Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T13:24:46.823Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Textile Factory Before Arkwright: A Typology of Factory Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Stanley D. Chapman
Stanley D. Chapman
Affiliation:
Pasold Reader in Textile History, University of Nottingham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A survey of insurance records covering eighteenth-century manufactories in three branches of the British textile industry reveals much about the gradual evolution of factory production in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. Professor Chapman suggests that neither size, power source, nor the supervision of work constitutes a useful criterion by which to identify the modern, Arkwright-type factory. The essential characteristic of that institution was that it was specifically designed for flow production, rather than the batch production methods of earlier modes of manufacturing.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Winter 1974 , pp. 451 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The Social Science Research Council of Great Britain have rendered financial assistance for the preparation of this article. I am grateful to Professor A. W. Coats, Professor S. Pollard, Professor H. Freudenberger, Mr. N. B. Harte, Dr. P. Strange and Mr. C. W. Chalklin for helpful suggestions.

References

1 Notably Wadsworth, A. P. and Mann, J. de L., The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire (Manchester, 1931)Google Scholar; Heaton, H., The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries (Oxford, 1920)Google Scholar; Mann, J. de L., The Cloth Industry in the West of England from 1640 to 1880 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Hoskins, W. G., “Rise and Decline of the Serge Industry in the South-West of England,” (M.Sc. Econ. thesis, London, 1929)Google Scholar; Chapman, S. D., “The Genesis of the British Hosiery Industry 1600–1750,” Textile History, III (1972).Google Scholar

2 Freudenberger, H. and Redlich, F., “The Industrial Development of Europe: Reality, Symbols, Images,” Kyklos, XVII (1964) 394 ff.Google Scholar

3 Sun, Royal Exchange, and London insurance company registers are in the custody of Guildhall Library, London E.C.2. Dr. D. T. Jenkins has estimated that there are 1,200,000 insurance policies extant for the eighteenth century. None of the registers is indexed.

4 Here are two examples in which comparisons can be made to illustrate the historian's problems. According to evidence given in a Chancery suit in 1762, the initial capital of a firm of calico printers at Temple Mills, West Ham (London) was £3,457, where the three partners had carried on a “large and extensive business.” When they became bankrupt, their immediate successors insured the business for £3,100, a reassuring sum to the historian seeking confirmation of the reliability of the insurance registers. (Public Record Office, C103/51 and B1/37, 133–143.) Another firm of calico printers that ended in the Chancery Court declared their capital “laid out in purchase of certain leasehold premises situate in Merton” (near London) in 1769 to be £7,964. The partners' 1775 insurance refers to a whole range of industrial property as repositories of various utensils, stock, and manufacturing processes, but only insures one fixed asset, a madder mill house, for £500 because the other buildings were the landlord's property. (P.R.O. C12/1727/31.)

5 Defoe, D., Tours through the whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), Everyman Edn., I. 221Google Scholar; J. de L. Mann, West of England, 26.

6 Alcock, N. W., “Devon Farmhouses,” Trans. Devonshire Assoc'n., Vols. 100–104 (1968–1972) and the same author's “Devonshire Linhays,” ibid., vol. 95 (1963).Google Scholar

7 Sun 164/225543 (1765).

8 See Appendix A.

9 Hoskins, W. G., Industry, Trade and People in Exeter 1688–1800 (Manchester, 1935), 37, 57.Google Scholar

10 See Appendix A. Compare Nottingham Journal, April 9, 1763, in which a Derby millwright advertises that he “has travelled all over the south west parts of England and Wales in order to obtain a further knowledge of whatever might be useful relating to Corn Mills, Paper Mills, Cloth Mills, Leather Mills, Forges of all kinds, Slitting Mills, Logwood Mills and Snuff Mills, and all sorts of Mill Machinery.” Clearly there was much for a mill wright from the home of the Derby silk mill to learn in Devon, Wilts., Gloucs., and other south-western counties.

