The working life of Museum of London

Most of our objects tell a good story. But not all are as fabulous as these snakeskin shoes, very recent additions to the dress collection.

You would think we’d bought them hot off one of London Fashion Week’s runways. But no, they were worn in 1945 by Gladys Sandford on the day of her wedding to Charles “Arthur” White. I will tell you more about Gladys and Charles in a future blog, today I want to concentrate on the shoes.

Looking inside the shoes, you can see a stamp looking a bit like two Pac-Men (Mans?) about to devour a ‘41′.

Clothing, like food, was rationed during and after the Second World War, from 1 June 1941 to 15 March 1949, to be precise, and the sign stands for ‘Civilian Clothing 1941′.

Let me try to explain. To buy clothes you not only had to have money but also coupons, which were provided in a ration book. You did not get receive many coupons, 66 per year at first, and later only 48. To put this in perspective, to buy a coat you had to spend 18 coupons. If you want to know the number of coupons for other items of clothing, have a look at these pages from a ‘Clothing Coupon Quiz’ published in August 1941, also from our collection (click on the image and you should be able to read it).

Not every item of clothing sold during the war had a CC41 stamp. This was only applied to so-called ‘Utility’ clothing, which was produced to strict guidelines. Skirts, for instance, could only have a certain number of pleats, buttons and so on, to save material. Below is a detail from the ‘Making of Civilian Clothing (Restrictions) (No. 6) Order from 1 May 1942′, which lists the ‘restrictions on making’ of women’s dresses (and maids’ dresses!):

We have a number of shoes with the CC41 stamp in the collection. Some were made with wooden soles to save leather. None of the shoes are made of snakeskin, but I guess there were not many other uses for this material during the war.

Gladys’ shoes were donated by her daughter Pat, together with a lot of other, beautifully presented material. Amazingly Gladys’ diaries from the period have survived and she noticed the purchase of her shoes on 18 October 1945. Pat told me that Gladys’ always said that the shoes were bough second-hand and had once belonged to an actress!

The last entry on these two pages is for 20 October 1945, the day of the wedding. As was her custom, Gladys was very matter of fact: ‘Arthur and I got married / went home tonight’.

Sadly, there is no wedding picture but there is an undated photo of Gladys, which I reckon was taken at about the time she met Arthur, in 1941/42  (I might just be hopelessly romantic). Charles was a lucky man and this as well as other photos of Gladys show that she certainly had a good eye for fashion.

Gladys and Charles White were happily married for almost 50 years, until Gladys’ death in 1995. There will be more of Charles and Gladys’ moving story in the future.