The Tailor of Gloucester

Who will help the tailor of Gloucester to finish the Mayor’s elegant coat? For the tailor has fallen ill, and the Mayor is to be married in it tomorrow – on Christmas Day in the morning? Written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter in 1901, this story was written as a Christmas gift to ten-year-old Freda Moore, the daughter of her former governess. Potter based the story on a real-world incident involving John Prichard, a Gloucester tailor who had a commission to make a new suit for the new mayor. But it’s Potter’s charming touch of adding impish, mischievous animals to move the story along that make this children’s classic.