11 Hoskins, Exeter, Ch. 3.

12 Chapman, S. D., “Industrial Capital before the Industrial Revolution,” in Ponting, K. G. and Harte, N. B., eds., Textile History and Economic History (Manchester, 1973).Google Scholar

13 Croslegh, C., History of Bradninch (1912), 300Google Scholar, discussed by Hoskins, M.Sc. thesis, 17.

14 See Appendix A.

15 They were occasionally called “spinning linneys,” e.g. Sun 104/138833 (1753).

16 Sun 141/189406 (1762).

17 The process of eighteenth-century urban infilling is described in detail in Beresford, M. W., “The Back-to-Back House in Leeds,” in Chapman, S. D., ed., The History of Working Class Housing (Newton Abbot, 1971).Google Scholar Early court building can easily be identified in other towns, e.g. at Norwich, Sun vol. 75, March 22, 1745; in Glasgow, Sun 219/320143 (1772); in Manchester Sun 103/136809 (1753).

18 Sun 176/248277 (1767), 227/331744 (1774), 123/162429–32 (1758).

19 Sun 103/137988 (1753) for £5 valuation.

20 F. M. Montgomery, Printed Textiles, English and American Cottons and Linens 1700–1850 (1970) is the best summary of the history of the industry, but there is no full up-to-date book on the subject. Floud, P. C., “The Origins of English Calico Printing,” “The English Contribution to the Early History of Indigo Printing,” and “The English Contribution to the Development of Copper Plate Printing,” Journal Society of Dyers and Colourists, Vol. 76 (1960)Google Scholar, makes earlier accounts of technical innovation obsolete.

21 List assembled from Manchester Mercury files.

22 Impression drawn from Manchester Mercury. W. Bailey, Western and Midland Directory (1783), lists sixteen calico printers in Manchester.

23 See Appendix B.

24 Quoted in F. Irwin, “Scottish Chintz,” 456. A. Hees' Cyclopaedia, IX, article on “Colour Making in Calico Printing” (1807).

25 By Asterleys of Wandsworth, London. The “fire engine” operated by a pump producing “iron liquor” — i.e., iron acetate mordant, P.R.O. E 144/23.

26 Clayton, M. and Oakes, A., “Early Calico Printers around London,” Burlington Magazine, XCVI (1954).Google Scholar For Ainsworth Hall, see Table 4 of this article.

27 Longfield, A. K., “Some 18th century Advertisements and the English Linen and Cotton Printing Industry,” Burlington Magazine, XCI (1949).Google Scholar

28 Lysons, D., Environs of London … I. Surrey (1792), 345Google Scholar; V. C. H. Essex, II (1907), 404.

29 Manchester Mercury (subsequently referred to as M.M.), March 6, 1781.

30 M.M., October 13, 1761.

31 M.M., March 16, 1762; compare M.M., March 1, 1757.

32 E.g. M.M., March 9, 1773, January 7, 1777, December 20, 1778.

33 M.M., March 3, 1778.

34 T. S. Ashton, An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century, 248.

35 P.R.O. E 144/29.

36 Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 137 n. 4.

37 P.R.O., wills of Thos. Watson and Thos. Nash; M.M., September 12, 1782.

38 Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 180 f.

39 M.M., October 21, 1783, February 4, 1783.

40 Baines, E., History of the Cotton Manufacture (1833), 262Google Scholar; compare M.M., January 9, 1759, advertisement by Edward Clayton, the first by a calico printer in Lancashire.

41 Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 305. See V. C. H. Kent, III (1932) for another example. The technical principles are elucidated most clearly in English, W., “A Study of the Driving Mechanisms in the Early Circular Throwing Machines,” Textile History, II (1971).Google Scholar The silk mills housed a varying number of circular throwing machines, gigantic cylinders that in the case of the Derby mill were 60 feet high and carried 336 spindles. The peripheral speed of the cylinders reached 80 feet per minute, and the spindle a speed of about 320 r.p.m. (74).

