 The word was still in English upper-class usage in this sense in the 1960s.In Victorian dressmaking terminology, "stuff" was used as a generic term for woven fabrics, with "cloth" generally reserved for woollens (as opposed to worsteds).Manufacture of Kidderminster stuff was established by the mid-17th century, when it was referred to by Richard Baxter, the puritan divine, who was lecturer in the parish church of Kidderminster from 1641, and then vicar in the 1650s.