These trousers were part of the marionette wardrobe used by the Tiller-Clowes marionette troupe from about 1870 until around 1914, when the company stopped presenting their touring shows, due to the increasing popularity of cinema, and to male members of the troupe enlisting in the armed forces. The marionettes, costumes, backcloths and accessories had been stored by the family in a blacksmith's shop in Lincolnshire for over thirty years, and were purchased by the marionette enthusiasts Gerald Morice and George Speaight in 1945 from Harriet Clowes, a member of the Tiller-Clowes family, when they started work on recreating some of the puppets' original repertoire.

Some of the costumes were used when the marionettes took to the stage again as The Old Time Marionettes in August 1951 as part of The Festival of Britain celebrations, at the Riverside Theatre, Festival Gardens, Battersea Park. This was one of twenty three items of costume, parts of costume and accessories that remained in George Speaight's attic, and were presented to the museum by his son who inherited them after his father's death in 2005.

Marionette troupes presented condensed versions of popular plays, pantomimes and melodramas with live musical accompaniment in fit-up canvas booths at fairgrounds and marketplaces, along with 'curtain-raising' Variety turns including singing and feats of acrobatics and tightrope-walking. Their costumes were modelled on those worn by contemporary performers on the human stage, and would have been made by members of the family. The V&A owns 35 of the figures, a fraction of a full working troupe but probably the largest surviving group from a 19th-century touring marionette theatre in Great Britain.