XPost: soc.history, soc.genealogy.britain   
   From: goddai01@hotmail.co.uk   
      
   On 27/09/17 13:25, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:   
   > In message , Ian Goddard   
   >  writes:   
   > []   
   >> One factor affecting the longevity of the domestic system is that it   
   >> could be combined with other trades such as farming.  In 1861 my   
   > []   
   > That's a very good point. As well as the logistics of the trade itself   
   > (sourcing the wool, for example), I can see that it would be something   
   > that could be done when other factors - primarily weather - prevented   
   > anything else on the farm being done. (OK, bad weather probably also   
   > includes dim light, but that may or may not affect weaving, depending on   
   > what cloth is being made.)   
      
   I should have mentioned that the weaving is only part of the process.   
   Spinning and carding were all originally done at home by wives &   
   children.  That took longer than the weaving so the weaver had time to   
   look after the farm.  It almost seems as if a man had to be married to   
   set up as a clothier.  In my previous post I referred to the Beardsells   
   whose development from clothiers is well documented by Day.  In a   
   previous generation one of them was described as a labourer before he   
   was married and a clothier afterwards.  His first wife died and he was a   
   labourer again and then a clothier after he remarried.   
      
   Similarly a Dearnley, described as a labourer at the time of his   
   marriage, subsequently became a clothier.  The couple were childless and   
   took on a Dearnley nephew, in part, I suspect, because the absence of   
   children of their own was an impediment to developing as a clothier.   
      
   I don't think we have a very clear handle on all the ins & outs of the   
   domestic industry.  Although smaller clothiers seem to have depended on   
   family for yarn preparation the larger ones employed journeymen weavers,   
   either on the clothiers premises or at the journeymen's homes.  As I can   
   find no explicit mention of journeyman weavers in the PRs I take it that   
   they were described as labourers.   
      
   We have to realise that there was no ready-existing model for the   
   mill-based industry.  To a very large extent people were experimenting   
   and making it up as they went along.  Fulling, always a speciality, was   
   mechanised early.  Carding and spinning followed.  Weaving came late   
   and, in fact the early factories still depended to some extent on   
   outworkers; one of the victims of the 1852 Holmfirth flood had come to   
   collect a warp to take home to weave.   
      
   --   
   Hotmail is my spam bin.  Real address is ianng   
   at austonley org uk   
      
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