Weavers of Coventry

SJT Thank you, but it's amazing how things just fell into place for me. In March 1988 we visited our young son and family in Perth, but while there they took us to a sightseeing place in Perth. This Yorkshire old Victorian farmer had take everything from his farm, livestock and household, from a spoon to bull, aboard a boat, sailed to Freemantle and settled on the Swan river in Perth - absolutely mind boggling - built a farmhouse exactly like the one he had in Yorkshire. I just couldn't come away, tools and implements I had never seen. Years later knowing I loved history of my home town, that same son introduced me to this forum. As a young boy in Coventry in the early thirties I could see the anguish in the eyes of the men thrown out of work. I knew nothing about the workings of the country, but I could see how they had been thrown aside as if useless. I could see the clenched fist as they talked of unemployment and I knew kids hid illness because we couldn't afford doctors, and kids of that time also wore hand me downs, from brother to brother. But Coventry employment steadily rose in the thirties and so did welfare. But even in Victorian times Coventry had one of the fastest population growths ever that put great strain on everyone, the growth and new technology was far too great for people coming from a agricultural background in those days to grasp, they needed more time.

SJT & Kaga, I hope you don't mind that as the topic has naturally migrated towards the subject of Beck and the weaving industry, I've copied / moved the latter few posts across from the County Hall topic so they can continue here in context with that thread. All the best, Rob

Rob, thank you. Grateful for everything.

Kaga, That may be the house called Tranby House you mention - built in the Victorian era on the Swan river. Restored and attracts many visitors. The old farmer couldn't have chosen a better place considering where it still stands now.

Yes, Dreamtime, it got washed away a few times by the river, but he rebuilt. There were old sewing needles and house things I had never seen or used, to me it was a very interesting place.

To me, Lord Ashley was the leading advocate for improving the working and social conditions of the weavers and lower classes in the 1830's. To improve the conditions in factories, he tried to limit, by law, work in factories to ten hours a day, but it wasn't till after the Beck episode he succeeded in 1833 in influencing the Factories Act. But it failed to stop children under nine from factories, and those under thirteen could still do nine hours. Reforming factory practises in the teeth of these new owners was a different matter. He was also concerned about their living conditions when not working in squalid factories and silk factories. These conditions destroyed souls as well as bodies. After toiling for sixteen or seventeen hours a day teenagers would emerge 'enfeebled', but even the law of 1833 did not apply to the silk mills. Ten hours of labour assigned to children of six/seven years of age, some had to stand on stools to reach their work. This was no more than slavery.

In the year 1820 William Cobbet came up from London to contest the electoral vote. He was badly beaten up by mobsters at the instigation of top aristocrats in the city. His message was against the way small so-called factories were springing up, and there would be a lot of riots. Eleven years later Lord -Ashley Cooper echoed those sentiments and brought about the factory act to reduce the hours, etc. He said our system begets the vast and inflammable mass, which lies waiting day by day for the spark to explode. The Peel Party got rid of him. At that time 75% of Coventry workforce was made up of the weaving and ribbon making trade. Names like Bray, Cash, Hennel, Beck and many more, the owners of these Silk Houses, just carried on with the long hours and bad and dangerous conditions, and Beck's workers. County hall hold they didn't even get a fell day like the home weavers did. To me I read Beck's as little more than back garden shed, possibly with eight to ten looms, a working staff of no more than a dozen, everyone on foot so they would have to live close to the factory. Taking out all the officials and watchmen, then how many would the small County Hall hold? If Gutteridge did witness the riot, he would be a very brave man, he would have been well known, and the mob in that mood. My view is that he went to court at the request of his kinsmen to keep eye on proceedings, for they did put the prices back. My grandma had a loom in a downstairs room, and my mother worked it in her early teens, which would be just before the First World War. Now, why did Beck not use the fast flowing river to power his looms, much like the water-mill in Alderman's Green Road, that was part of the same river, not so strong yet more looms, or as least as many?

