Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

eveal two other pin-makers in Tardebigge and Feckenham. Pin-making was no doubt an
offshoot of the more widespread local industry of needlemaking, which utilised some of
the same processes and raw materials. John Bott, described as both pin-maker and
needlemaker, was probably master of his own business and was termed ‘yeoman’ when
he died. 245
The other offshoot of the needlemaking trade, the manufacture of fish-hooks,
appears at the beginning of Period C. The great expansion within the fishing tackle trade
was yet to come, and pin-making never took a real hold in the local economy, unlike its
allied trade of needlemaking, which came to dominate the local scene.
In Period B the needle industry was growing apace. Marriage licence data
indicates an increase from 2% to 22% of the workforce over this period, while
apprenticeship books show that more than half of this zone’s apprentices were in the
needle trade. 246
Now the trade was well established locally, the supply and marketing
links, which had been built up, led to its concentration hereabouts. ‘Such clustering points
to the role of dissemination of ideas and capital in the spread of industrialisation.’ 247
Using all contemporary sources some 170 adult male needlemakers can be found
in this zone between 1700 and 1750. 248
Only twenty-six have so far been discovered
elsewhere: fourteen in other zones of the study area and a dozen in parts of England
245 WoRO, marriage licences of John Bott, Tardebigge, (Redditch), needlemaker, Feb.1732, and of John
Bott, Feckenham, pinmaker, Aug. 1740, and of Valentine Davis, Evesham All Saints, cordwainer, Nov.
1744, witnessed by Thomas Reading, Tardebigge, pinmaker. WoRO, probate of John Bott, Feckenham,
yeoman, 1764.
246 See Table 7.4 above and Appendix 23.
247 N. Raven and T. Holley in Stobart, Towns, Regions and Industries, p. 37, discussing the silk
manufactories in Staffordshire and Cheshire.
248 Totals for individual parishes are: Coughton 77, Studley 27, Tardebigge 27, Feckenham 23, Ipsley 6.
(No needlemakers have been found for Beoley parish in this period.)
299