The history of handbags and purses provides a fascinating insight into both men's and latterly women's developing need to carry a range of items about with them as they walked around their houses, and traveled away from home, over the last five hundred years or so A bag or purse would enable them variously to secrete small valuables, such as jewels and money, close to the body; to attend to personal hygiene and comfort, with the aid of such as a comb and a mirror; and to engage in a number of pleasurable duties, activities or pastimes of daily life -like writing a diary, doing some knitting or tatting, or playing a card game, to pass time on journeys and when staying away from home, or just when moving to another wing of the house or around the family estate.
An early form of bag or wallet was the drawstring leather pouch which carried coins, and which was looped through men's girdles or belts for safety. It was a simple development of a circle of fabric drawn up together with two lines of stitching going round the edge in parallel lines in different directions and knotted to make the drawstrings. This was seen from the 12th to the 16th centuries, often worn with a dagger or knife. Such pouches could in fact be stolen by determined thieves who would cut them loose. This suspension of a functional object from the belt has paralleled with the medieval 'chatelaine', a chain with keys attached about the waist, which was necessary for housekeepers even when simply moving from wing to wing within the larger houses of England. The chatelaine was revived in the 1840s as a device for suspending needlework and domestic tools like a pair of scissors, a tape measure, a thimble case, button hook, penknife, and needle-case from a device hooked onto the waist-belt.
From the 16th century there were also 'sweet' bags for the ladies, which were like lavender bags, made of a variety of available herbs to scent their handkerchiefs, and to disguise foul smelling odors from privy and street. A variant was the metal pomander. Men might carry letter-cases, which were large wallets for important documents, and gaming purses, for counters (and winnings), often with a coat of arms, crest or initials in evidence. They also had tobacco pouches, from the 17th century. For long and extended journeys luggage traveled in large trunks, but the more precious and intimate items were carried about the person.
Pockets were also introduced into clothes for carrying such small personal belongings. If we look at wardrobe accounts from the 16th century we find that these pockets were actually called 'bagges.' They would require about three quarters of a yard of material, inserted into the side seam, and were at first mainly seen in the garments of royalty and nobility - male and female -, but more and more as an essential part of the main garment. As men's suits appeared from the 1670s, men's pockets transferred to their coats and waistcoats, as very visible functional and increasingly decorative features, to carry a watch on a fob chain, a snuffbox, a visiting card case, and a handkerchief. By the 18th century ladies' side dress pockets became so large and so useful for carrying a multitude of items that they were often made separately, and attached singly or in pairs onto a band, which tied around the waist. Access to the pockets was provided through slits in the skirts.
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it.
Ne'er a penny was there in it
Except the binding round it.
Many of these separate pockets have survived in museum collections across Europe, though not all are correctly identified as such! These were effectively bags under the skirt as opposed to visible accessories, and as such are often plain and unremarkable, and look rather like peg bags (which is perhaps what many became). In the 18th century there were flat-pocketed purses, beautifully embroidered for love letters and bank notes.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the silhouette of female dress was so figure hugging with the Neo Classical Empire and Regency line, pockets in a garment or beneath it were almost impossible, and would certainly have spoilt the hang of the skirt, so ladies carried delicate little drawstring bags or purses called reticules, or 'ridicules'. These could carry a handkerchief, fan and dance card, a scent bottle, some face powder and rouge, but nothing too weighty. They were traditionally of some lightweight fabric such as pale colored silk satin, prettily embroidered, or knitted silk. There are clear parallels in style and decoration between reticules and the somewhat larger needlework bags, which had emerged to carry wools and tatting and embroidery threads. These are the origin of the Dorothy Bag. Later there were drawstring shoe bags and dressing bags and the idea has persisted in P.E. bags and laundry bags.