Spectacles

Spectacles

These spectacles are thought to date from the eighteenth century. In October 1709 The Tatler reported ‘About five years ago it was the Fashion to be short sighted’ but ‘that Mode of Infirmity is out, and the age has recover’d its sight: but the Blind seem to be succeeded by the Lame, and a jaunty Limp is the present Beauty’. (Quoted in David M. Turner, Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment (Routledge, 2012))

Trafford Local Studies Collection, cat. ref. TRA/5/7/446

circa eighteenth century

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