By Tim Lambert
Leather has been used by humans since Prehistoric Times. People preserved animal skins by smoking them or rubbing animal brains on them. In Ancient Iraq vegetable oils were used to treat skins.
In Europe in the Middle Ages animal skins were dried then tanned. They were soaked in water with oak tree bark to preserve them. (The word tanning comes from the Latin word for oak bark, tannum).
However, tanning was a ‘noxious’ trade because it caused an unpleasant odour! Leather was softened by rubbing it with animal dung. In the Middle Ages in most towns tanning had to take place outside the town limits because of the smell.
In the Middle Ages and the 16th century leather had many uses. Books were bound with leather. It was also used to make arrow spacers and bracers (wrist bands for archers). In the 16th century men sometimes wore leather jackets called jerkins. A cordwainer made leather shoes while a cobbler repaired them. Cordwainers were called that because they worked with leather from Cordova in Spain. Cobble was an old English word meaning to carry out small repairs. A leather drinks flask was called a costrel.
Leather was also used, of course to make belts and purses. Men carried purses on their belts but thieves called cutpurses would try to cut them off!. Whips were also made of leather. (Whipping was a common punishment for minor crimes). In Scotland a leather strap called the tawse was used to hit children until the 18th century.
Several English surnames come from the leather trade, skinner (a man who skinned animals), tanner, currier (a man who dressed leather after it was tanned), glover and saddler.
In the 19th century dog excrement was called ‘pure’. There were pure collectors who walked the streets of cities picking it up and then selling it for tanning. The use of dung for treating leather lasted until the mid-20th century.
However, in the 19th century machines made the mass production of leather goods possible. In 1858 chrome tanning was invented. Leather was tanned using chrome salts. In the 19th century the first attempts were made to create artificial leather. Products improved during the 20th century.
The old insult for a stupid person ‘leatherhead’ was first recorded in the early 17th century. But the town of Leatherhead in Surrey does not derive its name from there. It’s not certain where it came from but it may have once been Leode rida, meaning public ford.
