Patten (shoe) dung and human effluent (from chamber pots)– was usually thrown directly into the street (often with minimal advance warning). Making full foot contact with such an unpleasant surface was, understandably, highly undesirable. Thus, pattens tended to only make contact with the ground through two or three strips of wood and raised the wearer up considerably, sometimes by four inches (ten centimetres) or more in contrast to clogs which usually have a low, flat-bottomed sole integral to the shoe. A later pattern of patten which seems to date from the 17th century, and then became the most common, had a flat
MacAdam Shield Shovel MacAdam Shield Shovel The MacAdam Shield-Shovel, also known as the Hughes Shovel, was an item of Canadian infantry equipment during the First World War. It was designed and patented by Sam Hughes, the Canadian minister for the Department of Militia and Defence in 1913, combining function as a spade/shovel and as a shield. Ena MacAdam, Hughes' personal secretary, had first suggested the idea of a shield shovel to Hughes after she witnessed Swiss soldiers making field entrenchments during field exercises. The MacAdam shield-shovel resembled the standard portable infantry spade of its day in both size and shape. In order to