Belt or braces?

I SCARCELY had as meikle left/ As buy a gallows button,’ lamented the narrator of a poem by Charles Lockhart, published in 1821. ‘Gallows’ or ‘gallowses’ was the earliest recorded English-language term for a pair of braces. For the poet, the absence even of the wherewithal to buy a button for his braces provided an image of his financial suffering.

Braces were once ubiquitous: in place of belt loops, men’s trousers were made with buttons for them. Rich men and poor men, country sportsmen and roadmenders, conquering generals and cottage gardeners—as well