Sabot, from the Cambridge Historical Objects, Cambridge Room, Archives and Special Collections.
Exhibition Location: The Sakey Room on the first floor of the original Library building.
Sabot
n. heavy work shoe worn by European peasants, especially in France and the Low Countries. There are two kinds of sabots: one is shaped and hollowed from a single piece of wood (called klompen by the Dutch); the other is a heavy leather shoe with a wooden sole.
v. deliberate destruction of property or slowing down of work with the intention of damaging a business or economic system or weakening a government or nation in a time of national emergency.
The word is said to date from a French railway strike of 1910 when workers destroyed the wooden shoes (sabots) that held the rails in place. A few years later sabotage was employed in the United States in the form of slowdowns, particularly in situations that made a strike untenable—such as by migratory workers whose employment was temporary.
origin. The sabot on display has a slight heel with detailed carvings across the front and side, reminiscent of leather creasing and patterning. Nail stubs line the bottom of the shoe.
There is no known provenance or chronology of custody other than an old card catalog claiming that it came from the John Snelling Popkin Estate, which was located on Massachusetts Avenue near the Cambridge Common. Popkin (1792- 1852) was a professor of Greek at Harvard University.
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