Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

outside the study area. 249
The high numbers of needlemakers known in Coughton and
Studley can partly be explained by the fact that the registers for these two parishes
include occupations for most of this period, but they were undoubtedly the early centres
of the trade locally. Within Coughton parish most of the needlers were concentrated in
the manor of Sambourne, where needlemakers comprised a considerable proportion of
the hamlet’s population; it could be described as a specialist, industrial colony. 250
Apprenticeship returns from 1710 suggest that many needlemakers were at work in
Feckenham and Tardebigge parishes too, but the needlers in Tardebigge parish apparently
increase in the mid-eighteenth century, particularly in the industrial hamlet of Redditch.
Naturally probate records, marriage licences and parish registers mainly inform us
about adult male needlemakers, but they may have only formed the tip of the
needlemaking iceberg. From 1722 other sources mention women in the trade, and many
children of both sexes are taken on as apprentices. 251
No doubt family members also
helped their fathers in the eighteenth century, as in Period D.
The needle-trade was still not secure enough to be relied on for one’s total
income; many needlemakers farmed, while others were also tanners, tailors, weavers,
shopkeepers or victuallers. In this zone some two dozen needlemakers left probate
249 Zone A: Alcester 8. Zone C: Inkberrow 3, Wixford 1, Exhall 1, Spernall 1. For places near the study
area we find Worcester 5 (one of whom may also have been a spectacle maker), Alvechurch 1 and
Bromsgrove 1, while in the rest of England there are a handful of needlemakers at this period in Much
Wenlock (Shropshire), Long Crendon (Buckinghamshire), London (Whitechapel), Bristol and Chester
(Handbridge). These figures are from Worcester marriage licences and other sources such as those
accessible on www.a2a.org.uk . The numbers here are of those who worked in this period but finished their
working life before 1750. Some of these are therefore amongst the 40 needlemakers who also worked in
Period A.
250 See Table 7.14.
251 TNA, IR1/41 – 72, inland revenue apprenticeship books, 1710-1804, record many apprentices taken on
in the needle trade locally including some two dozen females. The earliest recorded female apprentice was
Elizabeth Bentley who was taken on by Mary Reeve, Sambourne, needlemaker, in Feb. 1722/3. (TNA,
IR1/48). (Mary was probably the widow of George Reeve, needlemaker who died in 1722.) WoRO,
probate of John Chellingworth, Sambourne, (Coughton), shoemaker, 1746, £9-8-2. Chellingworth chooses
Sarah Hanns, needlemaker, as his executrix. Sarah may be the widow of John Hands, tailor and
needlemaker, perhaps continuing her husband’s business after his death.
300