A bachelor button is a button that can be attached without sewing. It uses a stud pressed through fabric and into a top button.Mayman, Doug, “Led Soldiers”, , p.80Harmsworth's Household Encyclopedia: A-CIV, 1920, p179 They were sold in notion stores in the late 1800s and early 1900s as an emergency repair button. They could be attached and removed.“The dyestuff situation in the textile industries” United States Tariff Commission, 1918, p38 The poem “A Bachelor's Button” is a lament by a man whose lover never sewed his button on his coat and had to use a bachelor's button to repair it.From “Out of a Silver Flute”, 1896, page 122
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