It began with mockery, insults and pelted rubbish, when the Englishman Jonas Hanway came back from a trip to France in the early 1750s and went for a walk in London. His fellow citizens were amazed and even shocked by his behaviour, but Hanway was undeterred by their reactions. Without even blushing, he bore his umbrella through London and, unlike all other strollers, was undaunted by the adverse meteorological conditions.
In London in the 18th century bearing an umbrella was not the done thing, for especially in the case of men it stood for weakness, femininity and, last but not least, for France.
The history of the umbrella and its social consequences
15.06.2023 Wiebke Hauschildt (Online Editor)
The Umbrella in Europe
The French had discovered the umbrella for themselves at the start of the 18th century. Inspired by the parasol, a far-eastern invention, which had shielded noble pallor for centuries from the sun, the Parisian merchant Jean Marius had invented a lighter and foldable version, which he fitted with waterproof material. Once the French Princess Palatine acquired one of his umbrellas in the year 1712, it became an indispensable accessory for women throughout the country.
Portable rain-protection in Europe had, however, been mentioned very much earlier. In the year 800 Abbot Alcuin of Tours sent Bishop Arno of Salzburg an example: “I am sending you a protective roof to keep the rain from your venerable head.” But parasols can be seen on illustrations in China dating back about 4000 years. For thousands of years a parasol was a status symbol of emperors, kings, shahs and pharaohs and was made from bamboo and oiled paper. Present models are made of impregnated cotton, plastic or nylon and held together by a steel rod.
Travelling salesmen took parasols with them through Persia to Greece and Italy and finally to the whole of Europe, but the first models were bulky and heavy and, as Lukas Weber writes in the FAZ, ‘citizens at the time preferred to keep their hands free for self-defence,’, which is why parasols went out of fashion till the late Middle Ages. In the 16th century they were seen again round the Mediterranean, and from the early 18th century on, they were available in foldable versions. These still had a framework of wooden rods and whalebone and weighed about 5 kilograms, which is many times the weight of present models.
The Engineer and the Knirps
In 1934 a Breslau engineer by the name of Hans Haupt patented an umbrella, which could be folded up, to take up little room when not in use. He called it the knirps. This little umbrella, which he had thought up already in 1928, was the first of its kind with a telescopic framework. What had led him to the idea? Owing to a leg wound from the First World War, he had found it very awkward to use a walking stick on the one hand and a non-collapsible umbrella on the other.
His invention revolutionized the umbrella industry. The company Bremshey & Co. from Solingen took over serial production and was shown to be shrewd in doing so by continually greater sales figures.
The Legacy of Jonas Hanway
Hanway was a stubborn man, indifferent to social stigma, so he bore his umbrella through thick and thin, as mentioned above. But the fiercest attacks he was exposed to came from an unexpected quarter, from the drivers of horse-drawn carriages, who were afraid that the umbrella would deprive them of passengers. In England at the time they were the most common means of transport and, owing to their roofs, fared well on rainy days. The cabbies viewed Hanway as a threat to their business and opposed him, even violently. They pelted him with rubbish and even tried to run him over. Hanway countered by thrashing a cabby with his umbrella, according to the British history magazine ‘Look and Learn’.
But Jonas Hanaway as an umbrella pioneer proved to be on the right side of history: more and more Englishmen resorted to umbrellas, and only three months after his death, London cabbies were vexed to find an advertisement for umbrellas in the London Gazette. But in another respect Hanaway was on the wrong side of history, for in his ‘Essay Upon Tea and Its Pernicious Consequences’ (1756) he vehemently opposed the importation of tea into England. As it turned out, not only umbrellas but also tea became hallmarks of the Empire.
