Leather Socket Leg

History

Peg legs were the cheapest and most basic prostheses available to those who had lost legs. These devices commonly consisted of hollow wooden buckets or cups into which the stump of the user was placed. Slightly more expensive prostheses that had features such as leather sockets to hold stumps were available from surgical instrument makers, offering amputees with modest budgets more comfortable devices. These were much cheaper that high-end artificial legs, which could cost upwards of 20 pounds. For more on the artificial legs available in the nineteenth century and the distinction between peg legs and artificial legs, see chapter 4 of Ryan Sweet’s free 2022 book Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture.