When Men Had Too Many Pockets: Dangerous Victorian History

We talk a lot about women's pockets and the fact that there's not enough of them and they're not big enough to actually function, but what about men's pockets? What's the history there? Because even if we go back 100, 150 years, they're still complaining about women's pockets not being as effective or numerous as men's pockets. So how many pockets did men have 100 or 150 years ago? Well, it turns out the answer is a lot, to the point where they didn't know what to do with them and it just kind of gets silly at some point. I started this whole journey because I found pockets in weird places in some of my antiques and wanted to know what exactly those are used for, because they're not exactly in practical places. In fact, you would be sitting on some of them. So what exactly do you put in some of these pockets? Turns out, spoiler alert, they didn't know either and the entire journey of men's pockets once we get to the standard modern men's suit around the middle of the 19th century is just a lot and very confusing. Though for some reason, they seem to consistently say that women's pockets were the confusing ones, because women did have pockets. They just put them in really weird and mysterious places and filled them with all sorts of strange things that men didn't have any clue about. It's much like women's purses today. Women's pockets were apparently considered a complete mystery and that man may find the North Pole, but it is not likely that he will ever succeed in finding the pocket of his wife's gown that hangs in the clothes for us. So in an era where women clearly had pockets, how is it that men still had so much more? Because men usually had anywhere from 15 to 30 pockets standard in their outfits. In fact, they joke about this constantly in the fact that they basically call man a marsupial. One article said they basically developed during childhood. You start off with a couple pockets here, add a few more there. Every once in a while, once you reach a certain age and gain a new garment, you gain a few new pockets. You grow these pockets on yourself. So pockets were very much considered an integral part of men's existence. Despite the fact that they had so many, they had no clue what to do with them. And the men themselves seem to constantly lose things in these pockets as well, because there are just so many. In fact, one article says, men's pockets are put to such multifarious use, there are so many of them, and they are disposed about the various garments that go to make up the suit in such odd and inconvenient places that they are past fathoming. So I guess that goes back to my initial question of what did they actually do with all these pockets? And the answer is, they don't know anything and everything. In fact, when they talk to pickpockets of the era, they mention the fact that they have trouble figuring out what pocket to go for. They're struggling in their trade because there are so many diverse options, and people put their things in very weird places and very weird pockets. They just have too many that they have to figure out. So clearly they have more pockets than they know what to do with, and consistently are going to be forgetting where they're putting things. Which, if they're trying to figure out a way to remember all of the things that they've hidden away in their pockets, maybe they should take a look at the sponsor for this week's video, June's Journey. It's no secret that I love the 1920s, and I am a huge sucker for the classic murder mystery too. And if you're like me, then you will absolutely adore the sponsor for this week's video, June's Journey. It's a hidden object game that follows our plucky sleuth June in solving the mystery of her sister's murder, and to uncover all of the family secrets. All set in the world of the roaring 20s, and beautifully illustrated to capture the vibrancy of the era. Of course, June keeps getting caught up in exciting and perilous situations on her journey. As you discover clues in each new place, the story unfolds, revealing mysterious characters, shocking secrets, and adventure. On top of all of this, you get to build up the island with gardens, houses, shops, and more. There are new exclusive items every month too, so you can design your own little vintage town. I found it perfect to pick up for a few minutes here and there throughout the day to take a break. It's so satisfying to complete the scenes, and the extra challenges. Though there might actually be more objects in the scene than we can fit into a standard set of pockets, but I can't express to you just how much I absolutely love this game. You can download from the link in the description, or by scanning my QR code. Thanks again to June's Journey for sponsoring this week's video, so we too can remember what we put in our pockets. Which, thank goodness, we do not have as many as the Victorian Gentleman, because that is a long list. We're going to start with the trousers, which I think are the most practical things. We expect there to be the side pockets. They sometimes had one, but often had two of those side pockets, like we're used to. They were originally entered in from the top, rather than the sides, or at least with little flaps. But as the waistcoat gets longer, that kind of makes it difficult. You have to flip it out of the way in order to get access, so it's a lot easier to have them in the side seams. There's also commonly a watch pocket still there. Even though the watch can move around to different areas, that watch pocket still kind of just hangs out. If you've ever wondered what that weird tiny little pocket on your jeans is, that's kind of a vestigial watch pocket in a way. I think just really adds to the marsupial concept. But we have those two main pockets in the trousers, maybe the tiny watch pocket or something else of that sort in the waistband. And once you start getting into the 20th century, you'll start to see pockets on the back as well. They're not terribly common really until the 19-teens and 1920s. Prior to that point, you have enough other pockets going on in the rest of the outfit. They don't really worry about that, but technically you could have easily five pockets or