Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

close links with that other important Birmingham trade. 197
In Alcester’s baptisms from
1813 to 1840 only one gunsmith appears. 198
In Restoration Alcester the needle industry’s important role in the town’s later
economic history, could not be foreseen, when only three needlemakers emerge from
Alcester’s records, all no doubt closely linked with the burgeoning trade in the Needle
District to the north. 199
In Period B a mere half-dozen needlemakers appear in the
archives, only one of whom left probate. 200
However, there are signs that Alcester’s
interest in the industry starts to grow in the second quarter of the century, when John
Archer forsook his father’s flax-dressing trade to make needles and to gear up mills on
the River Arrow for needle-scouring. 201
In Period C the needle industry perhaps attracted workers who would previously
have entered the gun trade. In the UBD the following Alcester needlemaking businesses
are advertised, all partnerships: Archer and Mascall, Cheston and Morralls and Joseph
and Thomas Scriven. 202
These firms employed many townsfolk of both sexes and all
ages, no doubt some as outworkers and others in workshops and in two water-mills, one
converted from a corn-mill the other specifically built for needle-scouring. The Scrivens
went bankrupt in 1799, which demonstrates that, although the needle industry was
197 UBD 1792.
198 WaRO, Alcester baptisms 1813-1840. James Taylor, gunsmith, also lived in Birmingham and Redditch
at different times.
199 SCLA, DR333/49/6, 7, deeds, 1697, mention James Canning, Alcester, needlemaker. WoRO, marriage
licence of Samuel Morris, Alcester, bodicemaker, July 1692, witnessed by Richard Wilson, Alcester,
needlemaker. For Richard Badson , needlemaker, see Zone D.
200 WoRO, probate of John Canning, Alcester, (no occupation given), 1728.
201 J. G. Rollins, The Needle Mills, (London, Soc. for Protection of Ancient Buildings, 1970), pp. 10-11.
The mills converted to needle-making were probably all in Zone D at this period.
202 UBD 1792. John Archer was the only metalworker to feature in the jurors’ lists at this period, (WaRO,
QS76/3).
112