Pencils, a sketchbook, cake, yards of stolen ribbon, thimbles, snuff boxes, a picture of a lover, two live ducks: these are just some of the fascinating things carried by women and girls in their tie-on pockets, an essential accessory throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

But tie-on pockets were far from trivial or marginal things. Worn under the skirt by duchesses and country gentry, prostitutes and washerwomen alike, in practice they enabled women to negotiate their relationship to consumption, work, possessions, mobility, and privacy. Used as a lens to explore the complexities of women's lives, tie-on pockets reveal unsuspected facets of the past, bringing women's stories into intimate focus.

"What particularly interests Burman and Fennetaux is the way in which women of all classes have historically used these tie-on pockets as a supplementary body part to help them negotiate their way through a world that was not built to suit them.” — Kathryn Hughes, Guardian 

Softcover, 264 pages. Beautiful photographs and illustrations throughout. 2019.