The Tailor of Gloucester
In May 1894, Beatrix Potter was staying at her cousin, Caroline Hutton’s home, Harescombe Grange, five miles south of Gloucester. Caroline told Beatrix the curious tale of a local tailor, John Pritchard (1877–1934), a tailor commissioned to make a suit for the new mayor. Closing his shop one Friday evening, Pritchard left a waistcoat cut out, but not sewn together so he was surprised, when he opened the shop again on Monday morning, to discover that apart from one button hole, the waistcoat had been sewn together. A tiny note, pinned to the button hole, read, ‘No more twist’. The tailor was bewildered, but from this date, he advertised his work had been ‘made at night by fairies’. Hearing this tale, Beatrix requested that they visit Gloucester the following day to visit the tailor’s shop at 45 Westgate Street.
There are slightly different versions offered about the truth of this tale. Many years later, Mrs Pritchard, the tailor’s wife, recalled that Mr Pritchard was very concerned about the waistcoat as he was running out of time to finish it. When he left the shop on the Saturday morning before the show, the pieces for the waistcoat had been cut out, but not sewn up. Mr Pritchard has two assistants who knew how concerned the tailor was and so returned to the shop and worked on the waistcoat until it was finished- all but one buttonhole as they had run out of thread. They pinned a little note saying ‘No more twist’ to the waistcoat as a reminder that it needed to be finished on the following Monday. However, another version, told by Pritchard’s son, Douglas, in 1979, says that one of the assistants had shared the full story. He and his colleague had been out drinking and, instead of heading home, they returned to the shop. Unknown to the tailor, they had a key and let themselves in. Not wanting to draw attention to their drunken state, they decided to remain in the shop on Sunday and leave after dark. To pass the time, they finished off the work- except for the last buttonhole. Too ashamed to admit that they had been drunk- and had a key- they did not admit what they had done!
Potter sketched the Gloucester street where the tailor's shop stood as well as cottage interiors, crockery, and furniture. The son of Hutton's coachman posed as a model for the tailor. In Chelsea, Potter was allowed to sketch the interior of a tailor's shop and she visited the costume department at the South Kensington Museum to refine her illustrations of 18th century dress. Although Prichard was a near contemporary of Potter's (he was about eleven years her junior and in his twenties when the incident took place), Beatrix's tailor is shown as ‘a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers,’ and the story set in the 18th century.
The tale was finished by Christmas 1901, and given as a Christmas present to ten-year-old Freda Moore, the daughter of her former governess and Beatrix Potter later borrowed this gift copy, revised the work, and privately printed the tale in December 1902.
The House of the Tailor of Gloucester is a delightful little museum and shop, housed in the building Beatrix Potter chose to draw as the tailor’s house in the story. The ground floor is mainly devoted to a shop selling Beatrix Potter’s books and merchandise related to them whilst up the rickety staircase, the top floor of the shop is a tiny museum, packed with objects related to Potter and the story of the tailor. There is also a replica of the waistcoat which inspired the story, the original of which is in the V and A.
The tailor’s kitchen, reconstructed from the pictures in the book, including Simpkin the cat, is at the back of the shop. The house of the tailor of Gloucester was closed in 2005 by its then owners, the Frederick Warne publishing company, but a campaign launched by a local business man raised enough money to buy the premises which re-opened in 2007.
The House of the Tailor of Gloucester
9 College Court, Gloucester, GL1 2NJ
You can read about my visit(s) to Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District, Hill Top, here.