more in just your trousers. Moving on then to the waistcoat is where we really start to take off. You have at least the two pockets down at the bottom. Usually you have another two stacked over the chest as well, as the waistcoat gets longer in style or as they move from childhood to adulthood and have more space. You'll have those four pockets traditionally. Inside, you might also have two more chest pockets, which is a great place to store the things that you don't want stolen by a pickpocket. Rather private, pretty obvious if someone's reaching into those spots. There's also some other weird places you can put things in waistcoats, but right now we're just focusing on the standards. As for the coat, it really depends on the style as to where they are. If you have a sack coat, the longer looser style that we're used to today for our standard coat style, you're generally going to have the two pockets down at that waist to hip level. You might also have one or two pockets up at the chest on the exterior. You can also have what's called a ticket pocket over one of those pockets. So that, as it's noting, is specifically for your tickets, a really narrow space just to put those in. On the inside, you can have more chest pockets. You can have more than one chest pocket on each side, multiple ones internal in order to have things that are easy to access, but just private enough. But that's just the regular style sack coat. If we're dealing with something like a tailcoat or a cutaway coat, the internal pockets are fine, but the external ones start to run into a problem when there's literally no front below the waist. So what they do instead is they move those pockets to the back and put them into the tails. And so the tailcoat pockets are what really started this whole thing for me, because you're sitting down on those. Unlike the imagery that we see of musicians sitting down at the piano and flipping their tails out of the way on the bench, that's not really an option in most chairs. You're going to be sitting on those tails, which means that you have these very long, large pockets, which yes, do take up nearly the entire expanse of your tail, and you're going to be sitting on those. What do you put in there? You can't put anything too large or lumpy. It's going to bump against the back of your legs. It's going to be really obvious and pull down the weight of everything. You can't put anything you can't sit on safely. So what do you put in there? And honestly, they don't know either. They would joke with the fact that men who got their first tailcoat, because it's a more formal garment, not everyone had one, would often ponder what to put in there and decide on their handkerchief, which is an absolutely hilariously terrible idea when you go to sneeze. You suddenly need your handkerchief, but in order to reach it, you're reaching inside of the tails, basically past your butt, at a diagonal, down to just above the back of your knee, desperately trying to pull out a handkerchief from a roughly foot-long pocket. And somehow you're going to accomplish this while not sneezing yet and not looking like a complete idiot while doing so. Great. So obviously, this led to a lot of hilarious circumstances that were quite silly and not so much practical. In terms of other places for pockets and tailcoats and cutaway coats, usually it's just the chest area and occasionally small ones put into the waist for things, again, like watch pockets or small change or keys or something really tiny that you don't want to lose. We move then on to the overcoats, which are a standard part of menswear, obviously, weather-wise. There are definitely times where that's not going to be worn, but if you are wearing an overcoat on top of all of this, you have the same range of pockets as before. So you can manage all of those pockets yet again, as well as things like the vertical pockets in front in case your hands get cold, which is particularly popular with things like motoring coats or other heavy winter weather coats. So you can keep adding even more on top of these standard ones. Tailors will do what they call specials in coats, which is just putting in a whole bunch of really specific pockets. So if you wear eyeglasses, if you always need easy access to your pen, if you really love cigars, you might ask for a very specifically shaped and placed pocket so you can easily access that all the time. Of course, not everybody gets the chance to go to a custom tailor even by the end of the 19th century. Ready-to-wear suits are becoming more and more common, and pockets sometimes come in a little less than ideal, and men take great offense to this. One article mentions trouser pockets that are too shallow to be no more than a hollow mockery. Often, trouser pockets will also apparently have holes in them, and whatever you place in them will just fall right out. Of course, if you manage to have a hole in one of your other pockets of your waistcoat or your coat, that just falls into your garment, and then you can find those coins later, only to find out that you weren't actually broke, you do still have a few pennies left. As for their relationship with pockets in general, though, they are quite obsessed with them and really lay a lot of importance on the access to many pockets. One man said that no pocketless people has ever been great since pockets were invented, which, yes, does smack entirely of racism, but definitely some strong opinions on the pocketless existence there. When the new Marines uniforms came out in 1904, they did not have side pockets in their trousers, and everyone kind of freaked out about the fact that how are you expecting these very manly men to exist without their very manly pockets? And the issue of no side pockets and trousers seems to be an extra sore spot because the number one thing that men like to put into their trouser pockets are their hands. This is true today, and true 150 years ago as well. So it was not uncommon for women to stitch up the side trouser pockets of little boys to stop them from doing that. I'm sure to also stop them from putting some really weird things in their pockets, but the moment that boys would put their hands in their pockets, they would start to slouch and lean over and