Curator's Choice: Phil Dunn from the People's History Museum in Manchester chooses the Shoemakers' banner 1832

I have found a very interesting interview of Mr. Phill Dunn, curator of  People's History Museum, interviewed by Mr. Bill Miller for culture24.org.uk..

"I have chosen one of the museum's earliest trade society banners – a banner which relates to the 1832 Reform Bill agitation and the Parliamentary Act, passed by the Lords on June 4th 1832.

The banner has particularly splendid trade society emblems at its centre, proudly displaying the products and tools of the trade. There's a gent and lady holding a boot and a fine shoe (perhaps a dancing pump), and, directly below, a monarch's golden crown and a half-moon knife, the shoemakers’ principal leather cutting tool. 

National emblems are also evident: the thistle of Scotland, rose for England, and shamrock for Ireland, although there is no Welsh leek. This is because the shoemakers (formerly known as cordwainers) abounded in towns across the British isles and were patriotic.

Then there's the golden crown  and the reference to St Crispin. He was the patron Saint of shoemakers and their Medieval guild, and his origins (and that of his twin brother, Crispianus) are rooted in 3rd century Christian legend and martyrdom in France. As examples of his piety and humility Crispin, a noble Roman, took to shoemaking, charity, and evangelizing among the poor.One imagines that this connection with the sanctity and good works of Crispin both flattered and honored the shoemaker's trade, and may have stood as a noble exemplar for the Georgian shoemaker. Such good works were part of the charitable aims of the shoemaker and other venerable crafts. A measure of the noble regard with which the shoemakers revered Crispin lay in the fact that, well beyond the middle ages, the shoemakers held a holiday or feast day called Saint Crispin's Day on the 25th of October – as legend had it, the day of his martyrdom. In Christian art, Saint Crispin had his own emblems, which would be taken as craft emblems by the shoemakers, a shoe and the cobble’s last. There's a verbal pun here in the lower legend – We Are All true To The Last. The banner was made or partly adapted very soon after the passing of the Reform Act on June the 4th 1832. The wide, looping legend across the top states: The Battle’s Won. Britannia’s Sons Are Free, And Despots Tremble At The Victory." 

You can read the full interview here: culture24.org.uk.