The Song Of The Shirt

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Fashion

‘The Song of the Shirt’ [is] in its place the most important English poem of the nineteenth century … (Source: Davidson 1903, in Hynd 2005, p.508).

This poem by [Thomas] Hood [is] about a poor seamstress who ended up in the workhouse … (Source: Evans 2009, np link).

… [who has] no freedom; having to spend every spare second stitching in order to buy a crust of bread so she can live. She knows her only option in life is to work until she dies of either exhaustion or starvation (Source: Anon 2003, p.1 link).

Hood develops this theme by focusing on an overworked woman who sews men’s shirts and pants. She is the poem’s speaker. … The long hours and tedium of her job wear her down physically, and the poor pay forces her to wear rags, live in squalor, and go hungry. While working her threaded needle up and down, she sings a “song of the shirt” as a complaint about her plight. … In her song, she says she must work from sunup (‘while the cock is crowing,’ line 10) until nightfall (’till the stars shine through the roof,’ line 12). She is no more than a slave. She works so hard, she says, that she falls asleep over her work but continues it in a dream. … The speaker then appeals to men, telling them that wearing out the shirts and trousers she makes also wears out the lives of the women who sew them. In other words, while sewing shirts and pants, these women are also sewing their own shrouds. But, the speaker says, she little fears death; for she herself – gaunt, deprived of food – is the very figure of death. … And what does she get for all her work? Only a crust of bread, ragged clothing, and a ramshackle house with shabby furnishings. … Throughout the year, she sits at her sewing – like a prisoner in a workhouse – and yearns in the spring to go outside for a single hour to breathe the fragrant air. She has no time for love or hope, but only time for grief. So on and on she sews, and on and on she sings the song of the shirt. (Source: Cummings 2011, np link).

Thomas Hood, (born May 23, 1799, London – died May 3, 1845, London), [was an] English poet, journalist, and humorist (Source: Luebering, 2006, np link).

{The Song of the Shirt] was written in honour of a Mrs. Biddell, a Lambeth widow and seamstress living in wretched conditions. In what was, at that time, common practice, Mrs. Biddell sewed trousers and shirts in her home using materials given to her by her employer for which she was forced to give a £2 deposit. In a desperate attempt to feed her starving infants, Mrs. Biddell pawned the clothing she had made, thus accruing a debt she could not pay. Mrs. Biddell, whose first name has not been recorded, was sent to a workhouse, and her ultimate fate is unknown; however, her story became a catalyst for those who actively opposed the wretched conditions of England’s working poor, who often spent seven days a week labouring under inhuman conditions, barely managing to survive and with no prospect for relief.(Source: Anon 2014a, np link).

Less than two months later, on December 16, 1843, Hood debuted: ‘Song of the Shirt’ in the Punch Christmas number with details paralleling the Biddell case ( a fact noted by nearly all of Thomas Hood’s biographers, and recent scholarship on ‘Song of the Shirt.’) This fact does not undermine Hood’s genuine concern for the conditions of the poor seamstress, but does highlight his ability to capitalise on the popular interests of the day. Biographer John Clubbe explains that the plight of the seamstress plagued Hood long before the publication of ‘Song of the Shirt’: Hood wrote a reproachful piece in January 1843 for New Monthly in which hedescribes the emaciated figure of the seamstress and her “pitiful earnings” and compares sewing gusset and band together to stitching together the body and soul. Clubbe also notes, ‘Hood may have put a draft of the ‘song’ aside, then decided to capitalise on it when he saw the furore caused by the Biddell case.”’ Whether or not Hood had written a full draft of the poem before Biddell became a recognisable name, her case certainly enabled him to bring his ideas to a mass audience, and launched him into popularity as soon as he publicly acknowledged authorship of the poem (which he had originally published anonymously) (Source: Disher 2005, np link).

The Song of The Shirt was published anonymously in the struggling new periodical Punch. Overnight, both the poem and the magazine became and sensation (Source: Edelstein 1980, p.184).

There is a paper in this week’s Punch full of matter that should be known to everyone. It is called The Song of the Shirt and is the production of a writer of genius, if ever there was one. We advise the well-doing and the comfortable to commit that Song to heart (Source: Anon 1843a, np link)!

We earnestly recommend the well-to-do-in-the-world people to commit the following song to heart. It is not founded on fiction, but on heart-rending fact. Three-halfpence is the current price for making a shirt in the richest metropolis of the world: and it will be seen by reference to our general news, that shirts are made in some of our workhouses for one farthing (Source: Anon 1843b, p.7 link)!

The ‘Song of the Shirt,’ which first appeared anonymously in a weekly periodical, we had marked for inserting several days since, but press of other matter imposed. In now re-printing it we can append the name of the writer- Mr. Thomas Hood- who, in a letter to an evening journal, avows authorship. Mr Hood, albeit an acknowledged wit, not unfrequently fails in attempting the facetious, but seldom, indeed, in touches of manly feeling and pathos, such as the following lines so admirably display (Source: Anon 1843c, p.6 link)

Although the following remarkable production has already been extensively circulated, it has yet to reach some thousands of additional eyes, (it literally reached our eyes,) and we therefore transfer it to our columns. We should indeed be sorry that our annual volume should be commenced without including so useful, so stouching, a composition. It is calculated to do great good and ought to dine its way to every heart. There are passages in it of genuine poetry and pathor, which will bear frequent perusal (Source: Anon 1844a, np link).

The Song of the Shirt became an of the impetus of popular opinion and frequently used to support the liberalized labor laws in England (Source: Lometa 2001, np link).

Although sweating was not unknown in the eighteenth century, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that it became recognised as a serious social issue. The conscience of the nation, as the distinguished medical journal, the Lancet, pointed out, was only really awakened by the appearance in 1843 of Thomas Hood’s Song of the Shirt … Hood’s portrayal of a Christian seamstress … captured the public’s imagination (Source: Blackburn 2002, p.25).

It could not endure the woman in unwomanly rags. It hid its head like the fabled ostrich. … But the woman in unwomanly rags and all the insanity and iniquity of which she is the type, will now be sung. Poetry will concern itself with her and hers for some time to come. The offal of the world is being said in statistics, in prose fiction: it is besides going to be sung (Source: Davidson 1903, in Hynd 2005, p.508).

Today it has become a literal translation making it applicable in Guatemala, Thailand and West Africa (Source: Lometa 2001, np link).