Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Feckenham Forest. In turn they received the weavers’ finished cloth and sold it on to the
big-time Worcester cloth merchants. Both men were literate, (indeed one also acted as
parish scribe), and of yeoman status, with capital behind them. 107
Another Feckenham
weaver featured in local property deals, and many other weavers supplemented their
income by farming at least in a small way, while a Studley weaver, Richard Doley, also
ran a general store. 108
These more prominent businessmen come to light, but most
weavers were probably too poor to trouble the probate courts.
As in other zones, the important part played by the womenfolk is again suggested
by the presence of spinning wheels in inventories and also by the apprenticeship
indenture of Elizabeth Cox to learn spinning in a yeoman’s household. 109
References to
women wool-carding and spinning also occur in overseers of the poor accounts. 110
In the second half of the eighteenth century weavers were still present, probably
in the same numbers as in previous periods, but, as the population grew, their share of the
workforce was smaller. Most weavers hereabouts probably still worked in small family
units like the Griffin family in Feckenham. 111
Many types of cloth were probably still
woven, but linen or flaxen materials are specified more often than wool. 112
Coarse flaxen
107 WoRO, probate of Benjamin Westwood, Feckenham, innholder, 1729. WoRO, marriage licence of John
Walford, Feckenham, clothier, May 1725, witnessed by Benjamin Westwood, Feckenham, clothier.
Elsewhere Westwood is described as a yeoman, and Walford is probably of a wealthy family of tanners and
yeomen.
108 SCLA, DR12/63, concerning property transactions of Thomas Hawthorne, Astwood Bank,
(Feckenham), weaver. WoRO, probate of Richard Doley, Studley, (no occupation given), 1720, £76-1-7,
indicates weaving and shopkeeping.
109 WaRO, DR360/79/11, Alcester parish apprentice indenture, 1689, of Elizabeth Cox of Alcester, to John
Reynolds, Feckenham, yeoman, to ‘learn the trade and mistery of a spinster’, presumably from the
yeoman’s wife.
110 For example, WoRO, BA4284, (ix) and (vii), Feckenham overseers of the poor.
111 WoRO, probate of Thomas Griffin, Feckenham, weaver, 1792. The only weaver in this zone to leave
probate in Period C; he was worth less than £20, illiterate and possessed only loom, which he left to his
son.
112 Some references are rather fortuitous. William Perry of Redditch, was specified as a linen-weaver when
mentioned in Berrow’s Worcester Journal 26 Jan. 1764; he had killed another man after an altercation in a
Redditch pub.
273