no longer have the good posture that was so important. So making sure that they didn't get into the bad habit of that, particularly in things like photographs, they stitched up their pockets. I actually have a pair of antique boys trousers from probably around the mid-19th century that have the pockets stitched up. So yeah, that tracks. But even if their pockets were stitched up as little boys, men still consistently put their hands in their pockets. One article goes on a very lengthy discussion about the fact that there really isn't a good reason for doing this. It does mention that English men generally seem to regard their hands as inconvenient additions to their bodies, of which they are ashamed, and of whose use they are ignorant. So they stow them away. There's not a practical side to this, and that they were unprepared to defend it on any moral or artistic ground, whatever. They were just comfortable. But hands were far from the only thing we're going to be finding in men's pockets. In fact, the long, long list that I could find of what was typical in men's pockets was a little bit overwhelming. So I am just going to speed read this for you, because there's a lot of stuff on here, and these are all things that I found in multiple articles. So this is all really common for any single one man to be carrying. Handkerchief, pen, knife, toothpick, toothbrush, pencils, corkscrew, scissors, rule, wallet, dictionary, testament, letters, pictures, rubber bands, fingernail brush, charms, puzzles, button hooks, tobacco boxes, cigars, cigar holders, strings, matchboxes, ear picks, extra buttons, then change, bills, lawyers' briefs, sermons, tradesmen's accounts, doctors' prescriptions, architects' drawings, tax gatherers' lists, blank books, then the extra special things made just for pockets. Pocket watches, pocket combs, pocket compass, pocket mirror, pocket pistol, pocket volumes, pocket books, and pocket ink stand. I'm sure there are so many things that are not on that list as well. That's just what I kept finding over and over again. And of course, carrying this load of stuff creates some issues, not only in walking around with all the things clanging in the bulk, but also in the removal of the clothing, because no one's going to bother to take everything out of their pockets before they take all of their clothing off. We've all forgotten something in our pocket when we put things into the wash. The same thing goes, apparently, when you come home late at night to a house full of sleeping people and start to get undressed, only to take the trousers and lay them over the back of the chair, at which point it gives up its contents with a mighty shout of diabolical hilarity and a crash that shakes the house to its foundations and awakens everyone. The gentleman in the story in particular mentions that he has a pen knife, keys, dollar, dime, pennies, poker chip, and clothes. But of course, these are just the things that are typical in pockets, the things that make sense to have in your pockets, even made for your pockets. There's a whole list of things that are very poor decisions, and they have well recorded some very entertaining stories for us for that reason. We're going to start off the cautionary tale by looking at flammable things. Of course, matchbooks make perfect sense to carry around in an era where candles and other things need to be lit quite regularly. However, carrying loose matches in your tails is perhaps not the best decision, as one sergeant discovered when he sat down, managed to rub a few things together in his tailcoat pockets, and set fire to his entire backside. So maybe not the best choice, but there are plenty of other stories of gentlemen who did similar things. One put his cigar into his pocket, thinking that it was no longer lit. As his pocket started to smoke, he didn't notice, sitting down in a theater full of people. But the people next to him did, and the child started yelling fire, and caused a bit of a very rapid exodus out of the theater. On a similar note, another gentleman apparently put his pipe into his pocket, thinking it was fully emptied. It was not. He hung it upon the peg and went upstairs to bed. The rest of the building started to smell the smoke, woke up, figured out what was happening after calling the fire department, tossed his poor jacket outside, and stepped all over it in order to put the fire out. So things were taken care of by the time the fire department got there, but the gentleman did lose his coat in the process. And the most exciting in this category is, of course, the man who worked on a construction site and decided to put dynamite caps into his tailcoat pocket, along with some loose matches, again. And something rubbed together the wrong way, and set off some dynamite caps. He did have to go to the hospital, but it does mention that he seems like he'll be all right. But of course, explosives are not the only thing. We can also look for animals. Plenty of articles mention all sorts of strange things that little boys were putting into their pockets, like worms, and frogs, and other slippery, slimy things. But we're going to look first at an honorary mention of a young lady who went on a science expedition to an island, and decided to bring home a snake for further studying. Of course, getting onto the boat to head back to land, the snake got free. And as everyone freaked out, she didn't manage to grab it in time, and someone instead chucked it overboard. And it was a great loss to science, supposedly. So maybe keep better track if you're going to put live animals in your pockets. Which one other gentleman seemed to do a pretty good job of, except for the fact that he was drunk and ended up in jail, and failed to notify the police officers who were going through his pockets to make sure he didn't have any contraband with them, or anything he can't take into the jail cell. And as the officer reached his hand into the pocket, got bitten on the finger by a baby alligator. The drunk man had apparently gone to the reptile zoo earlier in the day, and had managed to bring a friend with him. The police officers did keep the alligator for him when he got out the next day. They kept it well-fed with some flies, and made sure that it was