Donkey work – OED – n. the hard or unattractive part of an undertaking
Donkey Jackets and Engines
The previous two posts considered the working-like-a-donkey theme in the cotton mills of Lancashire and the homes of the working class, predominantly in the north of England. This post continues that theme; here the donkey lends its name to an engine and ‘yokes’ the labourer.
If smokers wear a smoking jacket and bad-ass bikers wear biker jackets, then do donkeys wear a donkey jacket or do their hides make a donkey jacket? Certainly not. No. Neither. Unlike the leisurely, pleasure pursuits of smoking and biking, men who traditionally wore donkey jackets were working class labourers and tradesmen who worked like a donkey doing dirty and often dangerous work.
The traditional donkey jacket is a three-quarter length jacket made from wool with a button up front, two front ‘patch’ pockets and a leather yoke. The first donkey jacket was reportedly made in 1888 by a draper’s son, George Key, from Staffordshire for navvies working on the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal (1887-94). He used a heavy-duty wool, called Melton, that resisted rain and offered warmth. The leather yoke provided added durability and protection especially when shouldering heavy loads. The name donkey jacket is reported to have come about because of donkey engines – a steam-powered winch or logging engine that was used by the navvies on the production of the Ship Canal. And of course, donkey engines, like the bearer of the donkey jacket, did the donkey work.
By the mid-twentieth century many working class trades were synonymous with the donkey jacket: miners, dustbin men, any outdoor worker. In the 1960s the donkey jacket became associated with skinheads – an emerging counterculture of English working-class youths that by the 1980s was a global movement. In 1981 in the UK, the leader of the opposition, Michael Foot was pilloried in the press for his choice of outerwear at the main Remembrance Day Service. Despite being an expensive three-quarter length jacket from Harrods (no less), the British press pilloried him describing him as wearing a ‘donkey jacket’ and looking like an ‘out-of-work navvy’. Today the donkey jacket has been gentrified further and is a fashion item for men who want that ‘edgy’ look.
Thinking symbolically about the relationship between the donkey jacket and its wearer, it’s not difficult to see the hard-work relationship. Just as the hard-working donkey is under the dominion of its master, the bearer of the donkey jacket is equally supressed. Even more striking is the correlation between the jacket’s yoke and the physical yoke under which beasts of burden laboured; think, men in donkey jackets under the yoke of capitalism and to press the point, the jacket’s yoke often bears the name or logo of the employing company – further subjugating the wearer to their ‘master’. In a paradox however, the heavy-duty Melton wool used in the jacket’s production is the same wool used for hunting jackets. Who would have thought that the traditional fox-hunting upper classes were galloping around the countryside on their noble steeds, wearing scarlet jackets cut from the same cloth as the men who worked industriously, like donkeys, to make our modern industrial world.
Sources, Images and Further Reading
George Key: https://web.archive.org/web/20120815133126/http://www.cannockchasedc.gov.uk/
site/custom_scripts/HeritageTrail/in_and_around.html; for a humorous look at the gentrification of the donkey jacket and the Michael Foot image see: https://creaseslikeknives.wordpress.com/2016/ 12/28/guest-post-bring-back-the-donkey-jacket/; for Melton wool see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Melton_(cloth); Hunting Jacket see: https://www.thefield.co.uk/country-house/clothing/what-to-
wear-ot-hunting-21368; Donkey jacket from Agecroft Colliery, black felt, with fluorescent shoulders,
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8412245/donkey-jacket-from-agecroft-co-jacket.