Originally Posted by
Haraka
Those inhabitants of "The Towers" ( before it went comprehensive) will remember all the "Gieves" and "City's" pantomime for uniform fitting, with Burtons considered very "Infra dig" for officers in those days. So I doubt the tailor origins of the term before then.
I didn't go through Sleaford Tech, but even at OCTU we had the same snobbery about Burtons. A few months earlier we had been scruffy oiks and here we were pretending we knew all about bespoke tailoring. The bubble was burst when one of our number told us he had worked for Burtons before joining the RAF, and spilled the beans that Moss Bros used to contract a lot of their work out to Burtons, even to the extent of getting them to sew in the Moss Bros label.
Re Burtons/snooker halls - I got my first suit from Burtons in Carlisle and played my first game of snooker upstairs.