Daily AncestorTailor
A tailor made, altered and repaired clothes, especially men's suits and coats, cutting them to measure.
Tailoring was a guild trade with masters, journeymen and apprentices; in England a tailor had to serve an apprenticeship, typically seven years. A shop usually had a master, a foreman and several journeymen.
In the 1800s cheap ready-made clothing and work done outside the shops hurt many tailors. The 1900 census instructions told enumerators to distinguish between a dressmaker, seamstress and tailoress, so a woman doing tailoring may be listed as tailoress rather than tailor.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1910 census
Morris Lefkowitz, 38, Tailor, Russia
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Daily Ancestor. "Tailor." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/tailor. Last checked 2026-10-10.