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Home , Edmund Cartwright, Irish linen, Richard Arkwright, Samuel Crompton, The Textile Institute, Thomas Highs

The Research Journal of the Costume Culture Vol. 20, No. 4 pp.616~620, August 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.7741/rjcc.2012.20.4.616

Inventions and Other Developments Associated with the Heritage Industries of the British Isles

M. A. Hann†and E. Nicholson University of Leeds International Archive, University of Leeds, UK (Received April 27, 2012 : Accepted August 1, 2012)

Abstract

The objectives of this paper are to examine some of the factors which may account for the rise in predominance of British textile manufacture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This paper identifies a range of important eighteenth century British inventions and associated developments, such as the ‘’ system, which stimulated expansion in textile manufacture in the British Isles and led to the rise in international importance of various ‘heritage textile industries’, including the industry, the Yorkshire woollen and industry, the Dundee industry and the Irish industry.

Keywords: Heritage , British inventions, eighteenth century

underwent substantial declines in machinery capacity, Ⅰ. Introduction output, numbers of establishments and numbers of personnel employed, as textile manufacture re-located Textiles with functional, ritualistic, decorative and geographically to locations offering lower production aesthetic applications have been produced throughout costs. Examples from the British Isles context include much of Europe for several hundred years. Various the Irish linen industry, the Yorkshire woollen and craft-based industries have evolved and have received worsted industry, the Dundee jute industry and the attention from scholars and museum professionals over Lancashire cotton industry; there are several others. the years. Many well-documented collections, comprised All four had risen to a peak of output and perfor- of hand-crafted textile items, are housed in national mance, during the nineteenth and early-twentieth cen- and provincial museums across Europe. Also of im- turies, to be confronted ultimately with unavoidable portance (in the cultural, historical and heritage con- decline towards the late-twentieth century. Examples text) but receiving relatively less scholarly attention of heritage textiles still produced today, though at from textile and fashion scholars, are the various reduced capacities compared to several decades ago national factory-based textile industries developed along- are Irish Linen and Harris . side, or in the wake of, the , In many cases, communities built up around these involved in the processing of various fibres, including heritage textile industries, with generations of work- (linen), , cotton, and jute. Towards the end forces recruited often from the same families to work of the twentieth century, many of these industries in the same mill. In some cases whole towns were

† 교신저자 E-mail : [email protected]

－ 616 － Vol. 20, No. 4 M. A. Hann and E. Nicholson 155 built by entrepreneurs in order to ensure that workers capital to invest in new forms of industrial activity; lived close to their place of employment and also, in its many colonies which acted as sources of raw some instances, to ensure socially and hygienically materials and markets for finished products. Improve- better living conditions for the workforce than would ments in the transport infrastructure and in industrial have been the case otherwise; Saltaire (in Yorkshire, production generally were strongly supported by govern- UK) established by Titus Salt in 1851, and now ment and the Royal Navy was available to protect a UNESCO world heritage site, is a good British British sea trade. By around the mid-nineteenth century, example. the Industrial Revolution had spread to France, The objectives of this paper are to examine some Belgium and Germany as well as the United States of the factors which may account for the rise in and ultimately Japan. Drawing on substantial natural predominance of British textile manufacture in the resources, as well as European capital to build rail- eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Particular attention ways and , the United States had overtaken is focused on inventions which brought about signi- Britain as the world’s leading industrial nation by the ficant increases in production which in turn led to last decade of the nineteenth century. Never the less the development of the various British heritage textile Britain retained an important position industrially, industries. throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Probably the most noticeable benefit of the Ⅱ. The Stirrings of Industrial Industrial Revolution, for the societies affected by it, Revolution was sustained economic growth, the increase in ave- rage per capita income and vast amounts of wealth Radical changes in agriculture in the 1700s were accumulated by industrial entrepreneurs. Working necessary pre-requisites for the Industrial Revolution conditions faced by the newly-industrialised labour in Britain. Seed drills and the use of the plough force in the new factories and mills were regarded as were of great importance, and these and other agri- harsh by many contemporary social observers, and cultural inventions led to increased food production the employment of children was a particular concern; which in turn allowed population growth. Degrees of these aspects of the topic are however outside the labour intensity in farming were decreased which in scope of this short paper. An interesting article con- turn contributed to unemployment in farming and the cerned with employment conditions and the deve- availability of a large unemployed labour force. A loping trade union movement was provided by Pearce proportion of this large labour force was thus avail- (1975). able for employment in unskilled or semi-skilled textile manufacture. Ⅲ. Inventive Activity The development of the ‘factory’ system was sti- mulated by the availability of several important pro- The Encyclopaedia Britannica Online identifies five cess innovations in textile manufacture (identified important textile inventions associated with the Indu- below) as well as developments in water and steam strial Revolution and the reduction of labour costs: power, rail and water transportation, mining, John Kay’s ‘’ (1733); and iron smelting. Britain was well placed to benefit ‘ jenny’ (1764); ’s ‘water from these developments. Advantages included the frame’ (1769); ’s ‘’ availability of coal and iron resources; its position as (1779); ’s (1785). an established commercial power; the availability of Each is considered briefly below.

