Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

are low. As well as farming, weavers tried other by-employments to make ends meet, for
example, one Dormston weaver also ran a general store. 87
No woolcombers are mentioned in this zone; perhaps some farmers or weavers
performed this task or maybe the wool was combed in the local towns before being put
out to (female) spinners in the villages. 88
However, Thomas Hulbert of Inkberrow is
described as a wool-dealer in 1781. 89
Spinners go largely unmentioned, but inventories reveal spinning wheels in many
households, such as that of John Hunt, glover in the 1670s, who, as well as skins, leather
and gloves, also had hemp and eight pecks of wool in his wool-chamber. The wool
comprised almost half his inventory total. Hunt apparently acted as a dealer in many
types of textile and leather, probably putting out work to local spinners and weavers and
also selling ‘mercery wares’. The presence of an alum-tub suggests he was also dyeing
cloth, but alum could also have been used for processing leather. Hunt also had a
‘raghouse’, suggesting the collection of rags for re-use, or for sale as second-hand clothes
to the poor, or to pass on to paper-mills. 90
Although many women must have supported the textile trade by spinning, their
role as weavers would be completely hidden locally if it were not for Rev. Heath’s
comments that in Inkberrow in the 1790s ‘females are employed in spinning and
weaving. By the former an industrious woman can earn 4d. to 9d. a day; by the latter 6s.
to 8s. a week. Where the man and his wife both weave, it frequently happens that the
87 WoRO, probate of John Homan, Stock Green, Inkberrow, weaver, 1761, £16-8-3., and of John Collins,
Dormston, 1762, £17-16-4.
88 Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 18, p. 36,
describes independent women spinners buying small amounts of wool on market day and returning next
week with yarn on which they made a handsome profit. Others span for the clothier.
89 WoRO probate of Edward Hill, Inkberrow, (no occupation given), 1781, mentions Hulbert.
90 WoRO, John Hunt, Inkberrow, glover, 1677, £94-10-0. Although there is no evidence of papermakers in
this zone until the eighteenth century, he could have supplied paper-mills in Zone D.
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