Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Table 7.25 Males in needlemaking and allied trades in baptism registers 1813-1840
Parish
Number
of entries
(n)
Fish-hook &
fishing tackle
manufacture
% of males
with known
occupations
Fish-hook &
fishing tackle
manufacture
Number
of entries
(n)
Needle
manufacture
% of males
with known
occupations
Needle
manufacture
Beoley 7 1.4 9 1.8
Coughton 2 0.3 126 20.8
Feckenham 40.5 2.0 559 27.9
Ipsley 30 5.6 184 34.3
Redditch 171 8.9 934 48.6
Studley 17 1.3 399 31.6
Tardebigge 6 0.6 70 7.1
Northern (Needle) District 273.5 3.5 2281 29.2
Baptism data from 1813 to 1840 shows that 32.7% of adult males were making
needles, fish-hooks or fishing tackle. Table 7.25 separates the two main branches of the
trade. Redditch had 32 needle-making businesses listed in the 1828 directory, 26 in 1835
and 36 in 1839. 288
Men, women and children were all involved in making needles.
Bentley wrote in 1840: ‘Their manufacture furnishes many examples of the advantages of
a minute division of labour.’ 289
In local records the different jobs such as needle-scourer
and needle-pointer had begun to appear in the mid-eighteenth century, and by 1851 there
were more than a score of these different jobs. 290
Some processes were always
undertaken by men, such as the well-paid, dangerous needle-pointing, while other jobs
were more suited to women or children with nimble fingers.
Some processes were done by hand, others were mechanised, using water-power
and from 1800, steam-power. 291 Yarnall’s steam-mill was used to scour thousands of
needles at one time. 292
Innovations were introduced, but did not always meet with
288 Pigot’s Worcestershire Directory 1828-9, Pigot’s Worcestershire Directory 1835, Robson’s
Birmingham and Sheffield Directory 1839.
289 C. Hopkins, Joseph Bentley’s History of Worcestershire, (Durham, C. Hopkins, 1985), p. 78.
290 Shown in Appendix 20.
291 VCH Warwickshire, iii, p. 179, mentions Pardow’s steam-mill in Studley, established in 1800, which
employed 250 hands.
292 Robson’s Birmingham and Sheffield Directory 1839.
308