Hi Kaga, This site has a pic of Beck's factory as it was in the 1930s (converted to a brewery by that stage) just before it was demolished I believe the bottom floor (and possibly second floor) would have been Beck's home. The looms and machinery he had in there are well documented both in the riot trial and in the claim for compensation he made against the City of Coventry. Here's Beck's account from the trial: "I resided, on the 7th of November last, in a building I erected in the parish of the Holy Trinity. The building consisted of rooms and a workshop on it; there was a front to the dwelling-house, and what we call a back front. The principal of the machinery stood on the third floor, and there was one power loom, my own property, in the attic, in which was making ribbons; it was a moveable machine; there were eight power-looms in the shop below, six of them were mine, but they were not complete; they were intended for the weaving of silk ribbons; Mr. Christopher Woodhouse owned the other two; Mr Woodhouse has others in partnership with him; I was to have 1s per week for the standing of each of his looms, and 4s per week for the steam power by which they were worked; there was work in one of the looms, and we were getting in the other; there was also an alabar loom, belonging to Merry and Brown; it was there for the purpose of being altered; I had a throwing mill on the attic; it was employed in throwing silk; it was my own and I had silk in it on the 7th of November; I had a steam-engine to work the looms and other parts of machinery besides; I had three winding engines; they were my own; two of them were in the attic and one below, with materials for working them" Attached is the 1851 map showing where Beck's factory was located: marked 'Ribbon Factory' to the left on the river. Perhaps he used river power at first but then changed to the steam engine later when that was available (presumably more efficient and reliable technology). Some wonderful people on this site actually had a look at County Hall for me recently to assist with estimating the numbers that would have been present at the trial. The newspapers report a full house of course. I can't help on any of the other matters you mention (changes to factory hours etc) but one thing that did come out of the Beck's Mill riot was that the manufacturers agreed not to use steam engines. I believe this commitment stood for some years during which time the silk ribbon industry withered in Coventry. I believe by the 1850s it was all but over.

The 1851 Board of Health map. You can see Beck's Yard, which ran directly north from New Buildings. At the north end of the Yard you will see a rectangular building marked Ribbon Factory. This was his mill.

In Beck's day the yellow triangle to the right of Beck's Yard was still a mill pond. I can't think that the water flowed very fast at that point. Mills tended to be built on the down side of a mill pond, off a mill race. Off the bottom point of the triangle there was such a channel. The line of the garden fences to the right of the road show where it ran as it headed back to re-join the Sherbourne. The Priory mills (probably corn) started to the right of the road (New Buildings) and included the building behind. The Saw Mill to the north was a later addition and was probably always steam powered. There does look like a bit of an intake to the west of Becks but it can't have generated much of a flow. Maybe it was just for water used in making steam? Though there was a well on site too. The picture of Thornley's/Beck's was looking west. The river/mill pond would have been just to the right, almost flush against the building.

SJT Thank you. To think I used to run about round there in the thirties, but never knew who it belonged to, in the fifties it became 'The Continental Cafe'. I'm not sure about Tasmania but in Oz your gg grandad would have seen cotton growing, knowing how it was spun, dyed, knitted and woven - he would have been an all round man. But we had none of the social reforms then and not even a queen. We must not look through our eyes, but through theirs - ragged, dirty. It was one of rigid class distinctions very few would have understood what was going on, there was little or no attempt to regulate public health, a failure to treat sewage, girls driven to vice through threat of starvation. People were illiterate without the means to improve themselves. This was before the Poor Law Act and people could stray only as far as their feet would let them. Children as young as eight were working twelve hours a day. Ignorance and injustice were common place, there was no post yet, and newspapers were hand bills. I believe court papers were called chronicled, and the courtroom was not as we know it - but we have nothing else to go by.

Hi Kaga: No cotton industry anywhere in Australia (including Tasmania) until 1850s but yes, he was an 'all round' man. In Van Deimens Land he was a shepherd, then a police constable (both while still a convict!) and made his fortune as a butcher and bought up a lot of land. In 1831 there were both newspapers and handbills. The Coventry Herald (published weekly on a Friday) was about four pages of very small print. But as you say, only the literate would have been able to enjoy it. That said, there were numerous charity schools for working class around Coventry so a small percentage of the weavers would have been able to read it. Hi Helen F: Here's the map of Beck's mill from the court notes at the trial. It has Cross Cheaping in the wrong spot but as you explained, there was a mill pond / dam.

Thanks for that interesting map. I note that it puts the building offset from the river, central to the plot. Is the map wrong or did the river move closer to the building between then and 1850? The map does miss the inlet from The combined Radford Brook and St Agnes spring just before the river goes through the sluices. At that time the two streams hadn't been culverted. Looking at the earlier maps, it appears that Beck's was built within a walled knot garden. Part of a trend to build over gardens

SJT Well 1850 it could have been, I saw the prison Commissary at Freemantle with photos of sacks of cotton, and small piers, where the prisoners loaded the boats with cotton for the UK, very interesting visits. Must have been a slap in the eye when the Brits found a Dutchman had discovered WA 150 years before Captain Cook (Dirk Hartog). Cross Cheaping was less than a hundred feet away from Becks and the pool I believe was the other side of Becks to CC. And this was a time when George Eliot was tripping down the Burges to get home and possibly my gg grandfather down Bishop St. You can see a photo (1850 time) of my g grandad, post 50, topic canals round Cov.