Sixteen-String Jack, Or, What's in a Name
From time to time, I catch up on a lovely blog entitled the Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century, one of the recent posts of which mentions a highwayman who went by "Sixteen-String Jack", John Rann. He was so called because he wore "sixteen strings at each knee". My curiousity piqued, I disbelieved the pub-sign recreations of what this might have looked like, and have been poking through various period pieces. The best one I've found is distressingly small, and it's difficult to see his precise dress. smarriveurr suggested some kind of calf-enhancement was going on, and as he knows a well-turned 18th-century leg, it's hard to argue.
thirteenletters provided a fun clue in Coaching Days and Ways, which indicates that certain riding dress included "small clothes of corded silk plush made to button over the calf of the leg, with sixteen strings and rosettes to each knee," circa 1808. As Rann had been employed as a coachman for a time, this makes sense, and even a Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century, 1750-1800 indicates with some line drawings of period sources, that breeches were after c. 1794 tied, and that 1790s pantaloons were "sometimes also pulled in round the ankle with a running string".
Any other theories?
thirteenletters provided a fun clue in Coaching Days and Ways, which indicates that certain riding dress included "small clothes of corded silk plush made to button over the calf of the leg, with sixteen strings and rosettes to each knee," circa 1808. As Rann had been employed as a coachman for a time, this makes sense, and even a Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century, 1750-1800 indicates with some line drawings of period sources, that breeches were after c. 1794 tied, and that 1790s pantaloons were "sometimes also pulled in round the ankle with a running string".
Any other theories?