okay. But they didn't allow him to take it back into the cells with them, because it might have caused a little bit of confusion to have something like an alligator in the drunk cells. Victorian men also apparently had to be taught that you shouldn't keep food in your tail pockets as well. Custard pies were mentioned a few times. In fact, so casually that it seems to be an ongoing issue, rather than a single one-off. So I guess don't put pies in your pockets? Another great story has less to do with the disaster of forgetting something in your pockets, and more to do with the experience of acquiring it. A young man found a peanut seller, and was going to have roasted peanuts put into one of his pockets to take home, because he didn't have a bag with him. And so he decided his tailcoat pocket was the best option for this. So he pulled open the pocket, bent over, and sidled his way up to the peanut seller to dump peanuts, quite awkwardly, into his back tailcoat pocket. At which point two young ladies, who he knew came around the corner, he got embarrassed, tried to run away. But the peanut seller did not want to lose the sale, and already had hold of his tails. So he kept hold, and followed him around, trying to pour the peanuts into his tailcoat pocket. All while he's trying to run away, remove the coat, anything he can do to not look embarrassing in front of these young ladies. The whole thing turns into this hilarious dance, at which point he gives up, and storms off into one of the bars nearby, leading the young ladies to declare that they didn't know that he was such a drinker. So obviously quite an embarrassing situation there, with the awkward tailcoat pocket, and how to reach it. But my particular favorites when it comes to food, has to be eggs. Which I feel like goes without saying, that you probably shouldn't put eggs into the really deep long pockets that you sit on. You're going to forget about them from time to time. This is not just one article that I found specifically calling out eggs, but two. One talked about a group of men that would go out hunting, and would bring back eggs, and inevitably would occasionally forget about the eggs in their hunting jackets, potentially for a really long time. It also talks about it from a really weird moral perspective, in terms of the eggs being comparable to wealth or ego. That you shouldn't put such fragile things in such irresponsible places, easily forgotten, easily mishandled, because inevitably you'll break them. It's kind of a don't put all your eggs in one basket sort of concept. But the second story is a little bit less moralistic. It's about a deacon who decided to pick up some eggs for the children to color on Easter, and he puts them in his back tailcoat pockets, and forgets about them. Until of course the next day, when he's at Easter ceremony. He's sitting down for some of the time and manages to break those eggs, doesn't realize that that's what happened, until he gets up to take the collection plate around. And as he is taking collection from one of the more difficult ladies in the congregation, he notices that there might be a little bug on her hat. So he reaches down into his tailcoat pocket for his handkerchief, which we all know now is a terrible choice to begin with, and instead is met with a large quantity of raw egg and eggshell. At which point he makes a face. She gets offended, thinking he is judging her for not putting enough money in. Starts to publicly, loudly, throw a fit about this. At which point he pulls out the egg-covered hand. She panics. He panics. He runs off with the plate of money. She accuses him of trying to steal the money, and the whole thing just kind of devolves from there. In the end, they eventually figure out what happened, but obviously he was horrifically embarrassed by the entire situation. And again, it just goes to show, don't put something so breakable in a place where you're going to sit on it if you forget. Sounds way worse than just putting some receipts through the wash. But somehow that's still not the worst story that I came across. We're now moving on to bottles. Because remember, they have glass bottles in this era. Not plastic bottles. Glass. That thing that pretty easily breaks. Not surprisingly, alcohol was a really common option to put into little hidden pockets, especially tailcoat pockets, and continued to be a trendy thing to do well into the 20th century. And hiding alcohol to get into clubs or other places that way seems to be a pretty popular option. Which again, just make sure you don't sit down on it, break the bottle, because then you're going to have glass shards as well as alcohol everywhere. It's just a bad time. But somehow even worse than that was this poor gentleman who went over to a young lady's house to court her. The parents left them alone in the front parlor. He smartly turned down the lights in order to save on energy. And then they sat together upon the rocking chair, which apparently was between the two of them enough weight to break the bottle of rubber cement that the man had put into his back tailcoat pocket earlier that day. And of course, rubber cement plus air will end up solidifying and drying. And they spent enough time sitting on that chair together that by the time he tried to get up to turn the light back on, he was thoroughly glued to the chair. At which point they panicked and realized that the only way that they were going to manage to get out of this was if he took the entire chair with him, tried to get everything unstuck at home, and hoped that no one noticed an entire chair was missing from the parlor. So I suppose a great lesson was learned that evening. Don't put breakable things in your back pockets. Of course, none of this actually answers what one should be putting into their back tail pockets for me. In general, everyone seemed to say we don't really know what the point of these is. They're just kind of there because I think they can be. So I suppose those 30 pockets aren't necessarily all they're cut out to be. You may manage to evade the pig pockets, but you may also manage to evade your own memory in the process. And don't forget, you can download June's Journey from the link in the description or by clicking my QR code.