Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

as long as these poor workers were not too near the ‘big house’. 231
If nothing else, the
colonies of workers provided a trickle of revenue from encroachment fines. 232
The local needlers were not isolated from others in the trade elsewhere in the
country. For example, Francis Scale of Sambourne was apprenticed to a Bridgnorth
needlemaster. 233
Needlemakers may have been brought in from outside to bolster the
trade or add new ideas, but for the most part the early needlemakers hereabouts had local
surnames. 234
With some exceptions, (such as the young Alcester pauper, Charles
Aulster), many of those apprenticed before 1700 seem to be from successful farming
families rather than from pauper stock; many were literate and some later held office in
their parish. 235 Perhaps these needlemasters employed poorer neighbours to carry out
some of the more mundane tasks, maybe on a part-time basis and without a formal
apprenticeship. Such poorer participants in the trade, (cottagers with little capital who
chose to go into needles rather than weaving or nails), may not figure as ‘needlemakers’
in the existing records.
The informality of the trade in this district was one of the advantages over the
London needlemakers, who were still fettered by restrictions on the number of employees
taken on, all of whom had to be official apprentices. By the 1680s the London needle
manufacturers invited those from our Needle District to join the Worshipful Company of
231 The Throckmortons built Spernall fulling-mill, as discussed in Zone C. They also encouraged
prospecting for coal on their estates, for instance at Weston Underwood in Buckinghamshire. Lord
Windsor was involved in improving the navigation of the Severn and in industrial ventures in South Wales.
232 SCLA, DR5/2489, Throckmorton MSS, Sambourne manor court, Oct. 1686, records 19 encroachments.
WaRO, CR1505/16, Sambourne manor court, Oct. 1705, records 33 encroachments, demonstrating the
increase at this period.
233 Jones, ‘The development of needle manufacturing in the west midlands before 1750’, p. 358. Francis
Scale’s surname was also written as Seale.
234 The Throckmortons had estates in Buckinghamshire and could have encouraged needlemakers from that
area (centred on Long Crendon) to migrate.
235 WaRO, DR360/79/2, Alcester parish apprentice indentures, 1681, Charles Auster, apprenticed to
Edward Butler alias Huntington of Hunt End, (Feckenham), needlemaker. An example of a higher status
needlemaker is Richard Lawrence. WaRO, QS11/15, Sambourne hearth tax, shows Richard Lawrence
paying for 2 hearths. He later served as churchwarden and constable.
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