1883-10-25ux

Sometimes reporters found their stories in hotels, chatting with people who had tales to tell. Such was the case with a story which appeared on October 25, 1883 when a man from the Spectator dropped into the big hotel on James Street North and overheard a conversation involving traveling salesmen.

          Appearing under the headline, “Exchange of Clothes” the article, in full follows:

          “A party of five or six men, all commercial travelers, sat around the cheerful fire in the grate of the sitting-room at the Royal the other evening, talking about old times and expenses on the road.

          “ ‘Look here,’ said one, a representative of a Toronto wholesale house, ‘that hat of mine I would not exchange for any one in the room.’

          “A number of hats were produced by their respective owners and passed around for examination. Among them was a fine beaver, brand new, and a beautiful seal, but neither of these would the Toronto man take for his Christy, though it was not a very good one. After all the travelers had failed to guess why he would not exchange, the owner of the hat explained that the hat had been given to him by one of his best customers up north, in exchange for a scull cap, which had been made by his mother. The up north customer had been a schoolmate with the traveler’s mother, and the scull cap was looked upon him as a prize.

“ ‘And why do you value the cap he gave you so highly?’ asked a brother traveler. “Because when I go on the north route with it, I am sure to get a big order from the old man.

“Among young men, and some older men, too, there is a good deal of trading in clothes. It is a common thing for a man to go out wearing one hat, and return with another. The exchange is not confined to hats only, but to neckties, silk handkerchiefs, and sometimes even coats.

“There are men who have a mania for trading coats. The writer one Sunday afternoon observed two young men coming down John street mountain steps; when half way down, they suddenly stopped, laughed, said a few words and pulled off their coats. The reporter, thinking there was going to be a fight, drew near, but was surprised to see each attire himself in the other’s coat, and disregarding the fact that the garments did not fit, proceeded homewards and were seen at church the same evening still wearing the exchanged coats.

“Nobody takes any notice of a man changing a garment with another man, but just let a lady try the dodge, and within an hour, it would be all over town that Miss A. had been seen with Miss B’s bonnet on.

“A gentleman, a clerk in a bookstore not far from Hamilton, called at the Spectator office the other day and showed a hat that had been worn by two of his friends before he came into possession of it. The first lad hat left the city and gave the hat to the second for a remembrance, and the second gave it to the third when he (No. 2) left the city to take a situation with No. 1.

“And so it will ever be. Men can wear each other’s hats, neckties or coats, and nobody thinks anything wrong has been done; but just let one of those dear, darling creatures of ladies wear a friend’s hat, how she will be passed around from tip to tip and talked of as if she had done some ‘just awful.’ ” ¹

¹  “Exchange of Clothes : A Habit Among Men of Exchanging Garments : A Hat That Had Been Worn By Half-a-Dozen Men – Handkerchiefs and Neckties, and Sometimes Coats Swapped”

Hamilton Spectator.   October  25, 1883.