Weavers of Coventry

The way I see it, these people were starving, they were doing ten to twelve hour shifts in this dirty, immensely noisy factory, and here's this young lad darting in and out whenever he wishes, and for how long he wishes - they are desperate, miserable with life, conditions, and wages just been cut, they must have hated him. To me he was very rich, not in money, but with what he had to what they had. This was going on all over the country, and they could do nothing - like I said, up north they had just shot a lad such as Gutteridge. The chartists' agitation did not start till 1838, they felt they were to sink more and more into the state of slaves. Has the world ever yet seen a population so dangerous in every respect as to the society in which existed as the manufacturing population of Great Britain. Crowded together in most formidable masses, well aware of the force of organisation. The 19th century was an era in which religion still underpinned almost all the great institutions and dominated education. It was one of rigid class distinctions. Landed and rich families controlled its ruling class, it rejected the notion of political, legal and property rights for women and deplored their attempts to have an education, yet it was about to have a woman on the throne.

??

Kaga. May I suggest you read the book.

SJT The Lunar Men - by Jenny Uglow Industrial Birth Read it in the library - then you will buy it. Guaranteed. Question. Was there any house number mentioned in any part of the trial? Victoria was not queen until 1837 and then she had seven attempts on her life, no wonder she stayed on the Isle of Wight. The penny black stamp post did not start till May 1840 so I don't think house numbers had started. The establishment was alert to the problem of civil unrest, fear that the distressed manufacturers rioting and revolution. In Paisley in 1842 one fifth of 80,000 people were on workhouse relief or starving. Created the belief that the government had shuffled out of taking responsibility. Coventry industrialised, attracting more into the locality, a slump in demand and Coventry had catastrophic effect. Coventry people remembered the massacre of Peterloo by the Cavalry in Manchester 1819 and the Cavalry demanding free meat from the butchers of Butcher Row. 1831 and the roads just out of town were mere dirt tracks, Coventry's goods got bogged down, soiled, stolen and lost, and Staffordshire Wedgwood crockery, over 50% broken before it had reached 20 miles. Annewiggy Gutteridge not even on my list, but I will read it. He was not a worker as such, he was learning his trade, a great difference - as someone wrote he did not go home and sit and watch his son die from starvation when the trade slumped, as his workers did. Same as Becks workers with the reduced wages were about to. All history books will tell you we were on the verge of revolution, much the same as the French one thirty years before. The huge class system remained with us until the Second World War, then they found their money, and their ways placed them in the same danger.

I repeat Kaga, read the book. Quote from the book We made the last week's wages last a fortnight, and then came thought of where or how to find food for ourselves and our 2 children. Our furniture that we had only recently purchased, went one article after another, at a heavy discount, to procure rent, bread, and oatmeal for porridge; but there was a limit even to these scanty means and the time soon came when we had disposed of the last article that we could raise money upon. An unprecedented severe winter set in, and from lack of food and fire we suffered very severely. One night we thought our youngest child was dying from the unavoidable exposure to cold and want, and we had to break up an article of furniture in the dead of the night as fuel, to warm the child back to life. For 2 days not a particle of food had passed our lips, and for nearly a fortnight, in this bitterly cold weather we had slept on the bare boards huddled together to keep as warm as we could.

Kaga, In answer to your question: no, there was no house numbers mentioned. Yes, the civil unrest at the time is highly relevant on many levels and features in my manuscript. I hadn't heard of the cavalry demanding free meat. I wonder what that was all about??? Regarding industrialisation, my research suggests it was limited in Coventry in 1831. Beck's was the first steam engine amongst the weaving trade, for instance. Perhaps it took off at some point later on? Or perhaps other industries besides weaving were into it? Thank you for the info on the roads / dirt tracks. I wonder if Spon Street was paved from Spon End to the centre of town? Thanks for the tip on The Lunar Men. Looks like a fascinating read.

Annewiggy, The book is on its way to me, thank you for the info, SJT, The Lunar men will explain it all - the industrial things we used including steam engines. Yes I read it as such from about 1800 the gradients were lowered or raised, large stones for the basements then smaller and smaller making it a harder substance with a small fall from the centre so the rain would run off, very narrow, and the carriage wheels run easier, but I believe they left ruts at either side and had many accidents. They also made a race against each other, they were very skilled coachmen - one could take a pipe from your mouth with his whip without harming you, as he passed by. Coventry was central, so had a huge coaching business. Accidents and distress to animals, they kept improving the roads, something like £3,000 was borrowed to do round the Allesley area, but tolls increased. But it was the high society ladies that demanded better coaches and smoother riding.

