It may seem like a little thing, like Tom Thumb little, but it was on this date, April 25, 1684, that a patent was granted for the thimble. There is not much more written about this one. I am assuming it is England, as the United States had not been established yet. We were not even a wink in the eye at that point.
But thimbles came around long before then. When people started sewing and pushing needles through tough material, like heavy material, or leather, they needed something to ease their woes. I know about woe. I was born on a Wednesday.
The origin of the word, the term we use today, came from the first thimble manufacturer in England in the 17th century. They called the device a “thumb-bell,” which evolved into the word we use today. I like the thumb- bell name. It fits, no pun intended.
Now, I don’t know how the dirt-diggers know this, but Early man used pieces of bone to help push needles through cloth. They say they did this as early as 30,000 years ago. I supposed they unearthed old needles by old bones and carbon dated them, is how.
It has also been discovered that by the times of the Romans, thimbles had made their way into existence. The oldest thimble ever discovered dates back to the first century and was found in Pompeii.
At any rate, that 1684 date seems to be when thimbles became more prevalent in culture. Most of them were made from brass at that time.
Early thimbles were made from whalebone, horn, or ivory. And today, they are made from just about anything, including metal, plastic, leather, rubber, wood, glass, or china. Useful and decorative, alike.
Whenever I think of thimbles, I think of two things — the aforementioned Tom Thumb, who was no bigger than his father’s thumb. And then Thumbelina, who is tiny too. If I were a movie producer, I’d have these two meeting up and becoming a team of small superheroes, fighting crime at the lowest level. They’d wear thimbles for hats and have tiny capes.
Anyway, clearly, my thoughts do not match those of a digitabulilst. That is what a collector of thimbles is called — a digitabulilst. This hobby first became popular after special thimbles were made for the Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park in the 1800s.
These days, the largest thimble collection in the world belongs to a gentleman named Robert Harper of the Canadian persuasion. His treasury contains more than 8,000 thimbles. That is some thimble-loving.
They have been used for more than sewing and collectibles, though. In the 1800s, people used them to measure shots of alcohol. The popular phrase emerged, “Just a thimble-full, please.”
It is also said that prostitutes would wear them on their fingers and tap on people’s windows to let them know they were there. A knuckle would have worked too, if you ask me. Albeit, I have absolutely no experience in this field, for the record.
Then there were the mean Victorian schoolteachers, who would wear thimbles and thunk ill-mannered students on the head. The nuns at Our Lady of Mercy must not have been sewers. They were more spankers and shakers, not thimble-thunkers.
Those little thimbles made their way to game boards such as Monopoly. They also landed on the big screen, when Michele Pfeiffer, making her first Catwoman outfit using thimbles as the base of her claws in Batman.
Then there were the two rats in Chicken Run who tried to pawn thimbles off as a nice tea set.
But we should always remember the thimble’s main objective. To make life easier. To make things a little less painful. To help with a task, to lighten a discomfort.
If we humans lived by the “Creed of the Thimble,” the world would be a better place. Maybe, just a little.
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“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
― Desmond Tutu
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“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”
― Kahlil Gibran
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“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
― Aesop
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The Creed of the Thimble is bigger than you think
