The Impact of the Mechanization of Cotton Manufacture Upon Male and Female Employment;

The impact of the mechanization of cotton manufacture upon male and female employment; a case study of Manchester c.1780-1840

Keith Sugden, University of Cambridge

There is a well documented literature to describe the mechanization of cotton spinning and weaving in the county of Lancashire between the late eighteenth and second–quarter nineteenth centuries. This literature focuses upon a number of aspects. For example, the technical inventions, who did what and when, the contemporaneous literature describing the various machines, the number of spindles and looms at work in a small number of selected years, the national output statistics, and the Factory Inspectors’ Reports. Despite the breadth of the historiography, there remains insufficient, clear empirical evidence to pin point the date at which the mechanization of the two processes first significantly impacted the industry. This study, the first part of a larger work, attempts to address this deficiency through the analysis of the occupations of single men, and more specifically through the timing of occupational change. Its aim is to plug the gap in knowledge between the onset of mechanization and the publication of the first Factory Inspectors’ Reports in the 1830s’. Specifically, the study will attempt to answer two questions; by what year was cotton hand spinning in Lancashire a redundant occupation? When did the power loom first adversely affect male employment and provide employment opportunities for women?

The first spinning machine was introduced into cotton manufacture in England by Paul and Wyatt in the 1730s and 1740s, but it had limited commercial application. Hargreaves’ jenny, based upon the technology of the one-thread wheel, was introduced in the 1760s and was adopted by Lancashire cotton spinners by 1771.It produced an even yarn that was fine for the cotton weft but too soft to manage the hard-twist required for the cotton warp. Arkwright’s water frame, a development upon the Paul and Wyatt machine, was patented in 1769. It could not produce the uniformly even yarn necessary for the weft and was suitable only for the cotton warp. The ability of the two machines to produce the different yarns enabled them to complement one another, but it was the inability of the jenny to produce cotton warp that led to Crompton’s development of the mule.The mule, a hybrid that combined the features of the wheel and the frame, could spin both warp and weft and was capable of producing fine yarn. It utilized rollers, adopted from Arkwright’s water frame, to squeeze and stretch the yarn, and its spindles on a moving carriage drew out and twisted the yarn, similar to Hargreaves jenny. Arkwright’s frame was driven by water, as the name suggests, and was operated in the main by children and women. The early jennies were hand-operated and were sufficiently small to be domestic machines.Adults found the horizontal wheel and treadle awkward to operate, whereas children aged nine to twelve years could do so with dexterity.The early jennies had 8 to 12 spindles but larger machines with 60-80 spindles became common. These machines were operated by women. Machines with 120 spindles, first built around the 1790s’, required a man to operate them.As the number of spindles increased, the use of the jenny moved from the household to the workshop and mill. In contrast to the smaller jennies and the frame, the mule was worked by men.Cotton mule spinning advanced rapidly. According to estimates by Colquhoun and Crompton, the number of mule spindles in the cotton industry increased from 700,000 in 1789 to over 4,209,570 in 1812. Over the same time period, the numbers of jenny spindles decreased from 1,400,000 to 155,880.

Using the parish of Manchester as a case study, this paper analyses the marriage records of the church of St Mary, St Denis and St. George to track the temporal change in the number of bridegrooms who were either spinners or weavers.Manchester parish was selected for study for a number of reasons. For instance, the parish was at the vanguard of the cotton industry at this time. Also, Manchester parish was large, covering approximately 60 square miles. It contained two towns, Manchester and Salford, and many townships. By means of the imposition of double duty to those in the parish who married at another church, residents were financially encouraged to marry at St Mary, St Denis and St. George. These church registers are considered to be a fair representation of single men, bridegrooms, who resided within the parish. PostHardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, marriages at the church were comprehensively recorded in the registers. Over the time period studied, more than 95 per cent of all St Mary, St Denis and St. George entries include the occupation of the bridegroom. Their analysis shows the onset of male spinning. The number of bridegrooms who were either spinners or weavers rose rapidly in the 1780s, but the ratio of one to the other reached a plateau by the 1790s, at a level that was maintained for around fifteen years.This plateau is considered to be indicative of the timing of the demise of local cotton hand spinning. It suggests that the commercial practice of spinning by hand was effectively over in Manchester by the end of the eighteenth century. Large jenny and mule spinning had become dominant. The spinner/weaver ratio trends upwards towards the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century, indicative of the displacement of male weavers by women as power looms were introduced. Whereas mule spinning positively impacted the opportunity for adult male employment, the introduction of power looms had an adverse effect.

Preliminary work to analyse the marriage registers of a number of other Lancashire textile towns, for example, those of Oldham St Mary, Wigan, Bolton le Moors, and of Blackburn St. Mary, has been carried out. The work shows, that whilst Manchester parish was at the forefront of the change in spinning, other parishes soon followed. Similar trends are observed, albeit at different time periods. This work will continue and will endeavour to map the change in all Lancashire parishes for which occupational information is available. As far as the data will allow, a complete picture of Lancashire will be drawn.