This picture is from 1823 and shows the old style cobbling at the corner of Fleet Street (where the artist was standing), Spon Street and Hill Street. I'm not sure how far this extended up Spon Street but I'd guess all the way to beyond Spon end. I believe that there was a requirement for householders to maintain the stretch outside their home by acquiring river pebbles and doing the work themselves. So if there were houses, they'd have cobbles. Spon End would have been easier to repair, being closer to the supply of cobbles. Report on the Road from London, by Coventry to Holyhead. From June 1820, this might help. I haven't read it yet.

Thanks Helen F and Kaga! And now for an actual weaving question (seeing as this is the Weavers of Coventry topic thread): what is a warp? I know it in the sense of the thread (ie. the weft woven across the warp) but in the trial and other reports, people were talking about throwing 'warps' out of the window. For example, this account from one of the witnesses: "...we both then went to the Mill Dam, and stood there; when standing there I saw warps thrown out of the windows of the factory; I remained about ten minutes on the Mill Dam, till the house was on fire..." I guess it could be the particular thread used for the warp on a big oversized bobbin / roll??? So as well as smashing machines, they threw the raw materials out the window???

SJT A warp is the length wise yarn base, you then weave across to fill it in, if you haven't got the warps to work on then you have nothing. Hope that helps.

The most common way of handling the warp seems to be a method of having many bobbins on a rack but another way was to pre wind the threads onto a warp bar. I'm not sure if the method varied by machine design or by date or by type of weaving involved. Having all the threads on one bar seems more risky to me (if one thread breaks it's harder to repair), and might be for shorter batches (eg rugs). I imagine it would be quite satisfying to throw bobbins out the window still attached to the machine as not only would they get dirty, they'd unwind, particularly if they fell in the water and floated away. Could a whole rack be pushed out of a window? This probably requires some specialist information from a weaving museum. The Herbert may be able to help or the Manchester Science and Industry Museum. Manchester Industry museum.

Helen There was one in Birmingham Museum, it also had the steam engine that was used and made for Hawkesbury pit, the first ever steam engine of its kind made in kit form, assembled by engineers. Different parts made in different towns, and assembled at Bedworth - much the same as car parts of the 50 era. SJT The brilliant picture of Helen's above shows the man with a barrow of cobbles and the man with the crusher/rammer that turned the cobbles into dust form. That particular corner, they raced like chariots round the bend, the people inside clung on for dear life. Just a few yards in Fleet Street, where the artist would be, a cart came out of West Orchard - they crashed, horses and people scattered across the street.

In Gutteridge's description he says they dismantled Mr Beck's house, cut out the warps from the looms in the factory and threw them into the mill dam, filthy piece of water on the site now occupied by the Smithfield. He later says "Having an intense desire to see the new machinery which dispensed with manual labour" (this is an inquisitive 16 year old boy who is interested in things like this and the world around him). "I went to the ill fated factory with one of the men employed there, and it was while I was inspecting the looms, absorbed with their beauty and simplicity of their arrangement, that the rioters commenced to demolish them, to pile the broken pieces on a heap of shavings, and deliberately set fire to them".

Annewiggy I have read this book before, 70 years ago - but now I remember. When I was a kid in the 1930's it was always reckoned (promised) that when I left school at 14 I would work on the farm, but the war delayed it for 6 months, I took a job in a small weaving factory. This was 1941, the year Courtaulds made a break through to produce nylon. I hated the deadly noise, lasted about two months, left and went to an Ebonite factory for about four months. The farm job came up. 1950, I was browsing through a book-shop, the picture on the cover was of looms. I glanced through it, it was of Coventry - bought it for about three shillings, but I was a fireman at the time, and the burning of the looms intrigued me. You could say this book sparked my interest into Victorian days. But history was missing, interest in those days was all rebuild. Now I know why I posted he would not dare to be near Becks at the time - his father had rescued him in a very dangerous situation. Also Courtaulds had been using a steam driven loom for about three years (1928), I believe in Coventry. Annewiggy, I'm so glad you encouraged me to read this book. Thank you. PS. The cover picture is not of the time of Becks, but much later, 1860-70 time.