![]() ![]() ![]() They wore top hats, indoors and out, except in homes or churches. Gentlemen, no less than ladies, could be identified by their clothing. Bailey, an American visitor to London in the 1870’s, wrote that he could find ‘traces of nobility’ in an aristocrat’s ‘very step and bearing.’ He asked mischievously: ‘Can you conceive of a bowlegged duke? Or is it possible for you to locate a pimple on the nose of a viscount? And no one, however diseased his imagination, ever pictures a baron with an ulcerated leg, or conceived of such a monstrous impossibility as a cross-eyed duchess.’ This was Yankee wit, but the plain fact was that you could tell. In days it was far easier, and would usually be accomplished by a glance. “Identifying a stranger’s class has always been a social challenge for Londoners.
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