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For centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution, Arkwright left his native Lancashire for spinning and were conducted on a home (or where, in 1777, he met (who had ‘cottage’) basis, occasionally supplementing the income made several inventions relating to ). Spon- from farming. Typically the women of a household, sored by the firm of Need and Strutt, Arkwright built often assisted by children, were involved in spinning mill on the river Derwent in , and men (occasionally from within the same house- housing water frames producing cotton . Arkwright hold) were involved in weaving. A merchant (or is considered by many observers as a leading entre- clothier) ‘managed’ the process, by providing the preneur of the Industrial Revolution and a contem- fibrous raw material and then paying for the spun or porary authority on textile processing . He woven goods. One handloom weaver required the is also associated with the introduction of the factory yarn produced by at least four spinners, but this system as well as with the of cotton changed dramatically with the introduction of an (a century before Ford). In the publication invention to become known as the ‘flying shuttle’. World Heritage Sites in the , it was Invented by John Kay (1704－c1779) of Lancashire, commented that: and patented in 1733, the ‘flying shuttle’ permitted ‘… the Derwent Valley site is significant because the faster production of wider cloth and led to a of the development of early technology at … Crom- four-fold increase in demand for yarn. At around the ford Mill in 1771. Here, Richard Arkwright first same time, with populations increasing at home and introduced factory production and transformed the the colonies providing a massive ‘captive market’, scale of the output and the numbers of workers on there was an increased demand for quantities of British- the site. A shift system was introduced with workers produced cloth. This in turn necessitated innovations employed in large buildings and living nearby in in spinning methods in order to feed the faster and dependent communities. The spread of the factory wider ‘flying shuttle’ looms. system created a new cultural tradition and the ven- A major innovation in spinning was the ture introduced a degree of social enlightenment and which became known as the ‘’. Some concern for the quality of life …’ historians give credit to (1718－1803) Yet further improvements in spinning came in of Lancashire for its introduction in 1764 and others 1779, with the introduction by Samuel Crompton argue that the credit should go to James Hargreaves (1753－1827, also of Lancashire) of the ‘spinning (1720－78), also of Lancashire, who acquired the mule’, so called because it combined elements of patent for the machine in 1770. By the late 1700s, both the ‘spinning jenny’ and the ‘’. This more than 20,000 spinning jennies were being em- invention permitted a single operator to work simul- ployed, each spinning yarn using multiple spindles taneously with numerous spindles and, in a relatively (of between twenty and thirty per frame) at the one short time, the Lancashire town of , with time, thus replacing the efforts of a large number of many factories operating spinning mules, had become hand spinners. a world centre for the production of fine cotton The next important invention, the ‘water frame’ yarns. (first known simply as the ‘’) was Following from these important developments in patented in 1769 by Richard Arkwright (1732－1792) spinning and the potential for immense increases in who apparently obtained a model of a machine de- the quantities of yarn produced, attention was turned signed by Thomas Highs and, making reference to to weaving. A power loom was introduced by this model, built a full-sized machine. Sometime later Edmund Cartwright (1743－1823) of Leicestershire

－ 618 － Vol. 20, No. 4 M. A. Hann and E. Nicholson 157 in 1784 (patented in 1785). A few further patents engine in the late-eighteenth century, coal became followed, including his last patent in 1792 which the main fuel. The northern English counties of added multiple shuttle boxes for the weaving of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and weft-ways stripes and checks. were rich in coal mines and as a result these areas were well placed as locations to engage in factory- Ⅳ. Associated Developments based textile manufacture.

The inventions mentioned above stimulated massive Ⅴ. Conclusion developments across all the textile industries of the British Isles, including cotton manufacture in Lancashire The rise to international predominance of British (mainly in Oldham, Bolton and ), woollen textile manufacture, and the various heritage textile and worsted manufacture in Yorkshire, jute in industries identified here, was reliant on the intro- Aberdeen and linen in (predominantly to the duction of the , the availability of north-east of the island). In terms of quantity of cheap labour and investment capital, as well as output, the Lancashire cotton industry was pre- inventive activity across a wide range of areas. dominant and, by the mid-nineteenth century, was Developments in mining, , roads, railways, iron producing around half the world’s cotton cloth. smelting, chemical production, water and steam power, The bulk of eighteenth and nineteenth century and improvements in machine tools were also of textile inventions, including those mentioned above, importance. were applied first to cotton manufacture and, in some Various factors influenced the decline of these instances, it took several decades before their appli- heritage textile industries in the twentieth century, cability to the mechanisation of other textile industries after over one hundred years of predominance. Pro- was realised. In order to understand why this was the bably the most important factor was the increased case it is important to realise that different types of competition faced in both home and overseas markets fibres have inherently differing properties and require following the ‘migration’ of industrial activity to different processing conditions. locations offering cheaper means of production. A The adoption of textile inventions in Britain created further factor seems to be the rise in importance of demand for massive increases in supplies of clean man-made fibres as substitutes in many end uses. cotton fibre, with seeds and other non-fibrous material removed. Inventions sourced elsewhere contributed. References Of great importance was the introduction of the cotton gin (patented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, New Addy, J.(1976). The textile revolution, seminar studies , USA), an invention which stimulated the in history. Longman, London. Industrial Revolution in Britain and encouraged Aspin, C.(1981). The cotton industry, Shire album cotton plantation owners in the USA to plant more series no 63. Shire Publications, Aylesbury (UK). cotton. Beesley, I.(1987). Through the mill. Dalesman Books, Power sources to run the new machinery were in association with the National Museum of also of great importance. Typically, in the eighteenth Photography, Film and Television, Bradford. century, water power was used (thus the location of Collins, B.(1994). Flax to fibre. The story of Irish many mills adjacent to sources of fast flowing linen. Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum water). With the introduction of an improved steam Publications, Lisburn (Northern Ireland).

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Keighley, M.(2007). Wool city. G Whitaker & Co heritage sites in the United Kingdom, London. Ltd., Bradford, p.6. Pearce, C.(1975). The Manninghan Mills Strike, Brad- Lemon, H.(1951). Some aspects of the early history ford, December 1890-april 1891. University of of spinning with special reference to wool. Hull Occasional papers in Economic and Social Journal of , 42(8), 496-497. History, No. 7, Hull, p.58. Local Authority World Heritage Forum(2002). World

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