Thomas Rawlinson

Thomas Rawlinson was an 18th-century English industrialist who is widely reputed, though not without controversy, to have been the inventor of the modern kilt.

Very little is easily found about Thomas Rawlinson himself, even his vital dates (birth and death). He is described in nearly all accounts as being an Englishman and a Quaker who went to the Highlands in the aftermath of the suppression of the 1715 Jacobite uprising in order to establish an iron works.

The origins of the modern kilt

Prior to the turn of the 18th century, the form of the kilt typically worn in the Scottish Highlands was what is now known as the belted plaid or great kilt, which consisted of a large tartan or multi-colored blanket or wrap (Gaelic felie, with various spellings) which was gathered into loose pleating and drawn about the body and secured by a belt at the waist, the lower part hanging down covering the legs to about the knee.

Sometime in the late 17th century or, at the latest, the early part of the 18th century, a new form of this garment was introduced and became popular. This new form consisted essentially of the lower portion only of the great kilt, at first untailored, but many years later with the pleats or belt loops sewn in to better secure the garment about the waist.

Thomas Rawlinson (barrister)

Thomas Rawlinson (1681–1725) was an English barrister, known as a bibliophile.

Life

Born in the Old Bailey in the parish of St. Sepulchre, London, on 25 March 1681, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Rawlinson (1647–1708), by Mary (d. 1725), eldest daughter of Richard Taylor of Turnham Green, Middlesex; Richard Rawlinson was a younger brother. After education under William Day at Cheam, and at Eton College under John Newborough, he matriculated at St John's College, Oxford on 25 February 1699. He left the university in 1701, and studied at the Middle Temple, where he had been entered on 7 January 1696.

Rawlinson was called to the bar on 19 May 1705, and then made a tour through England and the Low Countries. Returning to London, he concentrated on municipal law, but succeeded to a large estate on the death of his father in 1708. He resided for some years in Gray's Inn, where his accumulation of books compelled him to sleep in a passage. In 1716 he hired London House, Aldersgate for his library, stacked three deep. Joseph Addison is supposed to have had Rawlinson in mind when (in The Tatler, No. 158) he wrote on Tom Folio, a "learned idiot".

Thomas Rawlinson (politician)

Thomas Rawlinson (1847 – 21 July 1928) was an English-born Australian politician.

Born in Kent to stonemason William Rawlinson and Eliza Underdown, he arrived in New South Wales with his family around 1852. He attended Sydney Grammar School and studied law at the University of Sydney, being admitted as a solicitor in 1870. He then moved to Bega, where he became partner in Rawlinson & Bland. On 14 November 1877 he married Sarah Ritchie, with whom he had eight children. In 1884 he was Bega's first mayor. He served as the Protectionist member for Bega from 1894 to 1895 in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. Rawlinson died at Bellevue Hill in 1928.

References