Boots form by far the larger part of clothing expenses in a family of poor children. Most fathers in Lambeth can sole a little boot with some sort of skill. One man, a printer’s handyman, spends some time every day over the boots of his children. He is a steady, intelligent man, and he says it takes him all his spare time. As soon as he has gone round the family the first pair is ready again. The women seldom get new clothes; boots they often are entirely without. The men go to work and must be supplied, the children must be decent at school, but the mother has no need to appear in the light of day. If very badly equipped, she can shop in the evening in The Walk, and no one will notice under her jacket and rather long skirt what she is wearing on her feet. Most of them have a hat, a jacket, and a “best” skirt, to wear in the street. In the house a blouse and a patched skirt under a sacking apron is the universal wear. Some of the women miraculously manage to look clean and tidy; some do not. The astonishing difference made by a new pink blouse, becomingly-done hair, and a well-made skirt, on one drab-looking woman who seemed to be about forty was too startling to forget. She suddenly looked thirty (her age was twenty-six), and she had a complexion and quite pretty hair—features never noticed before. These women who look to be in the dull middle of middle age are young; it comes as a shock when the mind grasps it. In connection with clothing comes the vexed question of flannelette. To a mother, they all use it. It is warm, soft, and cheap. The skirts for two children’s petticoats can be bought for 4d.—the bodies, too, if the children are tiny and skill is used. What else can the women buy that will serve its purpose as well? It is inflammable—the mothers know that, but they hope to escape accident—and it is cheap enough to buy. Better, they think, a garment of flannelette than no garment at all! They would use material which is not inflammable if there were any they could afford which is as warm and soft and unshrinkable as flannelette. The shops to which their calico clubs belong stock flannelettes of all the most cheap and useful and inflammable kinds. Flannel, merino, cashmere, woollen material of any kind, are dear in comparison. Enough unshrinkable stuff to make a child a new warm, soft dress can be bought for 6d. A woman with 6d. to spend will buy that stuff rather than let her child go without the dress. It is what we should all do in her place. A child must be dressed. Give any London magistrate 6d. a week on which to dress four children; give him a great deal of cooking, scrubbing, and housework, to do; put a flannelette shop round the corner: in exactly four weeks each of those children would be clothed in flannelette.