Spats

This is a photograph of an item on display at the Wyoming Veterans Museum in Natrona County, Wyoming.

 

It's a really nice museum not, having improved tremendously over the years, and with a lot of  very nice displays.  This particular one displays the uniforms of a long serving National Guardsmen and Reservists, who had Federalized service during World War Two.  What surprised me here was the spats.

The reason the spats surprised me is that I didn't think the Army had ever issued spats, or that officers had worn them as an unofficial item, and as far as I can tell, I'm right.  It's natural enough that the donor included these spats in this material, as they look like they belong there. The Army, after all, did issue leggings and puttees, which are similar.  Indeed, leggings are sort of like giant spats.

Army supply  man fitting private with Leggings, World War Two.

Leggings, as a U.S. Army issue item go back at least as far as the early 20th Century.  When the Army started issuing leggings as a matter of course with certainty I"m not sure of, but it seems to have come in during the Spanish American War, which also saw a turn over in uniform designs reflecting the switch from bold colored uniforms to dull colored uniforms which was caused by the introduction of smokeless gunpowder.  Prior to smokeless gunpowder, the military problem was seeing soldiers, and allowing soldiers to see each other, in dense smoke.  Hence the bold colors of that era.  Once smokeless powder arrived, however, the problem became the opposite.  Soldiers in one unit could see each other well enough, but they were also pretty exposed to the enemy.  The British started the ball rolling with a switch to "khaki," which in that case meant any dull earth tone, and the US followed their lead right at the start of the Spanish American War.  Indeed, as the change came right at that point, most soldiers fought the war in an ad hoc uniform made up of bits and pieces of various uniforms.  The old dark blue wool shirt was nearly universal, but cotton duck stable trousers were usually worn in place of wool trousers.  The Army did start issuing leggings right at this time, but not everyone actually received them.

First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry on the San Juan Heights.  Theodore Roosevelt is wearing Army leggings.  One other trooper is wearing a non Army, perhaps leather, pair.  Many aren't wearing any at all.  These soldiers would be wearing cotton duck trousers, except for Roosevelt who is wearing khaki breeches.  The shirts are the blue wool shirt of that period.

Leggings actually saw use well prior to the Spanish American War, and both soldiers and civilians wore them at least as far back as the 18th Century. They were a standard item for both sides in the Revolutionary War, for example.  Some units wore them during the Civil War, although they were not a service wide item in either Army.  After the late 1890s, they'd carry on as an issue item in the Army, Marine Corps, and even the Navy, up through the end of World War Two, although the Army started phasing them out in 1943.  The Marines actually retained them up into the Korean War.  The Navy still issues white ones today as a dress item, on occasion.

At the same time, civilians started wearing them for field duty use as well.

United States Geological Survey, surveyor, wearing leggings, about 1920.

Since World War Two leggings have bit the dust, and now are a historical oddity, save for "gators."  Gators are only worn by certain outdoorsmen, and are a sort of heavy duty baggy legging designed to be worn with low cut boots.  Indeed, leggings in general were only ever worn with low cut boots, which is one of the oddities of them, as they're really a pain and a person would generally always be better off with a higher pair of boots.  Gators survive as certain really heavy mountaineering boots, or back country cross country skiing boots are low cut by necessity.

Okay, so what's that half to do with spats?  Isn't this a post about spats?

Well, maybe everything.

Up until I ran across them I never gave spats much thought, other than that they appear to be a particularly strange clothing item.  My basic supposition is that they were simply strangely decorative, and in the popular imagination, they have come to be associated with the wealthy, or at least the very well dressed, of an earlier era.

A spats wearing Senator Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It turns out that spats is actually a shortened version of the actual name, spatterdashes, and that another name for them is "field spats."  Hence, they served a purpose similar to that of leggings, in that they were designed to protect the shoes and socks from the elements.  So, as odd as they now appear to us, they had an entirely practical origin.  In the era in which they were common, people commonly had fewer items of clothing in general, people had to preserve what they had.

Additionally, and very easy for us to forget, people in earlier eras, in every walk of life, were out and about in the rough more than most people are today.  A lawyer, for example, might have spent most of his days in the office, but he had to walk or ride there, and the streets were very unlikely to be paved.  People kept livestock in town, and if he had to make a house call, and they did, that might well be at a farm. So, in other words, not only were his office shoes probably his only pair, and his socks probably hand knitted and one of a very pairs, the whole world was. . . well. . .dirty.  And he had to be out in it a lot more than most people are today.  Hence, they were practical.

Indeed, as an aside, there's a great depiction of this sort of thing in Sense and Sensibility, when the ladies attend a ball, but are warned, upon dismounting from a carriage, that "the horses have been here."  Not just there, they'd been everywhere.  A good reason to wear spats.

How spats became associated with the wealthy I don't know.  They are today, in a cartoon like fashion.  The top hatted Monopoly figure, for example, wears spats.  Maybe the wealthy just had the best shoes, and therefore a need to keep them clean more than other folks.  Anyhow, these were a practical item and, because of that, they're now gone. They were probably a pain to start with, and with no ongoing need for them, they went.