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Factory work in Victorian Lancashire |
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A willowing and scutching machine that removed impurities from raw cotton, producing cotton wool
© Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston |
The work varied according to the different stages of turning raw cotton, usually imported through Liverpool from the southern United States, into cloth. Preparing the cotton to be spun was hot and dirty work performed mainly by women, presided over from the 1880s by male machine operators called strippers and grinders. Most spinning was done on the self-acting mule, which needed a spinner to control the operations of the machine, and piecers to connect up the broken threads, sweep up debris and keep an eye on the process.
The mule-spinners were 'aristocrats of labour', who were paid a 'family wage' that enabled them to be the sole breadwinner. They dressed respectably outside work, and many pubs in towns like Bolton had superior rooms set apart for them. Their younger assistants were paid less than a labourer, but would hope for promotion to become spinners themselves. If denied, they would seek work outside the mill.
body6.jpg<Women were generally excluded from the heat of the mule room, ostensibly for reasons of morality, as the men wore few and scanty clothes and heat was held to inflame the passions. It was also argued that women could not become mule spinners because they lacked the masculine authority to control the piecers; and they were also excluded from supervisory positions in the rest of the industry.
This was even true of weaving, the best-paid large-scale female occupation in Britain, where women working four looms could theoretically earn as much as men; but this was not much more than a labourer's wage, and the men tended to get the more complicated jobs that paid higher piece-rates. Women could lay claim to a measure of independence, and teased the supervisors or 'tacklers' by making jokes about their stupidity and incompetence; but they depended on male family members to get them jobs, and they were also vulnerable to sexual harassment.
Words: John K Walton - University of Central Lancashire
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