured ostentatious full-length fur-lined coats with wide fur collars, inspiring caricatures of cigar-smoking, fur-bedecked financiers and impresarios.

Popular styles
During the 1910s, cheaper furs like skunk, moleskin and musquash entered the burgeoning ready-to-wear clothing repertoire aimed at a mass market. The First World War advanced fur’s wider popularity, many well-paid female munitions factory workers reportedly treating themselves to full-length fur coats. Between the wars fashion-conscious women throughout society aspired to a glamorous fur coat or more affordable coats and jackets trimmed with deep fur collar and cuffs. Fox, especially silver fox, was fashion’s favourite during the 1920s and 1930s, when one or two fox skins were slung casually around the shoulders or fashioned into evening capes. After the Second World War, as elegance in dress returned, luxury furs retained their prestige, a mink coat becoming the most desirable female garment during the 1950s and 1960s. Only during the 1970s and 1980s did the wearing of fur begin to decline in enlightened countries, due to shifts in fashion and environmental concerns.

Processing furs
Traditionally preparing and producing animal skins and furs fit for human wear involved a complex set of processes including many highly specialised skills. Firstly, those tasked with the grisly job of garrotting (killing) and then skinning the animal had to take care to preserve as far as possible the appearance of the fur. Pelts were then scraped clean of flesh, soaked, dried off and currycombed. Workers called ‘fur cutters’ used special knives to remove heads and necks, rumps and tails and any areas that may have been spoiled by trapping or gunshot wounds. Decent pieces were then sorted according to size, type, hair texture and depth and general quality. Afterwards, experienced fur-tinters applied chemicals or liquid dyes as needed on tips or the whole length of the fur, perhaps blending tones and producing a smooth finish. The smaller pieces, for example squirrel or rabbit, had to be carefully matched, to create a single garment and assembling these according to length, into appropriate patterns, while concealing any defects and highlighting the superior areas of fur. The work of the ‘matcher’ was highly skilled, considered an art.

Next an assistant called a ‘nailer’ – often a general apprentice furrier – dampened the pelt, then stretched and nailed it, skin side uppermost, shaping and blocking it to a chalk-drawn pattern on a board. Once dry, the skins were removed and cut to shape, any excess fur being carefully trimmed off. Cutters supervised the sewing of the required coats, jackets, capes and other garments, stitched either by the machinist or hand-sewer. More combing, brushing and careful pressing using hot irons restored the lustre of the fur, then the ‘finisher’ added padding and silk linings, cuffs, ornaments and fasteners such as hooks and buttons. The finisher also sewed glass eyes onto prepared animal heads like the fox heads stitched onto a completed stole or wrap, and contrived fake ermine by sewing imitation black tails onto articles of white fur.

The creation of certain fur articles required even more specialised skills than those outlined above. For instance hat furriers, besides creating smart beaver felt hats, also turned stiff, low-grade furs such as rabbit and hare into malleable felt for making into headwear, using a method known as ‘carroting’. The hairs from a skinned animal pelt were removed and ‘felted’ or entangled through a combination of friction, heat, moisture and chemicals. This partly involved brushing a mercury and acid solution onto the pelts to break down the keratin proteins, the remaining matter when dry being a bright orange colour, hence the term ‘carroting’. This was then consolidated in hot water, passed through rollers and hardened into felt, before being dried, then dyed and finally blocked into hats.

The fur trade in the 19th and 20th centuries
Traditionally producing fur items or articles derived from fur was often a family business, with husbands, wives and children of all ages working together in a room of their home that would typically become thick with fine fur fluff. Some businesses remained small-scale and were admired for their bespoke, high quality output, until there was no longer a demand for their products. However, as fashionable demand for whole fur garments and fur-trimmed apparel increased and manufacturing became increasingly mechanised, a number of specialised factories arose, turning out thousands of fur garments. Pelts were initially trimmed manually, then loaded by workers into beating machines to remove loose matter; then into disentangling machines. Next they were dampened, kneaded, soaked, stretched, dried and dampened again, before being lubricated, with oil or fat, degreased, dusted, stretched and beaten, clipped, trimmed, combed and brushed, shaken, fluffed and finally sewn. Many of the processes once completed by hand could now be done by machine, but certain aspects such as stretching and clipping and finer sewing were still skilled tasks. The number of such businesses in the UK plummeted from the 1970s onwards.

Gruesome, arduous and even dangerous though much of the fur processing industry was, many of our ancestors found skilled positions or more casual work within this ancient trade, whether in small, specialised workshops or larger factories. Many would have been proud of what they produced and, in particular, the fur industry offered vital work opportunities for many Jewish immigrants who were often experienced furriers, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, some historians believe that the influx of foreign nationals from cold regions such as Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe with a long history of fur-wearing were largely responsible for expanding the production, retail and wearing of fur in Britain.

As with any complex industry involving many processes and that evolved over time, occupational terminology can be confusing. Past family members involved in the fur trade might be mentioned in census returns as ‘furrier’, a general term for any kind of fur worker or, more particularly, an experienced professional – one who selected, matched or cut out skins, or who made small fur items such as cuffs and muffs. Many other specialised fur industry jobs are also reflected in the census returns and other historical records such as trade directories, terms including fur merchant, fur designer, fur sorter and those mentioned above: blocker, cutter, dealer, dyer, finisher, fur garment maker, furrier, greaser, hatter, ironer, liner, machinist, matcher, nailer, sewer, skin-puller and stuffer.

Read Jayne’s latest guides to dating photos, and our article about the London Livery Companies, in the new print edition, Issue 9, available now – see discoveryourancestors.co.uk .