1) Clothing.
We have little information about the clothing worn by workmen in the past. The picture of a collier in Walker’s The Costume of Yorkshire provides us with one image of how a coal-miner might have dressed away from the pit: much earlier, in 1691-2, a Colsterdale banksman was distinguished from other workers by wearing a frock and cap for the purpose. For the men who worked underground there was probably no ‘dress code’ since even ventilated pits were almost certainly oppressively stuffy: indeed we learn from a seventeenth-century deposition that some miners worked naked or semi-naked. There are just a few references to their working attire: in 1692 William Goodall of Farnley received 6d to pay for his clogs and in 1695 Richard Child was allowed 1s 1d for an Apperon, probably one made from leather. The only article of clothing noted in tanners’ wills was also an apron
almost certainly leather in this case: 1658 the working tree, apron, knife, bill, Selby.