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New Zealand Tablet, 15 April 1915, Page 41

As late as 1784 Cowper, in describing the change which was then taking place in the manners and customs of all classes, mentions the umbrella in such a way as to show that, although its use was becoming much more general, yet its adoption by the lower classes was still sufficiently novel to call for comment. Though the umbrella was not adopted by gentlemen during daylight until almost the end of the eighteenth century there appears to have been previously a kind of transition period, during which an umbrella was kept at many coffee houses for the use of fashionable or effeminate men when the night was a wet one.