42 Chaloner, W. H., People and Industries (1963), Ch. 1, has the best summaryGoogle Scholar.

43 Hutton, W., History of Derby (1791), 198.Google Scholar

44 House of Lords Record Office, “List of Mills and Works on the River Derwent,” (1789). Sir Thomas Lombe's widow sold the mill for £3,800 in 1738, a figure that probably reflects a weak bargaining position as much as the heavy cost of the pioneer enterprise. Lombe Mss, Derby Public Library.

45 Young, Arthur, A Six Months Tour through the North of England (1770), I, 134.Google Scholar Fairbank Mss. (surveyor's notebooks), Sheffield City Library, S. 2985, S. 2995.

46 Fairbanks Mss.

47 Details from Dr. P. Strange and Mr. C. Charlton, who surveyed the mi shortly before its demolition.

48 Sun 210/305644 (1771). Elliott was the most prosperous dyer in the town at the time.

49 Coleman, D. C., Courtaulds, An Economic and Social History (Oxford, 1970), I, 33.Google Scholar

50 Poni, Carlo, “La diffusion des moulins à soie alla Bolognese dans les états vénitiens du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles,” Colloques Internationaux du Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (Lyon, 1970).Google Scholar

51 Chapman, S. D., “Fixed Capital Formation in the British Cotton Industry,” Economic History Review, XXIII (1970) 238–240.Google Scholar Charlton, C., Hoal, D., and Strange, P., Arkwright and the Mills at Cromford (Arkwright Festival booklet, July, 1971).Google Scholar

52 For example, Thos. Marshall, “bluemaker, oil and colourman” of Shoreditch (London) had a horsemill insured for £100 — Sun 230B/340411 (1774); John Crew, “madder manufacturer” of Faversham (Kent) had a madder water mill insured for £200 — Sun 216/315284 (1772). Compare RE 7252/3/31361 (1755), BE 7252/4/33066, Sun 224/335583 (1774).

53 D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry (1958), 150: “In most mills little capital and few workers remained the rule” through the eighteenth century. The insurance registers offer a 10 per cent selection of the 300 or so paper mills in existence c. 1750–1770, but probably only the biggest mills were insured. Those mentioned here were the largest in the sample; see Sun 63/26 July, 1742, 217/315489 (1772), 215/311002 (1772), 210/303789 (1772).

54 Kent may be an exception to this generalisation.

55 Ward, J. R., “Investment in Canals and Housebuilding in England 1760–1815,” (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar, reaches a similar conclusion on the sources of capital for navigation and canal investments. He argues that there was insufficient wealth in the provinces until the 1760s to finance canal building.

56 Montgomery, J., The Theory and Practice of Cotton Spinning (Glasgow, 1836), 248–255Google Scholar; Ure, A., The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain (1836), 297–313.Google Scholar

57 Chapman, S. D., “The Cost of Power in the Industrial Revolution,” Midland History, I (2), 1971.Google Scholar

58 For example, Robert Gartside, perhaps the leading Manchester employer of Dutch tape looms during the period covered by this essay (Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 301) insured his three storey building for £300 in 1755 (RE 7252/3/31511). At Warrington, a centre for sailmaking, only the largest spinning “factories” were insured for £ 100 — Sun 206/299656 (1771), 209/302664 (1771), 216/316425 (1772), 229/336211 (1774).

59 In the period 1770–1775 the largest numbers of detailed policies for non-textile industries are for paper, and for corn milling.

60 Maclear, J., “On the Growth of the Alkali … Manufacture of the Glasgow District,” Chemical News, January 12, 1877, 16.Google Scholar

61 Radcliffe, W., Origins of Power Loom Weaving (Stockport, 1828), 10Google Scholar; compare Report from the Committee on the Woollen Manufacture of England, Parl. Papers, 1806, III, 624, 682.